Free speech must protect us, not endanger us.

By Ted Belman

Phyllis Chesler writes about The Islamification of America and argues that “our concept of “religious tolerance,” academic freedom, and free speech are now being used to promote and protect hate speech against America and Israel and against the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

While giving numerous examples she asks some questions,

    Are we obligated to extend First Amendment rights to our enemies when we are at war? Even if doing so endangers us?

    At what point can we understand that such hateful teaching and preaching have the power to inflame someone like the Iranian student, Mohammed Reza Taheriazar who just drove his rented SUV into a crowd of fellow students at the University of North Carolina,

    But here is what really worries me. The same First Amendment, free speech, and academic rights that seem to work so well for Islamists, do not seem to protect our right to criticize Islamic terrorism or Islamic religious and gender apartheid.

And offers some solutions,

    First, we have to re-evaluate the meaning of free speech, both in terms of hate speech and in terms of wartime realities. Along the same lines, we must find some legally and politically sound ways to slow down or to eliminate entirely the growth industry of jihadist hate speech in America. Islamists do not hesitate to falsify, exaggerate, and censor our culture, e.g. the Danish cartoon incident. We cannot allow our traditions of freedom and tolerance to be taken over by intolerant forces in the service of repression or terrorism. This is not easy to do but it must be done—and done quickly—by the best lawyers and legislators in our land.

At the heart of all this is truth. Our right to speak the truth must be protected. Their right to lie must be restricted. The problem is who is to decide what is truth and what is lies. If we try to limit what they say they will scream “censorship” just as they censure our remarks when it hurts their feelings.

Brigitte Bardot has been convicted a number to times for “inciting racial hatred”. Currently she is being tried for uttering this opinion “I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its acts,” The prosecutor is asking for a fine of $23,000 and a suspended sentence.

Thus politically incorrect speech has been criminalized.

April 19, 2008 | 8 Comments »

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8 Comments / 8 Comments

  1. The foregoing comments are tangential at best to the premise of Phyllis Chesler’s article The Islamification of America.

    The line between freedom of speech and freedom to engage in hate speech has been blurred in Western nations. That line is most blurred when it comes to Islamist speech about the West, Jews and the Israel-Palestinian ongoing war.

    Western society censors itself when it comes to speaking about Islam and against Islamists of all stripes, but the anti-semitic/anti-Zionist crowd, be they Islamists or their left wing useful idiots have taken freedom of speech far into the realm of the freedom to speak hatred. If not, explictly, then certainly implicitly, they have carried that freedom to preach hatred into the realm of freedom to incite hatred with little or no outcry from the rest of society, except when confronted with the most vile racist hate speech in the form of anti-semitism and anti-Westernism that also incites hate based violence.

    Chesler says we need to put this issue of how to combat those intolerant hate filled advocates for freedom to engage in hate speech and incitement of hate and violence into the hands of our best lawyers and legislators.

    I would suggest that more than that is required. We Westerners will have to undergo a major attitude adjustment to become intolerant of those intolerant Western and Jew haters, mostly found amongst Islamists domestic and foreign and close the door hard on them.

  3. Regarding TIME issues – well, the BIBLE IS VERY LONG and not even two thousand years of Revelation prophecy can be shortened into a few sentences. The problem with modern society is that they DON’T TAKE TIME TO TEACH!

    How much TIME is spent in secular textbooks versus actually LEARNING?

    I would rather, as a reader, see lenghty articles that give thorough details, rather than reading someone’s opinions or commenting on someone else’s take. Presenting THE FACTS, no matter how long or short EDIFIES everyone who TAKES THE TIME OUT to REALLY STUDY!

    I am really skeptical of people who SHORTEN THEIR SENTENCES. I am really edified when anyone gives me articles that I can research later on, when I DO HAVE THE TIME!

    I have READ thousands of pages of books. I never wasted time or energy reading one liners and think that this wlll edify any reading audience.

    THE HOLY BIBLE is full of one liners that require EXPOSITORY TEACHING. One reason I don’t like modern churches is that they only spend one hour a week teaching and two hours on entertainment, and maybe TWO MINUTES praying.

    Can we condense a whole Sabbath day into two minutes of praying?

