i am not speaking directly about the video when i cite the rwandan case which you state is clear-cut.
i am simply trying to sort out the principle. in the case of rwanda, the conditions did not permit a response to radio milles collines by boycotting--after all, it was aimed at hutus, not tutsis; nor by a peaceful protest. it was inciting killing, not making philosophical observations about another people.
in this case of the video, it is complicated. as you say, a grey area. i don't think it would constitute an incitement in the u.s., partly because the conditions would not enable the people expressing their hatred in this film to generate acts of violence. but you can imagine a film, better made, inciting its viewers to attack muslims, and which could well result in death or property being burnt. i would have a hard time understanding this as a speech act separate from a physical act.
in our world today, the exhibition of a film can't be easily delimited.
so, an example of what i find troubling circumstances, on a smaller scale, but just like this film
in my own little neighborhood in east lansing our street abuts a mosque. last year a local bigot tore up the pages of a koran, burnt and defiled them, and then scattered them around the neighborhood. a kind neighbor tried to gather them up, and returned them to the people at the mosque. it got into the papers. the man responsible was apprehended, but not charged with anything as the prosecutor said that no crime had been committed. the leaders of the mosque just wanted it all to be forgotten, and we had the usual community-let's-all-come-together type event.
word got out, to afghanistan, to india. there were attacks, without deaths, in afghanistan, and then it blew over and was forgotten. in india, someone was killed. don't remember who, but probably a christian.
then it was forgotten.
but that poor family in india lost someone because of this person, whose act was considered anodyne, here in east lansing.
the local authorities and community really didn't have much feeling for the one killed in india, but it seems to me, if acts are to have consequences, if we are responsible for our acts, that this man, who deliberately set out to incite hatred and arouse muslims, bore some responsibility for what ensued.
i am not prescribing the punishment, simply affirming the belief that there was a real connection, in blood and death, between what he did and the person in india who died.
you can be sure if that person had been an american the consequences would have been considerably greater
ken
On 9/14/12 2:19 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:
Ken,
We all know about the "fire in the theatre" exception to free speech. But, and this is a big but, there is a huge grey area here; it is not clear-cut. It often requires judicial mediation to determine what constitutes crying "fire" in a theater. Even in seemingly clear cases of "fire" in the theatre, the prosecuting authority still has to prove its case that the fire didn't exist or that the person yelling fire had no reasonable grounds or protected right to yell "fire." Hate speech, which this film clearly is, is protected under US law. I am not an expert on libel, but insulting a group or religion does not constitute "incitement," which is the exception in free speech--unless you can prove that the purpose of the material was to incite, which is impossible since intention is a tough thing to prove. Incitement is a high legal bar and is almost impossible to prove. There are many cases in the US and other Western countries where those who sought to prove incitement were unsuccessful. You'd have to prove that someone willingly put out material they KNEW would incite people or cause them to react violently. The lawyers can chime in here, but my understanding is that you cannot libel a group, that only individuals can be libeled or slandered. If this is true, then your notion of the film committing libel against Muslims is untenable. And even if this were so, is violence the appropriate response?
The case of Hutu genocidal propaganda is clear-cut. I mean, you had people yelling "cut them," "kill the cockroaches," "burn their homes," kill their children," etc on radio. The film in question does no such thing, as abhorrent as its message is.
The film is a poorly made, poorly delivered bigoted artistic product that insults a religion and its key figure, something that has been done to many organized religions for centuries and have not always generated violent backlash.
