Anti-Islam Video: Is it Free Speech or Hate Speech?

[livingdead]

And the point you are missing is that the moment this ad was released it was banned, even removed from youtube at that time, so treat Muslims equally and they wont have to resort to violence.

Implicit in the message is threat of violence, which is why so many more such videos/cartoons are going to come.
Its going to take long time to get used to, till then keep burning your own houses.

 

[FaujHistorian]

And the point you are missing is that the moment this ad was released it was banned, even removed from youtube at that time, so treat Muslims equally and they wont have to resort to violence.

Pere dear,

If Muslims (and especially Pakistanis) want to be treated like Indians, then they must behave like humble and pro-West Indians.

Why on earth you would forget that we get treated by our peers and others based on how we come across as individuals and as communities.

If others around us perceive that we will be peaceful, humble, and with good character, then they will respect us and listen to us.

But if we behave like primitive tribal beduins, we loot, and we burn, and we bomb, then guess what????

others will not treat us with respect.

Earn respect as a community my dear poster, and the world will treat you much better. It is guaranteed.


peace to you brother, peace to you.

 

[livingdead]

^^^ Love your views, but they are too much of a generalization. There is a big pakistani diaspora in UK, and they are not particularly more violent / less humble than Indians.
The situation in pakistan is due to leadership failure not due to pakistanis as such being better or worse than Indian at individual level.
On topic: I guess the violent reaction is due to the religious/cultural teaching, which basically places prophet on a very high pedestral and one is supposed to be angry at slightest insult (even when not intended, say missing pbuh/saw after his name). Which is why it happened all over muslim world not only pakistan.

 

[t_for_talli]

Most chutiatic anchor

Interrupts speaker at most crucial times exposing his ignorance about the matter discussed

 

[JSpooner]

In the U.S. no one is going to "censor" you or shut your trap; but that won't stop people from thinking of you as a demented fool or deplorable bully and reject you on that basis.

You actually couldn't be more wrong. The US (and Europe)will censor and ban you for anti-Israel propaganda and permit anti-Muslim propoganda.

 

[RiazHaq]

Here's a Slate.com Op Ed titled "Hate Speech Hypocrites" by William Saletan:


Jews have too much influence over U.S. foreign policy. Gay men are too promiscuous. Muslims commit too much terrorism. Blacks commit too much crime.

Each of those claims is poorly stated. Each, in its clumsy way, addresses a real problem or concern. And each violates laws against hate speech. In much of what we call the free world, for writing that paragraph, I could be jailed.
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If we’re going to preach freedom of expression around the world, we have to practice it. We have to scrap our hate-speech laws.
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President Obama, while condemning the video, met these proposals with a stout defense of free speech. Switzerland’s president agreed: “Freedom of opinion and of expression are core values guaranteed universally which must be protected.” And when a French magazine published cartoons poking fun at Mohammed, the country’s prime minister insisted that French laws protecting free speech extend to caricatures.

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On Tuesday, Pakistan’s U.N. ambassador, speaking for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, told the U.N. Human Rights Council:

We are all aware of the fact that laws exist in Europe and other countries which impose curbs, for instance, on anti-Semitic speech, Holocaust denial, or racial slurs. We need to acknowledge, once and for all, that Islamophobia in particular and discrimination on the basis of religion and belief are contemporary forms of racism and must be dealt with as such. Not to do so would be a clear example of double standards. Islamophobia has to be treated in law and practice equal to the treatment given to anti-Semitism.

He’s right. Laws throughout Europe forbid any expression that “minimizes,” “trivializes,” “belittles,” “plays down,” “contests,” or “puts in doubt” Nazi crimes. Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic extend this prohibition to communist atrocities. These laws carry jail sentences of up to five years. Germany adds two years for anyone who “disparages the memory of a deceased person.”

Hate speech laws go further. Germany punishes anyone found guilty of “insulting” or “defaming segments of the population.” The Netherlands bans anything that “verbally or in writing or image, deliberately offends a group of people because of their race, their religion or beliefs, their hetero- or homosexual orientation or their physical, psychological or mental handicap.” It’s illegal to “insult” such a group in France, to “defame” them in Portugal, to “degrade” them in Denmark, or to “expresses contempt” for them in Sweden. In Switzerland, it’s illegal to “demean” them even with a “gesture.” Canada punishes anyone who “willfully promotes hatred.” The United Kingdom outlaws “insulting words or behavior” that arouse “racial hatred.” Romania forbids the possession of xenophobic “symbols.”

