Criticism of Islam Is New Front in PC War, Media Expert Says

[Gerald]

The mere act of criticizing Islam has become an act of politically incorrect hate speech, a media analyst and free-speech advocate says, citing several incidents in recent weeks where people have been lambasted publicly for their remarks.

"We're living in a 'here and now' where no one's allowed to say anything bad about Islam, it seems," says Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture at the Media Research Center.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/09/24...est=latestnews




Note:Published September 24, 2010

[Skybird]

As said before, in europe criticism of Islam now is a crime you can get sued over. It it happens. Currently there are such cases at trial in 7 european coutries, both againmst prominents and professionals, and against private persons. In all Europe, estimations of cases being filed but not - yet - negotiated, range from 300 to 500, all filed after the EU coup of Lisbon.

Not racism or offending or propaganda, but having stood up for a critical opinion on Islam is sufficient to constitute a crime. It can bring you into prison for longer time. whether you are right or wsrong, doe snot matter, and your arguments and their basis in fact and evidence does nto mattert, too. You are simply becoming crimional when thinking the wrong things.

It happens in the US, too, by the hands of CAIR, since years. Here, usually the victim is sued for paying high financial compensations.

The number of such attempts is in steep rise since roughly ten years. Critical opinion of Islam should be gagged and muzzled, references to unwanted truths should be suppressed.

So, it is not only a problematic symptom of a degenerating speech culture in the free world, but it is a symptom of a legal system having entered dangerous ground.

Early this year I heared a radio report on a small (? well, that'S what they said: "small") group at the EU that wants to criminalise unconstructive opinions and critical assessements of the EU's work, too, and put it under punishment to make such opinions known or report on them.

The West is jumping headfirst into a cesspool, and yells "Juchee!" while in midair.

As said before, in europe criticism of Islam now is a crime you can get sued over.

Really?

[tater]

The UN has a resolution that the US has signed on to that makes defamation of religion a civil rights violation.

Insanity.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by tater

The UN has a resolution that the US has signed on to that makes defamation of religion a civil rights violation.

Insanity.

The insanity lies in making any form expressing a critical opinion or attitude a "defamation". You may only think what is legal to think, and you may only say what you are allowed to say. If you violate that regime of an enforced "consensus", you get witch-hunted to death in public media, and if that violation even is with regard to Islamic claims and demands and self-understandings, then you even get criminalised and possibly punished with jail.

That is dangerous a condition, and indeed a major signal for dictatorship.

I also fear this spreading attitude that tyranny in the name of political correctness, is pretty much okay, since it is not about facism, but political correctness. Or the rule of the EU elite. Or Islam.

I used to differ between legalising criticism, which I supported, and prohibiting defamation, which I also supported. But the PC brigade is going from bad to worse and the insanity does not stop and it becomes more and more extreme and absurd and more and more freedom gets annihilated by them, so that I now do no make that distinction anymore, but tend to legalise both in order to assure that free speech survives even at the price of legalising defamation, too. I do not like it that way, but it is the lesser of two evils.

It is a massive abuse of classic ideals of the tradition of humanism and an abuse of freedoms in order to destroy freedom, that takes place right now. All that in the name of an increasing totalitarianism a la EU and/or Islam, and leftist dysutopias.

The insanity lies in making any form expressing a critical opinion or attitude a "defamation".

Thats the non existant law you dreamt up isn't it.

I also fear this spreading attitude that tyranny in the name of political correctness

Is that the tyranny where you were the one deciding what people were allowed to say?
Or was it the one where you were the one deciding which humans should be allowed to breed?
Oh no thats your tyranny out of the prison book again isn't it

[Dan D]

Originally Posted by Skybird

The insanity lies in making any form expressing a critical opinion or attitude a "defamation"

That would be insane indead.

The mistake here is that is that meaning of "defamation" in the general language use is different from the legal definition of "defamation" as a criminal offense according to the criminal code. In that sense a critical opinion can never be a "defamation". A defamation requires a statement of facts. Facts can be either true or false. A hearing of evidence will tell you if the fact is true or untrue.

Opinions in the sense of value statements on the other hand can not be measured as "right or "wrong", there are no "right" or "wrong" opinions because opinions are opinions, they make sense or no sense.

When you are making false statements of facts with the intent to defame someone, then you don't have the constitutional freedom of opinion on your side.

