A Victory for the Freedom of Speech
An important moment for the freedom of speech in Europe, more specifically Denmark: Danish Court Rejects Cartoons Lawsuit.
The City Court in Aarhus rejected claims by seven Danish Muslim groups who said the 12 drawings printed in Jyllands-Posten were meant to insult the Prophet and make a mockery of Islam.Islamic law forbids any depiction of the Prophet, even positive ones, to prevent idolatry.
“It cannot be ruled out that the drawings have offended some Muslims’ honor,” the court said. But it added there was no basis to assume that “the purpose of the drawings was to present opinions that can belittle Muslims.”
One example of the response from certain Muslim leaders:
In Syria, where a mob attacked and set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in February, Mohammed Habash, a legislator who heads the Islamic Studies Center in Damascus, said the ruling would “widen the gap between the Western and Islamic world.”
The spokesman for the plaintiffs already said that they will appeal.
Well, I would say to the plaintiffs: welcome to the West where freedom rules. If you don’t like it, if you’re afraid of being ‘hurt’, please go back to whatever place it is you come from.
Now we have settled that, lets move on to the next fase: getting rid of all the ridiculous rules limiting the freedom of speech.
(h/t ‘Interested’)
8 Responses to “A Victory for the Freedom of Speech”
I always say…
You’re not REALLY for free speech, unless you’re willing to listen to someone who damns everything and everyone you believe in, shouting at the top of their lungs for all the world to hear. If you can let them speak. I think you’re a strong proponent of free speech.
This must be repeated again and again. Also, if people don’t get it and decide to move into a free country and establish their own little Taliban state there, then they should be shown the door. Buh bye, don’t let the 21st century hit you on the way out.
Lynx: LOL. Very well said. I agree completely. Don’t support our freedom? Ciao.
Yeah, like the freedom of expression granted to Tony Judt, huh!
The hypocrisy makes me spit!
I’m going to make a giant leap of faith here probligo and assume that there is some sort of logical proccess that took you from someone demanding that a government forbid views they don’t agree with, and a guy who is denied a hall because of his anti-Israeli views. I also don’t recall I or Michael ever saying that this man shouldn’t be allowed to express his views, so the hypocrisy is therefore non-existant, especially because I personally didn’t even know this guy existed. I’m sure you will enlighten us as to why we are hipocritical about a man we have never spoken about, that I know of.
Oh and don’t spit dear, it’s bad manners, just like shooting of your mouth without arguments
Lynx darling, it is very simple really.
This thread opens with Michael once more purporting to support the freedom of the Danish press to publish cartoons of dubious merit under the aegis of “freedom of speech”.
I started my previous comment with two quick searches – google and technorati – with the words ‘galien judt’. Guess what? Both searches were empty!! Conclusion; if Michael has ever written about Tony Judt (freedom of speech or not) he has been able to hide it from two of my major search engines.
Now, you touch upon the second point; not only is Tony Judt anti-Israeli, he is Israeli. Would he be permitted to speak in Israel? Without fear of censure or legal proceeding? Hopefully he would. But in New York, in the United States, home of “freedom of speech”, a strange series of circumstances has prevented him from being heard at all. And the public outcry has been?
So we have the situation where Michael (and yourself I suspect though I have not bothered to research the point) holds very strong views in favour of freedom of speech. So too do I.
I have no problem with a newspaper that publishes bad cartoons that lampoon Islam (I would stop buying that paper), or a work of art that comprises a statuette of the Virgin Mary encased in a condom. I have no problem with David Irving being invited to address an audience in Wellington, though I would only attend on the basis that I be permitted to speak against the ideas of David Irving. So too I would support Tony Judt being heard.
If Michael truly wished to continue his campaign of “getting rid of all the ridiculous rules limiting the freedom of speech” then supporting Tony Judt would be a very very good point at which to start.
But in truth what we have here is Michael using “freedom of speech” as a faux vehicle to once again promote his anti-Islamic views. As it stands, Michael gives the strong impression of a person who supports “freedom of speech” only for so long as he agrees with what is being said.
That is hypocrisy.
(Doubting that anyone is reading anymore)
Well Michael can certainly speak for himself, but I’ll just insert that at no time that I know of has he EVER posted in favor of banning a certain kind of speech (with the understanding that there IS criminal speach, crying fire in a theatre and all that). Hypocrisy would be supporting freedom of speech depending on the topic. Show me where he favoured the ban on a certain kind of speech. The fact that he didn’t make a post about every single freedom of speech issue does not in any way show that those he doesn’t write about he agrees with.
I’ve never openly condemned burying adultresses to their necks and stoning them, does that mean I approve? Ridiculous.
Lynx, while mowing the lawn this morning, going out and getting a haircut, I had plenty of time to reflect upon what I wrote in that last comment of mine.
It was, I must confess, rather immoderate. Not for the line that you have taken but for another reason. It creates, reveals, an expectation on my part that I was wanting Michael to post along a particular line and on a particular topic. That I have to admit is unreasonable.
So please allow me to put my point in a slightly different way and I am done.
To try and defend the freedom of speech through the use of just one example, one instance, is risky. That risk increases exponentially when the example used is also a frequent topic used by the same author to express very specific feelings and opinions that I referred to earlier.
So, rather than just attributing that to hypocrisy, I should have taken a somewhat broader view.
If Michael truly wishes to defend his right to free speech, and yours, and mine then I do not believe continual carping about the Mohammad cartoons is the way to achieve that objective. There must be other, far more meaningful examples that he could choose – Aun Sang Sun Kyee for example, or the prisoners in Gitmo, or the women of Somalia, and Dafur… there are many many of them. As it stands, Michael is more like a stuck record blasting out the same little snatch of music over and over again….