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When free speech costs human life

Source: The Washington Post

By Qasim Rashid

A Libyan man holds a placard in English during a demonstration against the attack on the U.S. consulate that killed four Americans, including the ambassador, in Benghazi, Libya. (Ibrahim Alaguri – AP)

As with many of you, my Twitter feed spiked Wednesday with tweets about an anti-Islam filmand ensuing murder of U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens. Moments later and likewise, posts demanding an unequivocal condemnation from American Muslims flooded my Facebook.

Though it astounds me that some hold Muslim Americans accountable on behalf of extremists 5,000 miles away, here goes. I can speak specifically on behalf of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community to condemn this senseless violence in the strongest terms. Likewise, I have seen only similar explicit condemnation from my colleagues in countless different Muslim communities worldwide. But this condemnation is not new. We condemned the post-Danish cartoon violence that resulted in dozens of deaths and countless more injuries in 2005. We condemned the post-Terry Jones Koran-burning violence that killed 31 in Afghanistan in 2010. And now we again condemn this senseless violence in 2012.

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Categories: Americas, Libya, United States

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  1. Limits of free speech
    The article also nicely defines the limits of free speech, here I quote another example, showing that at least in decades past obscenity was not covered by free speech. I am borrowing my words from Wikipedia:

    The phrase “I know it when I see it” is a colloquial expression by which a speaker attempts to categorize an observable fact or event, although the category is subjective or lacks clearly defined parameters. The phrase was famously used by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964). Obscenity is not protected speech under the Miller test, and can therefore be censored.

    I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that. [Emphasis added.] —Justice Potter Stewart, concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964), regarding possible obscenity in The Lovers.

    Whereas, American courts at least tried to precisely define the limits of free speech, when it came to obscenity, but, when it comes to anti-Islamic vitriolic propaganda they look away, not realizing that peace of our Global village depends on mutual respect among the main religions of the world. Perhaps, some of the laws against slander and original laws against blasphemy can serve as framework to draw some limits on anti-religious propaganda. The media also needs to give up habit of stereotyping against Islam, and should stop putting Islam on unilateral trial, without opportunity to defend itself, while one bad apple does not lead to putting Judaism or Christianity on trial.

    Reference from Wikipedia:

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

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  2. Freedom of speech in the West has become a colonial tool. Noam Chomsky, the American philosopher and political critic, summed up the western concept of freedom of speech when he said: “If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like.
    Freedom of speech is not a free trade. Legal limits are imposed on freedom of speech by issues such as racism, national security, holocaust denial, glorification of terrorism, antisemitism and libel etc. To incite religious hatred is nothing less than that.

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