You have to check your facts carefully before you are ruining someone's reputation.

So to say that criticism of Islam is seen as a criminal offense is just plain ridiculous.

Same mistake here:

"We're living in a 'here and now' where no one's allowed to say anything bad about Islam, it seems," says Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture at the Media Research Center.

"No one's allowed to say" is meant the way that the author has the opnion that there are social norms, "Political Correctness", that do not "allow" to say something in the sense of "you can't/should not say that", "no one dares to openly discuss".

Skybird misunderstands Dan Gainor and thinks that Gainor is saying that there are actually legal norms that in a strict legal sense don't "allow" you to say something and make it a crime. You can even get punished for it!, "you get punished for criticising Islam".

Only that way you can come up with nonsense like "in europe criticism of Islam now is a crime you can get sued over. It it happens."

[JokerOfFate]

Just wait till steve sees your message Sky bird

[tater]

BTW, I think all "hate crime" laws should be stricken. All of them. Crime is crime, and violent crime is not worse because of the perp having "hate" in his mind. It's thought-crime, plain and simple. What could possibly be more totalitarian that criminalizing thought?

Be as hateful as you like as long as it doesn't interfere with your neighbor. Harming someone physically, or other, already criminal action is none the less still criminal.

The UN has a resolution that the US has signed on to that makes defamation of religion a civil rights violation.

No it hasn't and no it doesn't.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by JokerOfFate

Just wait till steve sees your message Sky bird

Why would that bother me?

[Skybird]

More than 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson warned of the slow drift from freedom to tyranny when he observed that “there are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government and which governments have yet always been found to invade. These are the rights of thinking and publishing our thoughts by speaking or writing.”

[

http://www.hudson-ny.org/410/europes-war-on-free-speech

The Amsterdam Court of Appeals has ordered the criminal prosecution of a Dutch Member of Parliament for criticizing Islam.
(...)
In 2002, Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated for his views on Islam and Muslim immigration. In 2004, Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death for producing a movie that criticized Islam. In 2006, former Dutch lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali was forced to flee the country after criticizing the mistreatment of women in Islamic societies.
What makes the Wilders case different, however, is that the Dutch state itself is now caving in to pressure from Muslim immigrants who seek to criminalize any opinions that could be deemed to insult Islam or criticize Muslim immigration.
But Holland is not the only European country at war with the exercise of free speech. In Austria, for example, Member of Parliament Susanne Winter was convicted for the “crime” of saying that “in today’s system” the Prophet Muhammad would be considered a “child molester,” referring to his marriage to a six-year-old child. She was also convicted for “incitement” for warning that Austria faces an “Islamic immigration tsunami.”
In Italy, the journalist and author Oriana Fallaci was taken to court for writing that Islam “brings hate instead of love and slavery instead of freedom.” She died in September 2006, two months after the start of her trial. In France, novelist Michel Houellebecq was taken to court for calling Islam “the stupidest religion.” He was acquitted in October 2002. More recently, animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot was convicted in June 2008 by a Paris court for “inciting racial hatred” for demanding that Muslims anaesthetize animals before slaughtering them.
In Britain, the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act, which creates a new crime of intentionally stirring up religious hatred against people on religious grounds, has led to zealousness bordering on the absurd. In Nottingham, for example, the Greenwood Primary School cancelled a Christmas nativity play because it interfered with the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. In Scarborough, the Yorkshire Coast College removed the words Christmas and Easter from their calendar so as not to offend Muslims. In Scotland, the Tayside Police Department apologized for featuring a German shepherd puppy as part of a campaign to publicize its new non-emergency telephone number. The postcards are potentially offensive to city’s 3,000-strong Muslim community because Islamic legal tradition says that dogs are impure.
In Glasgow, a Christian radio show host was fired after a debate between a Muslim and a Christian on whether Jesus is “the way, the truth and the life.” In Cheshire, two students at the Alsager High School were punished by their teacher for refusing to pray to Allah as part of their Religious Education class. In East London, all elected members of Tower Hamlets town council were told not to eat during daylight hours in town hall meetings during the Muslim month of Ramadan. Special arrangements were also made to disrupt council meetings to allow for Muslim prayer. Meanwhile, the council renamed a staff Christmas party as a “festive meal”
(...)
Nor are Muslims the only ones trying to restrict free speech in Europe. In Britain, for example, the government is facing pressure from homosexual rights activists to overturn a free speech protection amendment added to a controversial “gay hate” law. The free speech protection clause, which states that criticizing homosexual practice or urging people to refrain from such conduct will not, in itself, be a crime, was added to the new offense of “incitement to homophobic hatred.” But now the government wants to remove that protection. The crime of inciting homophobic hatred includes any words or behavior which is threatening and intended to stir up hatred. It carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.