What have these laws produced? Look at the convictions upheld or accepted by the European Court of Human Rights. Four Swedes who distributed leaflets that called homosexuality “deviant” and “morally destructive” and blamed it for AIDS. An Englishman who displayed in his window a 9/11 poster proclaiming, “Islam out of Britain.” A Turk who published two letters from readers angry at the government’s treatment of Kurds. A Frenchman who wrote an article disputing the plausibility of poison gas technology at a Nazi concentration camp...
[/I][/I]
Free speech vs. hate speech: Why is it legal to insult Muslims but not Jews?

 

[RiazHaq]

Here's another Salon.com piece on Islamophobia in the West:

Three hurtful words, scrawled in black circles under the eyes of a ballplayer named Yunel Escobar: Tu ere maricón. The message, conveyed in the eyeblack of the Toronto Blue Jays shortstop during a recent game, means, You’re a faggot. That’s hate language, and reaction was swift and stern. Major league baseball launched an investigation, the Blue Jays suspended Escobar for three games and enrolled him in “sensitivity training,” and he gave the obligatory apology in front of the microphones. Few if anyone publicly complained that, hurtful or not, homophobic or not, Escobar’s free speech rights trumped the concerns of others wounded by his words. No one said Escobar should be able to continue displaying the slur.

“Given the reaction of the offended community, Escobar’s punishment was absolutely justifiable and necessary to maintain order in society,” wrote Stacie Brown on policymic. In other words, the community came together and shut Escobar up, due to a collective sense of mutual respect for the rights of others not to be hurt by hateful speech. Society has forged standards of respect and unacceptability about racial, ethnic, anti-Semitic and homophobic slurs. Rightly or wrongly, the message is: use certain hateful words in public, and you’ll pay the price. So why is there a different set of values at work when it comes to the hurt caused Muslims by hateful, Islamophobic characterizations of the Prophet Mohammed, or denigrations of Islam?
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Here in the States, try advocating assassination, running an explosives seminar, defending the 9/11 attacks, or even making a charitable donation to the wrong group in the wrong conflict zone, and see how far you get. Some of these restrictions emanate from the USA Patriot Act, but others have been in place for decades. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in 1919, argued that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.” As Sarah Chayes points out in an LA Times op-ed titled “Free Speech or Incitement?”, “The Innocence of Muslims” was provocative by design, and therefore may fit U.S. case law that prohibits “specifically advocating violence.” She quotes Anthony Lewis, former New York Times columnist and eloquent free speech champion: “If the result was violence, and violence was intended, then it meets the standard” for a criminal act.

The second problem in the blanket free speech defense is its unequal application to Muslims and Arabs. “I come from a land, from a faraway place, where the caravan camels roam,” went the Disney film “Alladin”’s opening song, “where they cut off your ear if they don‘t like your face. It‘s barbaric, but hey, it‘s home.” Is there any other group in America for whom this kind of slur would not be roundly condemned, its offenders forced to apologize before being sent into the corner like Yunel Escobar?
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Free speech and the “clash of civilizations” - Salon.com

 

[FaujHistorian]

Here's a Slate.com Op Ed titled "Hate Speech Hypocrites" by William Saletan:


Jews have too much influence over U.S. foreign policy. Gay men are too promiscuous. Muslims commit too much terrorism. Blacks commit too much crime.


Free speech vs. hate speech: Why is it legal to insult Muslims but not Jews?

Dear poster,

this has been posted in another thread. This author of this article doesn't understand Islamic teachings.
http://www.defence.pk/forums/world-affairs/210797-hate-speech-hypocrites.html#post3462289

 

[RiazHaq]

Dear poster,
This author of this article doesn't understand Islamic teachings.
http://www.defence.pk/forums/world-affairs/210797-hate-speech-hypocrites.html#post3462289

This article is about unequal application of free speech and hate speech laws in the West. Its author does not need to understand Islam for the subject at hand.

 

[Just Jack]

Jews have too much influence over U.S. foreign policy. Gay men are too promiscuous. Muslims commit too much terrorism. Blacks commit too much crime.

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How about something like this:

1) Jews have disproportional influence over U.S. foreign policy.
2) Gay men are disproportionately promiscuous.
3) Muslims are disproportionately involved in acts of terrorism.
4) Blacks are disproportionately predisposed towards crime.

Would this still be hate speech? Or merely a statement of the statistically verifiable facts?