Ultimately, the appropriate response to hate speech is counter-speech, a peaceful demonstration to register disapproval, or a boycott of the medium and messenger of the hate speech. It is not to hurt innocents and engage in violence, which then validates the caricatures inherent in the said hate speech.--
On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 11:30 AM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
moses
there is censorship of speech, in innumerable forms:
--shouting fire in a theatre
--what if the theatre is the society, and the "fire" is a libel that wrecks someone's career, or even incites someone to kill that person? we have laws against libel, and the measure is whether the speech damages the person by the expression of false information
--what if instead of a person we are talking about a group? what if the information were an incitement to kill that group? that is what happened in rwanda with radio milles collines that incited the hutu population to "shorten the legs" of the tutsis, i.e. cut them down; and to "send them home," i.e. dump their corpses in the rivers.
under president clinton, the u.s. refused to support u.n. military actions against radio milles collines, at any point, because it violated american notions of free speech!
as a result of world war II, europe and canada instituted laws against hate speech on the ground that it indirectly caused damage to individuals, groups, and the society as a whole.
the u.s. hasn't instituted such laws, although hate crimes are a legal concept, i.e. crimes that would entail greater sentences because of an additional motivation of hatred for a group.
now, we have seen thousands of lynchings in the american south, hate crimes, often based on lies. in combating these crimes i would be in favor of criminalizing not only the murder, but the public utterance of a speech that incites the lynching.
in saying this, i am speaking against american liberal notions of free speech that are based on the idea that bad ideas ought to be combatted by good ideas, bad speech by good speech, john locke's notion of liberalism. but when the speakers are on an unequal footing, when one is a minority, not in power of the government or press or radio, as was the case in rwanda, the speech can function as an incitement, and can foment pogroms if not genocides.
no freedom is absolute; all freedoms have to be hedged by other freedoms, like the freedom from being attacked because you are a jew or a black person. the historical consequences have proved locke wrong. in fact, he was talking to and about english property owners, to the english bourgeoisie. his concepts did nothing to insure the rights of the poor or disempowered.
lastly, a video that expresses hatred of a religion is more or less the same as one that expresses hatred of a person: islam after all is constituted by muslims. i would agree that we should be free to attack any and all ideas; but i would be comfortable in challenging the expression or dissemination of such expressions if the circumstances endangered people. an incitement can only be such if the circumstances realistically make it feasible. to attack eskimos verbally as an evil group in a country where they do not exist can't be an incitement to anything. but if they are living under constrained circumstances, and someone urges on the population to destroy them, that would be a speech i would want repressed.
ken
On 9/14/12 8:48 AM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:
I agree with Hillary Clinton's statement below. To those who say "stop the provocation" I have a set of simple questions: how do you do that, by gutting the free speech tradition of Western societies? By imposing censorship on provocative artistic productions? And once you start down that road where do you stop? Will there ever be a time when the world is free of bigoted provocateurs? How do you respond to them without unwittingly validating the stereotypes and pathologies that inform underpin their bigotry? How is hurting innocents and attacking the institutions of a state that had nothing to do with the said bigoted speech a way to "stop the provocation"?"…the great religions of the world are stronger than any insults. They have withstood offense for centuries. Refraining from violence, then, is not a sign of weakness in one's faith; it is absolutely the opposite, a sign that one's faith is unshakable" – Hillary Clinton
On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 7:21 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:
Sir,
I beg to agree with you completely. We live in a world of cause and
effect. The solution is TO STOP THE PROVOCATION/s.
On the subject of provocation we have that old Swedish dog, Lars
Vilks, a pilgrim still tottering on his way to his life's final
destination, the grave, still unrepentant and hell-bent with his
provocations.
https://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sugexp=chrome,mod=18&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Lars+Vilks
The latest news is of him speaking at an anti-Muslim rally in the USA,
on 11th September of course:
https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=18&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Lars+Vilks+at+anti-Muslim+meeting+in+USA
The enemies of Islam know what they are doing even if they want to
disguise themselves as do-gooders who in the name of "freedom of
speech", "artistic licence", " freedom of artistic expression ",
"Human Rights"etc. want to bring the world of Islam in line and are
determined to stretch the Ummah's patience and tolerance to a maximum,
to absolute compliance/ agreement with them. They want the world's
Muslims to accept and accommodate the belittling, the ridicule, the
vilification, slander and defamation of the most beloved person for
every Muslim, namely the Prophet of Islam, salallahu alaihi wa
salaam.
