Free at last: Thank Thomas Paine, free at last!

In his 1791 “Autobiography” Benjamin Franklin writes about how, as Philadelphia grew, it was in need of a new, larger, assembly hall and he speaks of soliciting funds in order to build a hall so grand “... that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service …”

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As an Arab American Muslim, raised in New Hampshire, professionally nurtured in The Levant, I love the expression of Franklin’s inclusive and pluralistic vision and it has resonated with me since I first read it.

Franklin’s desires, together with writer James Baldwin’s challenge, “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually,” informs my work to this very moment, whether it’s commentary about genocide and ethnic cleansing, supporting libraries, opposing book-banning, and challenging attempts to suppress First Amendment rights in America.

Today, pulpits come in many shapes and sizes — podiums, books, phones, billboards, tablets, substacks, t-shirts, skywriting — many of which are easily publicly accessed. Among the most traditional and familiar are op-ed sections in America’s increasingly-challenged but surviving newspapers, pages where I make occasional appearances, especially in New Hampshire.

I am able to write such commentary today in part because the Rev. John Sharpe advocated in 1713 that libraries should be “publick and provincial … open every day in the week at convenient hours [where] all men may have liberty to read...”

I am able to write such commentary today in part because growing up in Manchester, I discovered at an early age the Manchester City Library. It opened the world to me, a world I discovered beyond that being defined for many Granite Staters at the time by William Loeb and the Manchester Union Leader, a beyond-conservative, jingoistic newspaper that along with the New Hampshire Sunday News helped drive New Hampshire politics for far too long.

I still remember an editorial Loeb once wrote that, while excoriating “piously hypocritical newspapers,” called President Eisenhower “that stinking hypocrite in the White House” because Eisenhower refused to support Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch hunts.

I still remember how both ironic and wonderful it was in 2018 when the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications awarded me its First Amendment Award. The Loeb School, partly funded through the generosity of a corporation that historically profited, in part, by marginalizing people who look and think like me — people not white, not privileged, not conservative.

And how deliciously ironic and wonderful it is that we gather on this page today because they published a column I wrote in 2021. I love it!

After 9/11, when I realized that as Muslim I’d always be seen as Other by many Americans who perceive this nation as white and mostly Christian, my life changed; I became more active in public and interfaith dialogue, more active as a writer and advocate for social justice.

I became even more involved, believing I was being called to engage conversations not just about Islam but about patriarchy, privilege, power, and conflict — to engage unhesitatingly between global and nativist interests, between parochial and liberal sympathies; to stand, as Palestinian poet Nathalie Handal might define it “… in the spaces between our footsteps.”

I share all this today because for too long America has privileged the narrative of white history and interests at the expense of the Other. As readers know, I am committed to setting the record straight.

Today, we live in a state more diverse and pluralistic than it was when I was at Manchester Central, more interesting, more vibrant, and with a Loeb School of Communications where students are taught that what underlies all journalistic endeavor is the search for truth.

That’s why we’re here, why we’re taught to understand, as Foucault writes, that “Truth isn’t outside power .... Truth is a thing of this world; it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint.”

In response to the Supreme Court decision ACLU-NH’s Legal Director Gilles Bissonnette stated: “Today’s ruling is a victory for free speech and freedom of press rights in the Granite State and affirms that defamation law may not be used to punish ordinary people for debating matters of public concern in a public forum like the Union Leader opinion section. People and the press - despite pressure and intimidation from those with financial resources who vehemently disagree with them - have a First Amendment right to voice their opinion without fear of litigation from those who seek to stifle criticism.”

I love Atty. Mike Lewis; I love his dedication and brilliance and focus and I am so thankful for what he did for me, pro bono, and for you.

He and I come from different backgrounds, different faith traditions. We occasionally differ over politics and contemporary events but that’s okay, that works for us. He has become a close friend and I’m thankful for that, for our being able to come together not in opposition to someone or something but because we share an affirmative and enduring belief that all Americans have equal constitutional rights to voice opinions and dissents without fear of litigation and intimidation.

I’m thankful, too, that the New Hampshire State Constitution, in its Bill of Rights. Part 1, Article 22 [Free Speech. Liberty of the Press], amended 1968, is unequivocal, recognizing that “Free speech and Liberty of the press are essential to the security of Freedom in a State: They ought, therefore, to be inviolably preserved.”

This case hung over my head for years; I felt particularly vulnerable and, as I could not afford to pay for representation, it was intimidating and limiting.

I slept well on September 4, 2024.

“O men! Behold,” the Qur’an tells us, “We have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another.”

So we may know each other.

That, too, is a good thing, for both believers and non-believers, and what I most want people to understand is that, as Richard Henry Lee, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, wrote “True freedom embraces the Mahometan and Hindu as well as the Christian religion” and that all have equal standing in America’s Public Square.

Together we stand: I, you, Mike, ACLU, NH Supreme Court — all who believe that free speech and liberty of the press are essential to the security of freedom.

Together we stand.