While Canadian authorities are busily penalizing speech critical of homosexuality, Daniel Pipes reports that Mohamed al-Asi recently presented a speech at York University in Toronto (sponsored by Muslim, Middle Eastern and Pakistani student groups) accusing the “Jewish Lobby” of responsibility for the 9-11 attacks. As blatantly false speech intended to promote hatred against a specific group, al-Asi’s talk seems to clearly run afoul of Canada’s hate crimes laws.
Of course, I believe that such liberal societies such as the U.S. and Canada should tolerate such speech, because the government cannot be trusted with the power to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable speech. But if hate speech laws are to exist, they must be enforced in a strictly neutral way, so that they are less likely to become a political tool of the powers that be. Moreover, certain groups that support such laws will do so much less enthusiastically, if at all, once they recognize that their own freedom of speech will also be in jeopardy. So, is al-Asi under arrest, or at least under investigation, and if not, why not?
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