Once governments normalize censorship and the punishment of points of view, free expression is firmly stamped with an expiration date.

Whenever censorship slithers back into polite society, it is always draped in the mantle of "good intentions." Fifteenth-century Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola's "bonfire of the vanities" destroyed anything that could be seen to invite or reflect sin. The notorious 1933 Nazi book burning... in Berlin torched some 20,000 books deemed subversive or "un-German". During Communist China's decade-long Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and '70s, the vast majority of China's traditional scrolls, literature and religious antiquities went up in smoke.

All three atrocities were celebrated as achievements for the "greater good" of society... Much like today's new censors who claim to "fight hate" because "that's not who we are," the arsonists of the past saw themselves as moral paragons, too. They purged anything "obscene" or "traditional" or "old," so that theocracy, Nazism, or communism could take root and grow.

There will one day be much disagreement as to how the same Western Civilization that produced the Enlightenment and its hallowed regard for free expression could once again surrender itself to the petty tyranny of censorship.... The answer is that the West has fallen into the same trap that always catches unsuspecting citizens by surprise: the steady encroachment on free speech has been sold as a "virtue" that all good people should applaud.

First, certain thoughts became "aggravating factors" that turned traditional crimes into new "hate crimes" deserving of additional punishment. Then the definition of what is "hateful" grew until politicians could comfortably decree anything at odds with their agendas to be examples of "hate." Who would be for "hate," after all? Surely no-one of good sense or good manners.

Now "hate" has transformed into an elusive description for any speech that can be alleged to cause the slightest of harms. From there, it was easy for the state to decree that "disinformation," or rather anything that can be seen to contradict the state's own official narratives, causes "harm," too. Those who despise free speech told society, "If you do not punish hate, then you're a bigot." And today, if you oppose the government's COVID-19, climate change, immigration or other contentious policies, your harmful "disinformation" must be punished, too.

On a plaque in the square [where the Nazis burned books] is a commemorative engraving... "That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people." That warning comes with no expiration date.

Iran accounts for 50% of all executions in the world although the country represents only 1.1% of the world population. More than 40% of all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience are in Iran.

According to Transparency International, the Islamic Republic is also in the world's top league for corruption. According to Tehran's official reports, between 2016 and 2020, embezzlement and bribery rose by 300%. Only last month, a $400 million embezzlement case was reported among 85 other cases of "big corruption" being investigated.

Official reports show that some 80 unnamed but presumably powerful figures owe untold sums to state-owned banks on the basis of non-existent collateral.

Add to all that the challenges that average Iranians face in social, cultural and political domains, and Alam al-Hoda's "Islamic model" is unlikely to find a big market across the globe.