Here's the flyer expressing the Muslim Student Union's views. "Please come and voice your support for free speech and respect for freedom of religion," the flyer reports. Moreover, the flyer says, "Islam promotes free speech." Sounds great!
But, the flyer goes on, "it is important to recognize that anything that is discriminatory does not qualify under this heading" of free speech. I take it that the implication is that criticism of Islam, or critical depictions of Mohammed (or is it any depictions of Mohammed at all?), is unprotected because it's "discriminatory." How about Muslim statements that other religions are misguided; are those "discriminatory," too?
Plus of course there's also the old chestnut about the supposed "differences between free speech and hate speech." Fortunately, modern U.S. First Amendment law does not treat the two as antonyms, just as it wouldn't discuss "the differences between free speech and blasphemy" or "the differences between free speech and sedition." It's a shame that the USC Muslim Student Union takes a different view.
Finally, the flyer promises that the advertised meeting "will be discussing the ramifications of the continued unveilings across the country on the Muslim community at large as well as its political implications." Here's my sense of the political implications: If the Muslim community is perceived as hostile to free speech, and as friendly towards coercively suppressing criticisms of Islam, that's going to be quite politically bad for it, at least in America. If, on the other hand, leading Muslim voices were to defend even the speech of Islam's critics, and to stress that the proper response to offensive speech is peaceful debate, not suppression by violence or by force of law, that would be politically good for the Muslim community.
By the way, where is Adam Gadahn from?
And let's not forget that this flier says nothing that speech-code-apologists of every race, religion, and creed haven't routinely said in our universities.
Better than NYU...
It would be wonderful if we lived in a liberal/libertarian paradise world, where people who defend liberal tolerance were rewarded by increased power and influence, and those who try to suppress freedom were themselves suppressed as a result of their bad acts, but the world doesn't work that way.
Now it's true that, though the cartoons are substantive and, now that the controversy has arisen, quite important, they are also offensive and hurtful to those who are offended and hurt by harsh criticism of Islam (or for that matter even by the entirely noncritical depiction of Mohammed); and some of them are angry at Islam. But that does not, in my view, make them "bad speech."
It's <i>because</i> of its crudeness that it has found that audience - crudeness is what many tune in for - but that is a reflection on what we choose to buy, not what "they" choose to sell. And I don't think that dick-jokes were what the founders had in mind as a threat. What I think is meant by "virtuous people," in this context, is - a people firm in the belief that the good ideas will beat out the bad; that we do not need to muzzle the speakers of bad ideas.
I disagree. To paraphrase Dennis Prager, I think that clarity is better than agreement in this case. Better for them to come out and admit that they favor suppressing anything that they don’t like rather than try to dilute the concept of freedom of speech by suggesting that there is “discrimination” exception.
Bottom line: those who us who value freedom don’t need groups like the USC Muslim Students Union and we’re better off with them standing firmly on the other side so that everyone knows where they really stand.
http://www.thevelvethottub.com
http://www.velvethottub.com
THE VELVET HOT TUB
Interesting example, it wasn’t even two months ago where we discussed the case of a man being imprisoned in Austria for the crime of Holocaust denial. Much to the chagrin of the Anti-Defamation League, our First Amendment doesn’t permit criminal prosecution of bad ideas and silly beliefs.
Perhaps one of the best ways to protect freedom of speech would be to lock the ADL and the USC Muslim Students Union in a steel cage Thunderdome-style and let them finish each other off.
http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/news/story.aspx?cid=3724
I read the link that you provided and the PDF with the complaint and some of the emails the precipitated it. I am curious though, since not all of the emails that were part of the discussion were included if there might have been something else to merit a harassment complaint that wasn’t included.
As far as free speech being chilled. From what your link shows so far, someone made a complaint and the University is looking into it as they are probably obligated to do so when anyone makes a complaint of this nature. I don’t see that as unreasonable on their part and as someone who works in an organization with established rules and procedures, I would be surprised if they didn’t follow their established procedures when a complaint of this nature was being brought forth.
From what I can tell, the reference librarian seemed to intend his recommendations to be provocative rather than setting out to harass anyone (unless there is something else in the emails that weren’t provided that suggests otherwise) and this appears to be an overreaction, perhaps intentionally with all of the right code words (“I don’t feel safe”) included to bring forth a complaint.
Unless this is part of a pattern of behavior or there is something that wasn’t included in the PDF (like an incrementing email), it looks to me like another case of people who presumably adults but cannot handle their disagreements in a professional setting without running to human resources to file a complaint.
The Pipes event was sponsored by the Student Objectives Club, and did not promise the "free pizza" that was mentioned in the Muslim Club ad.
Here's a link to the Pipes event info -- I haven't heard any reviews of either event.
http://www.uscobjectivistclub.com/DanishCartoonLetters.html
the USC Muslim Club ad that appeared can still be seen here:
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~muslimsu/
"Much to the chagrin of the Anti-Defamation League, our First Amendment doesn’t permit criminal prosecution of bad ideas and silly beliefs."
As far as I know, the ADL supports hate crimes legislation but does not support hate speech legislation.
Reading the statement they made (all I can find is this excerpt):
This clearly doesn't support your statement.
You said the ADL supports "criminal prosecution of bad ideas and silly beliefs" in the U.S. Can you support that?
A Muslim group trying to redefine First Amendment "free speech" to their liking is a lot different than a Jewish group commenting on a hate speech ruling in Europe (and acknowledging their very different history from ours) or highlighting the alarming fact that the head of a major state is now spouting it.
Frankly, I agree with the majority here and think these speech laws should be done away with everywhere. IMO people shouldn't be jailed in Europe or stoned to death in Pakistan for speech.
Thank you for your reply. I did read it again. Will you please read my post again. In it, I said:
You also then made the statement:
The popular term for this is "moral equivalence".
I still didn't see where they were advocating "criminal prosecution of bad ideas and silly beliefs" in the U.S, as you said. I've bolded the question you avoided answering.
None. But they don't have to. All they need to do is muddy the waters enough for nonmuslims to become uncomfortable with the idea of parodying the prophet.In this instance the violence is implied. They(the students) count on us to give their opinion equal weight.That is an error on the nonmuslims part. Not all positions need to be considered equally.Anyone with an ounce of critical thought can see the the muslim students position cannot be defended. Even without the implied threat of violence, it flies in the face of the first amendment.It need not be given serious consideration.