At the European level, meanwhile, government ministers from the 27 member states of the European Union are debating a draft EU Directive that aims to outlaw discrimination and “harassment” in the provision of goods and services. The new legislation would, for example, shut down Christian adoption agencies if they refuse to provide same-sex couples with children. Indeed, the definition of “harassment” is so broad that even moderate explanations of Christian beliefs on sexual conduct or other religions could be considered a crime.

Not only are European elites using hate crime legislation to silence people with opinions that do not conform to official state policies. They are also dividing Europeans into two groups (the majority and the minority), each with different rights and responsibilities. The minority (Muslims, homosexuals, Socialists) is imposing its will upon the majority (non-Muslim, heterosexuals, non-Socialists) by aggressively prosecuting those who refuse to fall into line.
(...)
the Obama administration says it intends to “strengthen federal hate crimes legislation, expand hate crimes protection by passing the Matthew Shepard Act, and reinvigorate enforcement at the Department of Justice’s Criminal Section.” Some politicians have also expressed support for re-imposing the Fairness Doctrine, which would effectively censor the opinions of tens of millions of Americans

http://www.hudson-ny.org/876/if-all-goes-as-planned

Octobre 2009:

If all goes as planned, the 27 member states of the European Union will soon have a common hate crime legislation, which will turn disapproval for Islamic practices or homosexual lifestyles into crimes. Europe’s Christian churches are trying to stop the plan of the European political establishment, but it is not clear if they will be successful.

Last April, the European Parliament approved the European Union’s Equal Treatment Directive. A directive is the name given to an EU law. As directives overrule national legislation, they need the approval of the European Council of Ministers before coming into effect. Next month, the Council will decide on the directive, which places the 27 EU member states under a common anti-discrimination legislation. The directive’s definition of discriminatory harassment is so broad that every objection to Muslim or homosexual practices will be considered unlawful.
(...)
Originally intended to serve as an equal treatment directive for the disabled by prohibiting discrimination when accessing “goods and services, including housing,” activist European politicians and governments had the directive’s scope expanded to include discrimination on the basis of religion, age and sexual orientation.

Under the directive, harassment - defined as conduct “with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person and of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment” - is deemed a form of discrimination.

Harassment, as vaguely defined in the directive, allows an individual to accuse someone of discrimination merely for expressing something the individual allegedly perceives as creating an “offensive environment.” The definition is so broad that anyone who feels intimidated or offended can easily bring legal action against those whom he feels are responsible. Moreover, the directive shifts the burden of proof onto the accused, who has to prove the negative, i.e. demonstrate that he or she did not create an environment which intimidated or offended the complainant. If the accused fails to do so, he or she can be sentenced to paying an unlimited amount of compensation for “harassment.”
(...)
Europe risks losing important fundamental freedoms, such as the freedom of speech and the freedom of opinion, but does not seem prepared to fight and preserve these freedoms. Perhaps the lack of interest of the inhabitants of Europe for legislation concocted at a supranational level explains the lack of interest in this matter.
The same phenomenon, a lack of interest on the part of European and also American public opinion, is apparent with regard to the semi-legal initiatives taken at the level of the United Nations. On October 2nd, the UN Human Rights Council approved a free speech resolution, co-sponsored by the US and Egypt, which criticizes “negative racial and religious stereotyping.” American diplomats said the decision to co-sponsor the resolution was part of America’s effort to “reach out to Muslim countries.” The resolution passed unanimously, with the support of all Western nations. Though the resolution has no immediate effect in law, it provides Muslim extremists with moral ammunition the next time they feel that central tenets of Islam are being treated disrespectfully through the creation of what they perceive to be an ‘offensive environment.