    Yes, we are all TOO BUSY to investigate, explore and learn – which is why society is producing too many educated idiots.

    We want to click on: YOU TUBE for an education now. And just how much time do we spend on television or entertainment versus a good book?

    When we go online to sites like Ted Belman’s site we want to LEARN and also interact and sometimes that requires 50 lines and not just one.

  5. While France is too sensitive to such statements, I’m sure you are in principle, against “inciting racial hatred” when it comes to textbooks in Palestinian schools.

    I’m going to copy from Wikipedia:

    Politics, controversy and legal issues

    Bardot expressed support for President Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s.[6][14] Her husband Bernard d’Ormal is a former adviser of the far right “Front National” party.[7][14]

    For comments published in Le Figaro newspaper,[citation needed] she was fined for “inciting racial hatred” in 1997.

    She was convicted in 1998 for making a statement about the growing number of mosques in France.[citation needed]

    In a book she wrote in 1999, called “Le Carre de Pluton” (Pluto’s Square), she criticizes the Muslim festival of Eid el-Kebir where sheep are ritually slaughtered. For the comments, a French court fined her 30,000 francs in June 2000. [15] [16].

    In a 2001 article named, Open Letter to My Lost France, she lamented: “…my country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims.”[17][16]

    In her 2003 book, A Scream in the Silence, she warned of the “Islamicization of France”, and said of Muslim immigration:

    “Over the last twenty years, we have given in to a subterranean, dangerous, and uncontrolled infiltration, which not only resists adjusting to our laws and customs but which will, as the years pass, attempt to impose its own.”

    [18] In the book, she goes on and talks about her homosexual friends, and said today’s homosexuals, “jiggle their bottoms, put their little fingers in the air and with their little castrato voices moan about what those ghastly heteros put them through.” She says French politicians are, “weather vanes who turn left or right as the fancy takes them… Not even French prostitutes are what they used to be.” She says modern art is “shit — literally as well as figuratively.”

    In May 2003 the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples announced they will sue Bardot. The “Ligue des Droits de l’Homme” (The Human Rights League) announced they were considering similar legal proceedings.[16]

    In her defense, Bardot wrote a letter to a French gay magazine, saying, “Apart from my husband – who maybe will cross over one day as well – I am entirely surrounded by homos. For years, they have been my support, my friends, my adopted children, my confidants.”[19]

    On 10 June 2004 Bardot was convicted by a French court of “inciting racial hatred” and fined 5,000 €, the fourth such conviction/fine she has received from French courts. The courts cited passages where Bardot referred to the “Islamisation of France” and the “underground and dangerous infiltration of Islam”[20].

    Bardot denied the “racial hatred” charge and apologized in court, saying: “I never knowingly wanted to hurt anybody. It is not in my character.[21]

  6. My preference is to limit the debate to the issues I have selected. I do not want to open Israpundit up to debate other issues. Secondly people who visit only have so much time to read. I want them to read what I have posted and perhaps comment. Many like to read the comments also. But the longer the comments are and the more tangential they are the less our audience will read them. People want short reads not long ones. Therefor I encourage everyone to keep their comments short.

  7. Ted, I would encourage you to allow people to post website threads which allow us to research valuable information that people here want to communicate. I would also encourage you to let people to post as much as they want to post, whatever is on their minds. As long as people aren’t SELLING ANYTHING, you should let people express themselves and if you don’t agree with them or like them – challenge them!

    Look at my website sometime by clicking on my name! Do you honestly think I care about my reputation being damaged? Uhm. No. I would also encourage Ted to just be himself and continue to provide thoughts and insights from the heart.

  8. Until the Jews have the right to pray on the Temple Mount and Build the Third Temple on the Temple Mount, there can be no FREEDOM for planet earth. The removal of the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque is Israel’s right of FREE SPEECH that bowing before foreign gods will not be tolerated on the God of Israel’s Mountain. We shall not worship any other gods beside Him or before Him!

    As for America, Americans should push to remove all 2,000 Islamic mosques under armed guard as Islam is a threat to National Security and a threat to Israel. Yes, Muslims have the right in their own land to be slaves of Allah, but for them to impose their slavery on us should be fought against always!

    Because the Islamic aspirations are to take away Biblical Freedom of speech – we must treat them exactly how they treat us!