Far too often, people respond self-destructively to real issues. Take Muslims protesting against that film which truly did insult the Prophet Muhammad. The ensuing mob demonstrations gave cover to a terrorist attack in Libya and generally reinforced the Muslim rage illusion among people that were thinking that anyways. The Innocence Of Muslims was a film (trailer) designed to inflame tensions and bring out the worst in people, and it did. Peoples anger, in this immediate case, was actually redirected against the United States, which didn’t produce the film. But the US is racist against Muslims. That is a real issue.
First Aside: US Racism Against Muslims
In the US the amount of anti-Muslim nonsense and lies people are able to propagate is astounding. It’s acceptable to call the President Barack Obama a Muslim as if that’s somehow a smear. The implication is that a Muslim should never be allowed to be President, which is chillingly backwards and wrong. Politicians and pundits regularly use ‘Muslim’ and ‘Terrorist’ as if they’re synonyms (even though American terrorism is mostly local) and law enforcement devotes disproportional resources to monitoring Muslims despite white supremacists and local violent groups being a bigger threat.
Of course, it’s not like much of the Arab world is in a position to talk. Saudi textbooks have numerous lies and smears against Jews and in that and other countries it’s either illegal or dangerous to not be a Muslim.
Second Aside: Free Speech
You could say that there’s a different concept of free speech in the west, but it’s not quite that. Western speech is limited, specifically by hate speech laws, protecting Jews and often gays and other minorities from defamation and threats. As William Saletan argues in the above-linked piece, they should probably loosen up all of these hate speech laws rather than randomly exempting Muslims from protection.
The Point: Trolling
At the same time, however, these recurring controversies show that the nation state is no longer even the relevant unit. People in Indonesia (and Sri Lanka) are protesting over an obscure video made in California. There was a similar controversy over cartoons in the Netherlands. This is, in many ways, an inoculation for sensitive Muslims against a world that is somewhat free, and to nations where media is not state controlled. In these protest there is the idea that America or YouTube is to blame when in fact there just spaces which contain largely free speech.
As more people enter the digital world they’ll find that they’re coming in contact with a wide range of people, including a significant proportion of assholes. While governments and service providers do need to regulate, you can’t regulate trolling, which is essentially what this is, at least in the current video case. The best recipe for fighting trolls remains to not feed them. Of course block, monitor, whatever, but that’s generally a site’s prerogative in the context of what they choose to publish (like I moderate comments that get out of control). You can’t really ask ‘someone’ to control what’s on the broader Internet without it being self-destructive, ie, hurting an awesome system if it is controlled or making you look silly when it inevitably isn’t.
they should probably loosen up all of these hate speech laws rather than randomly exempting Muslims from protection.
This is probably the stupidest thing I have seen you write on this site. Of course Muslims should be randomly exempted from protection. But what proof do you have have that they are randomly exempted from protection?
First of all, the attacks are against the US, not Germany or France. USA has the First Amendment. Sometimes public interests such as national security and personal safety trumps the First Amendment. But that is done with care. A living Muslim can go to court if some one defamed him, but he won’t be able to go to court for someone insulting his religion, just like a Roman Catholic or a Mormon won’t be able to go to court against someone for insulting their religions.
Watch Bill Maher’s show. Do you see religions (especially Mormonism, Scientology, Christianity in general) being protected against the First Amendment. Does Bill Maher go to jail for calling Joseph Smith a petty criminal?
So Islam is getting fair treatment. It is treated the same way all the other religions are treated. It’s only the Muslims who want to play victim and kill people. You won’t see Mitt Romney killing Bill Maher.
Of course Muslims should be randomly exempted from protection.
should be
Of course Muslims should not be randomly exempted from protection.
sorry
I didn’t go into it, but read the Saletan piece which is linked. Even in the US there are hate speech laws, and there is significant cultural (not legal) blowback for saying hateful things towards, Jews, blacks, etc.
In the US, laws prohibiting hate speech are unconstitutional. Limitation to free speech are based only on defamation, incitement to riot, and fighting words. These laws do not prevent Salman Rushie from writing Satanic Verses, or Bill Maher making fun of all religion ever invented.
This link would be really helpful in understanding how the First Amendment works in this US:
http://civilliberty.about.com/od/freespeech/tp/Hate-Speech-Cases.htm
Whatever the cultural blow-backs are, Ku Klux Klan is still active in the US and is legal. There are number of neo-Nazi groups as well that are legal. You cannot be punished for believing what you believe and expressing it, as long as you do something violent, or incite to riot, or defame somebody (and no, dead people are not protected by defamation laws. You can say whatever you want to say about Thomas Jefferson).
Now, I haven’t watched this “Innocence of Muslims” video, just like most of those protesters who go about killing people, and am unlikely to ever watch it. But as you claim, if it is only about insulting Prophet Muhammad, and not “hey, Muslims are pigs, let’s go get ’em” kind of thing, then the film-maker has all the rights in the world to make it, just like Dan Brown and Ron Howard have the right to make Da Vinci Code, and Bill Maher has the right to mock Joseph Smith.
The problem is Islam. It’s not as if Islam is the only religion that is mocked on the internet. But it’s only Islam that resorts to violence with such consistency when that happens.
I agree with everything Sharanga says. The only exception being Holocaust Denial.
Holocaust denial is not a crime in USA.
USA is a common law country (like Ireland), and doesn’t ban hate speech. Continental European countries, which are civil law countries, do have hate speech bans and ban Holocaust denial.
Holocaust is a crime aainst humanity , Hence even if there are laws against that ,it’s fine. But Islam is a religion similiar to Christianity or Buddhism. USA is a country ,which despite having the largest congregation of Christians in the devoloped world, still make no fuss about sacriligious South Park episodes, Jesus Christ Superstar or Last Temptation of Christ.
That muslims have gone mad over an obscure substandard film made by a shadowy figure not in anyway connected to US Govt ( and despite Obama and Hillary expressly condemning contents of movie) goes on to how infantile some of those guys are. Probably due to not having enough grey matter .
Out there in the streets across the world a new movie is playing. It’s called “Immaturity of Muslims”
Nice. I didn’t know this.