People are not only in danger to be sued over charges of "hate crime" when not thinking the officially wanted/allowed and streamlined way of thought on issues like Islam, migration, religion, homosexuality - they already get and got convicted on the basis of the new legal standard in the EU. Check google, and the news. That is a fact.

Three days ago, the European court of socalled Human Rights in an implication of a sentence has ruled that the Catholic church has no more the right to demand people working in it to follow Catholic rules of conduct and moral values as represented by the Catholic church. This sentence could become the precedence for arguing that even Muslims, Jews, Protestants and atheists must be allowed by the church to work in its institutions. One is wondering what would make the Catholic church the Catholic church then anymore.

Strangely, Islamic organisations are not treated by the same standard.

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/201...ing-the-Koran/

"I've read the Koran. I've studied the books from both sides -- the pro and the con. And I can tell you from what I've studied -- Islam is a political ideology disguised as a religion."
Back in her home country of Austria, Sabadistch-Wolff lectured on the subject and her comments on the Koran outraged a writer for a left-wing Austrian magazine.
"She took it to her editor and they apparently then decided they would take it to the lawyer and take it to the public prosecutor's office," Sabadistch-Wolff noted.
The Vienna prosecutor charged her with hate speech against Islam. She told CBN News she merely quoted directly from the Koran.
"I quoted the Koran. I told them even in the lecture, which Koran I used, which quote. Some of them even had their little Korans with them and they were flipping the pages, you know, checking on me," she said.
This is the latest case of a European charged with hate speech against Islam.
(...)
In addition to Austria and the Netherlands, hate speech charges have also been filed in the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Denmark, Beligium and Finland -- all against critics of Islam.

Prosecuting free thought and free speech even when conducted on basis of constructive aegument and reason,is no possible future dysutopic perspective - it already is reality and takes place in Europe since quite some time. The legal basis for this is now established, and valid. People alrready got sentenced in several countries. The trend of Islamic lobby groups trying to gag and silence criticism of Islam and Islamic colonization in Europe by suing opponents and critics over "hate crimes", is steeply climbing.

The really discouraging thing is that in Europe, people even do not seem to care.

Leaves me with this scene from Star Wars on my mind: princess Amidala in the great assembly hall, saying in frustration and disbelief:
"This is how liberty dies - with thundering applaus."


I think our leaders intentionally sell us into Islam's dark slavery, attempting to appease our future thought masters so that they will carry on to supply us with what we crave for so desperately:

O I L

and I think that many Eurocrats and lefties hope that they will gain in power for their own idelogies if they ally with Islam and let it help to errect a new culture of obedience to authorities in Europe. Career politicians are of that character that is craving for own power and self-glorification. Their craving needs the weakness and submission of thjose they lead. Because no sane man or woman would voluntarily follow a dubious character who craves for power for the saake of power itself and his own personal motives. Except said man or woman thinkshe/she has no other choice, is unable to realise what is going on, or is kept busy in other ways. A variation of "divide et impera", this time not regarding natiosn and factions, but masses of individual private people.

The communists and socialists in Iran also thought that they would secure their own power if allying themselves with Khomenei when he returned from exile. After Khomenei had secured his own power, most of these idiots ended as bodies hanging from lightmasts and telephone poles. They too thought they knew Islam better than Islam knows itself.

So to say that criticism of Islam is seen as a criminal offense is just plain ridiculous.

Exactly Dan, which is why Sky then has to link to two stories where they are not actually getting prosecuted for criticising Islam at all as that isn't against the law.
But its pointless telling him that as he is away with the fairies where muslims are concerned.
In that first case that prick Wilders condemned himself with his own words, it was incitement, he was aiming to provoke a disturbance.
The fact that his film was just ridiculed as being pathetic is irrelevant, he wasn't being prosecuted for what he said but for what his stated intention was.

[tater]

While criticism is not now criminal (at least here in the US), extant hate-crime laws do in fact criminalize thought, which is a terrible mistake, IMO. It's certainly possible to see such existing law being pushed farther, when the proper thing to do would be to repeal any such laws.

WRT to Islam, what is usually seen is self-censorship. Many times it's because the violence which pervades Islam makes threats of violence in response to expression credible.

While criticism is not now criminal (at least here in the US), extant hate-crime laws do in fact criminalize thought

No they don't, only as much as it does with ordinary crimes where it relates to intent.
Like did you intend to kill your victim or did you not think what you were doing.