One of the terrible things about terrorism is that you have to start to think like a terrorist just to go about daily life: When I pack to go to the airport, I have to think about whether anything I’m packing might be or look like something I could hijack or crash or blow up a plane with just to be able to get through security. I have to think about the most logical path for a gunman through a building to be able to have an escape-or-barricade plan in mind just in case, to be able protect myself day to day. I wouldn’t think about how to crash planes or shoot people in buildings otherwise but for the rise of terrorism and my need to go on with my life around it and around the security (theater) measures it has necessitated. Terrorism breeds terroristic thinking.
And now — do I have to think like an Islamophobe or a white supremacist just to be able to do my work and do no harm? I must take into account how my translation project about medieval Islam might be used against modern, flesh-and-blood Muslims by white nationalist terrorists. I have to wonder whether the above passage might be seized out of the historical and narrative context of late antique and early Islamic crucifixion and out of the context of the love letter to Córdoba that I am translating and used instead to demonize any and all Muslims, medieval and modern, as… I don’t know. I don’t want to have to get seven feet ahead of deadly hatred by imagining hatred. I don’t want to be the one who demonizes my academic subjects and my friends, even if it is to protect them. These are lines I will not cross.
I find myself in a quandary: If I go ahead with this project, if I put this paragraph out in the world, I might be putting ammunition into the hands of terrorists. But if I quash it, I let those same terrorists dictate nothing less than the very course of history, medieval and modern; they would limit what people could know about the Middle Ages and limit what people in the present could say about it.
I will confess an unpopular opinion here: I am a free-speech absolutist. Incitement to violence? No way. But short of that? Sure. Even after this weekend I’m still the Jew who believes that Nazis should be allowed to march down Main St. and that I should then denounce them long and loud. I believe that we fight speech with speech. It’s a position that has been sullied lately by white dudebros who don’t really understand or believe in free speech, but rather who feel entitled, but it is one that is still carefully thought and actively defended by organizations such as the ACLU. (This Twitter thread by my colleague David Perry is a useful and clear articulation of the difference and the consequences.)
This is not a decision I take lightly or unaware of the potential real-world consequences. But I will translate, I will publish, and if it all goes badly wrong I will fight speech with speech and hope that it will be enough.