And then when Muslims react, they say Muslims are violent people...
I should also like to observe that Muslims don't need non-Muslims and
the kuffar to lecture us about the Almighty being
"transcendental" (good word) nor do we need non-Muslims to plot new
theological pathways for Islam in the crucible of 21st century
existence,when they are not even familiar with the various schools of
ilm al-Kalam, from the early days of Islam to the present...
Make no mistake about this, some other religionists must feel a pang
of envy when they see the millions of the faithful gathering every
year at Mecca, for the hajj, women voluntarily in hijab, and above
all, people prepared to die for their faith....
As the late Bishop of Stockholm, Krister Stendahl said, we must leave
some room for " holy envy"
https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=18&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Lars+Vilks+at+anti-Muslim+meeting+in+USA#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=Krister+Stendahl+:+holy+envy&oq=Krister+Stendahl+:+holy+envy&gs_l=serp.12..0.0.0.3.9581.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.ZX5oNlZTFiE&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=ffa39db9650ab060&biw=994&bih=606
Extending Oluwatoyin Adepoju's logic a little, perhaps it's not only
Nigerian Muslims in Nigeria , who should not express their outrage by
demonstrating – to extend his logic, Muslims world wide should keep
quiet and abide by the knowledge that the enemies of Islam can do
Allah no harm. But what about the reputation of Allah's prophet?
The blasphemy laws in Judaism apply to the Almighty and the Almighty's
alleged transcendence has not nullified those blasphemy laws.
In Islam blasphemy extends to both the Almighty and his Prophets.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ( has usually meant
compensation) but the tit for tat that Oluwatoyin suggests (a* famous
book *by Muslims challenging critics of Muhammad or Islam,a* famous
film *by Muslims challenging critics of Muhammad or Islam, a* famous
cartoon series or comic book *challenging critics of Muhammad or
Islam. A *famous Facebook page* challenging critics of Muhammad orIslam.) is not really an effective antidote to the libelling and
slandering of the prophet of Islam, salallahu alaihi wa salaam, when
the harm is already done and the attackers are multiplying – I guess
that if we go Oluwatoyin's way, this would entail many more famous
books, famous films, famous cartoons series, famous facebook pages
countering detractors' lies and deceit. They (Islam's enemies) would
be happy with that kind of passive reaction - no literary fatwas, no
price on anyone's head, no cause for the criminals to go into hiding,
no executions for such crimes being committed and before we know it
they (enemies of Islam) will be having a go at making a Muslim version
of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's rock opera, "Jesus Christ
SuperStar" after which I guess Muslim countries will break diplomatic
relations with those who show it and some OPEC countries might even
consider doing a repeat of what they did in 1974-75 and make the oil
suckers pay....
On Sep 13, 9:43 pm, Lateef Adetona <adeton...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> It is disheartening that intellectuals are seeing the attack on the personality of the Prophet Muhammad as an academic exercise. More than that, it has to do with passion people have for their faith and this cuts across all faiths of the world. Those who wrote the film and executed it had a motive of harassing and provoking the Muslims among others, the effect of which, I am certain they did not think of. If some Muslims perceive the action as being borne out jealousy of the fame Islam continues to gather in spite of oppositions from many fronts, other may see it as affront which must be confronted. The response of the latter group is what we have seen in Egypt and Algeria and may just be starting. The Muslim intellectuals may have no reasons to respond to malicious activities against the Prophet in any form-be it in cartoon, play, book or whatever but no one will be able to stop the emotional Muslims from reacting emotionally when provoked. The answer
> to this question is an enlightenment to those who provoke others to stop the provocation. This may appear crude but it is the truth of the matter.
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---Mohandas Gandhi
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-- kenneth w. harrow distinguished professor of english michigan state university department of english 619 red cedar road room C-614 wells hall east lansing, mi 48824 ph. 517 803 8839 harrow@msu.edu
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