There are Muslim citizens who think that the there’s something really more dangerous than the Danish cartoons, for the way Islam is seen in the world. It is “the images of a hostage’s throat being slit in front of a camera”. That’s what the Jordanian newspaper Shihane wrote on February 2. Unfortunately, expressing these views is not always a good idea, in some Muslim states. So it happened that the newspaper was pulled off the newsstands, and its editor was dismissed.

The spirit of that provocation, though, is strongly widespread in the Muslim population, as it is shown by the brave statement made by Tewfik Allal and its Association du Manifeste des Libertés, appeared in the French press and translated in English by the American magazine Dissent in its last issue. “There are people in Islamic countries who think the same way as these Jordanian editors do – writes Allal, referring to the newspaper Shihane – but who are not allowed to express it. They lack freedom of expression more than anyone else”.

Allal, a French writer and trade unionist who was born in Morocco of Algerian parents, is the president of Manifeste des Libertés, an association based in Paris and composed of Muslim and non-Muslim people who strongly oppose Islamism. The association denounces, in his site, all that is being done in the world in the name of Islam, and expresses its solidarity to all the democrats and laic in the Muslim world. It is not the first time that Dissent publishes a statement by this association, and the magazine co-edited by Mitchell Cohen and Michael Walzer stresses that they are not used to publish similar texts. In summer 2004 Dissent published its “Muslim Manifesto from France”, in which its signatories explained: “We are of Muslim culture. We oppose misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and the political use of Islam. We assert a living secularism.”

Now Cohen and Walzer decide to publicise this second declaration “because of its courage and remarkable moral and political intelligence”. “For Freedom of Expression”, written by Allal, originally appeared in the February 8, 2006, issue of Charlie Hebdo, a Paris weekly, along with the offending cartoons. We can discuss about the quality of the Danish cartoons, argues Allal, but it is not possible to call for the murder of the cartoonists, “indeed of an entire nation in the name of God”. “This much is obvious and urgent: We must defend those who are being attacked by extremists in the name of Islam”, he continues, and then quotes Magdi Allam, Egyptian columnist of the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera: “Are we going to wait until another Theo van Gogh is murdered, perhaps in Copenhagen or in Oslo?”.

Allal affirms that the demonstrations and disorders provoked by the Danish cartoons have been orchestrated, are “a call to order directed at those of us who come from this very same civilization, whether citizens of Europe or—especially—elsewhere. We are being told, You are not entitled to be Europeans, you are not entitled to think ‘like Europeans’.” He reminds that the Islamic Conference Organization and the Arab League recently proposed that the UN adopt a resolution forbidding criticism of religions, in a clear challenge to “a long-established European right that is more urgent than ever: freedom of thought with its inseparable bond to freedom of conscience, as well as the rights of atheism and blasphemy”.

The Association of the Manifeste des Libertés condemns fundamentalism and asks for “a democratic, common future together, with pluralism of cultural backgrounds”, and remarks that “this hope is hated by the extreme right parties in Europe and by the radical Islamists”. “We believe that all the contradictions at work in the Muslim world, past and present, should be seen openly – Allal concludes – One day the experience of freedom will, as Salman Rushdie says, ‘break open the door of this prison’.”