Free speech, even offensive free speech, must remain free.
If there was ever any doubt about it, consider the case in Britain in which a man sprayed-painted a war memorial with the words “Islam will dominate the world,” “Osama is on his way,” and “Kill Gordon Brown.”
Tohseef Shah, 21, the criminal who wrote the graffiti in Burton-upon-Trent, was allowed to go free last week after the Crown Prosecution Service’s Counter Terrorism Division in London decided not charge him with a religiously related hate crime because, the CTD said, the act was not religiously motivated.
‘Islam’ not religion? How is spraying graffiti that “Islam will dominate the world” not religiously motivated? Obviously, it is. But under the whim of law enforcers last week, “Islam” has nothing to do with religion. Don’t even try to figure that out.
Nevertheless, it was the right decision for free speech. Tohseef “The Idiot” Shah should not be penalized for the “Islam” words. He should be punished for the paint. (And he was.)
To most reasonable people, free speech refers to all expressions, except for threats (unambiguously saying “I’m going to kill you”) and hazardous hoaxes (yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater that isn’t burning). Free speech must be protected. Without that protection, all freedom ends.
The law as hate. The words “Islam will dominate the world” might offend someone, but they hurt no one in any real sense. Shah should not face a greater punishment for vandalism related to a religious bias than for vandalism related to any other motive.
Unfortunately that’s not the way it is. Britain has laws against hate crimes, and Canada even has tyrannical censor boards to punish free speech that occasionally looks like hate to them.
This case reveals that the real hatred and the real crime are in these totalitarian anti-speech laws. Time after time, Britain and Canada use the courts and “Human Rights Tribunals” to torture once-free people whose only offense is to give harmless offense.
* In Britain last year, a tribunal awarded a Muslim police officer 10,000 pounds (about $15,000) because a West Midlands police recruiter said the officer’s beard reminded him of bin Laden’s and made fun of Islam.* In Canada in 2008, writer Mark Steyn was put through a costly legal wringer for publishing a article that some Muslims alleged exposed them to hatred and contempt. The Canadian “Human Rights Commission” and the British Columbia “High Rights Tribunal” dismissed the charges, but only after the censor boards were exposed by a free press as tools of despotism.
Double standard. Meanwhile, in Britain and Canada, criminals whose allies cut off the heads of their democratic enemies are shielded from hate-crime laws even when their acts fit even the strictest definition of hatred, bigotry, contempt and malice.
And “Kill Gordon Brown”? Kill the prime minister? How about that idea? The laws and law enforcers of Britain are so perverse that those words weren’t even reviewed as a potential crime.
Frank Warner
Multiculturalism apparently doesn't mean all cultures are equal after all. Apparently.
Posted by: Kevin | May 04, 2010 at 12:34 AM