Category Archives: Free Speech

As Quran-burning pastor Terry Jones returns to Dearborn today for another rally against Islam, the issue of free speech is back under the spotlight in metro Detroit.

Jones, who sparked international protests from Muslims over the burning of Islam's holy book, intends to protest outside Edsel Ford High School, claiming that Muslim students are bullying non-Muslim students. David Mustonen, spokesman for the Dearborn Public Schools, characterized Joneses' assertions as "not accurate."

Even so, Dearborn's police chief and mayor say they will allow the Gainesville, Fla., preacher to speak on a sidewalk outside the school this afternoon and will guarantee his civil liberties while ensuring an orderly day for students.

"We ... know that free speech is so treasured" in America, said Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly Jr. "It can be offensive. It can hurt us emotionally, but until it causes physical harm or a true physical threat, it is a permissible activity. And so we respect that."

In the last year, free speech has become contentious in Dearborn, which has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the nation. Several incidents led to legal cases.

Among them:

Christian missionaries trying to convert Muslims at the annual Arab International Festival in June sued the city over their right to preach to Muslims.

Last month, the Christian group Bible Believers sued the Wayne County Sheriff's Office in federal court for allegedly failing to protect its members after young Muslims threw water bottles at them because they were angry about a pig's head and anti-Islam signs the Christians brought to the festival.

Jones sued the city in April, saying officials wrongly barred him from protesting outside the Islamic Center of America mosque.

In June, Mike Mohamad Agemy, 47, of Dearborn was accused of trying to use his SUV to run over members of the Bible Believers outside the Islamic Center.

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Limits of free speech tested as anti-Islam pastor is coming back to Dearborn

08-10-2012 20:30 In his new memoir, Salman Rushdie recounts, in the third person, his upbringing as a secular muslim trying to understand his religion, as well as living under fatwa, a period when he says he discovered his own resilience. Jeffrey Brown talks to the author about recent clashes over free speech and Islamic ideology.

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Salman Rushdie Writes Novelistically About His Own Life - Video

A Massachusetts towns bylaw against public profanity appears to violate constitutional free speech rights and should not be enforced, the states attorney general said in a recommendation today.

Middleborough, a town of about 23,000, received national attention in June when residents at a town meeting voted 183-50 to approve an article that allowed police to enforce a 1968 bylaw by imposing a $20 fine against loud and obscene language. Supporters of the measure said it was meant to discourage groups of foul-mouthed youths who congregated on downtown streets or public parks.

The article was reviewed by Attorney General Martha Coakleys office, which said in Tuesdays ruling that the enforcement mechanism itself the $20 fine did not violate state or federal law.

"However, we have determined that some of the underlying by-laws passed more than 30 years ago no longer meet constitutional standards and those by-laws should be repealed by the town, and in the meantime, not actively enforced," said Emalie Gainey, a spokeswoman for Coakley.

The attorney general specifically urged repeal of the 1968 bylaw barring "profane" language in public, saying it would violate First Amendment free speech guarantees.

Coakley also recommended the town consider changes in two other bylaws a 1972 measure against the making of an "alarming or tumultuous noise," and an antiquated 1927 bylaw that prohibited, among other things, throwing snow balls or playing football on a public street.

She stressed her office had no authority to overturn the existing bylaws, since they had been approved by previous attorneys general.

Mimi Duphily, a former town selectwoman who pushed for the fine against swearing, said it was not clear what the impact of Tuesdays decision would be or if it might prompt repeal of the 1968 bylaw.

But she strongly defended the towns crackdown on profanity.

"This has nothing to do with freedom of speech," Duphily said. "This is about verbal assault."

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Coakley: Middleboro should flush ban on swearing

Syracuse, NY A journalist who has kept up her criticism of the government in Bahrain despite having her home attacked by pro-government forces will receive the 2012 Tully Award for Freedom of Speech.

Lamees Dhaif, an independent journalist and human rights activist, will receive the award from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications on Oct. 15. The award is given to a journalist who has faced a significant threat to free speech.

The ceremony will be at 7 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium in Newhouse 3. Dhaif will visit classes and meet with students while on campus.

The public event is free. For more information, call Audrey Burian at 443-1930 or aaburian@syr.edu.

Dhaif has worked for several newspapers in Bahrain, including Akhbar Al-Khaleej, Sadaa Al Isboua, Al-Qabas, Al-Afaaq and Al-Waqt.

Following widespread government censorship in response to anti-government protests in the nations capital Manama, Dhaif covered the events of the Arab Spring in Bahrain via Twitter, Facebook and her blog. She writes a weekly column for the Saudi newspaper Alyaum, and presents a television program on the Kuwaiti television station Al-Rai.

When she wrote a series uncovering allegations of bias against women in Bahrains family courts, a legal complaint was brought against her for insulting the judiciary. The case was dropped, but the government indicated it could revive the charges at anytime.

She was called into court again for criticizing the regime following large-scale anti-government protests in the spring of 2011.

Those charges were also dropped, but pro-government forces with Molotov cocktails attacked her home.

Dhaif has received several awards for her reporting, including a 2008 Excellence Award in Journalism form the Regional Conference on Women. She has also been honored by the Womens Union at the 2009 International Womens Day.

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Bahraini journalist to receive Syracuse University free speech award

If someone got physically violent on the Metro in Washington, DC, they would get kicked off the train or bus. Similarly, if someone indecently exposed him or herself (as noted in the new Metro ads threatening action against indecent exposure ) or yelled incendiary, racist or bigoted comments at riders, they would get ushered off.

Yet, that is exactly what Metro will do to its riders, thanks to a court order by US District Judge Rosemary M Collyer forcing it to run the violent, indecent and incendiary ads by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) beginning Monday, October 8, 2012. The ad makes a sweeping generalisation about all Muslims, referring to them as savages and contrasting the savages with the civilised.

It is paradoxical. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) can prohibit riders from listening to loud music or consuming food or drink - the former of which is ostensibly out of respect for others, the latter is because of health and cleanliness concerns - and yet it cannot prohibit vitriolic ads, which hurt and harm, and are unhealthy.

The ad that WMATA, to its credit, tried to delay and that is already running in New York City's subway, states: " In Any War Between the Civilised Man and the Savage, Support the Civilised Man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad ."

Since the ad makes no distinction between the majority of Muslims who use jihad non-violently and the small minority of Muslims who use violence and cite jihad as their defence, the ad intentionally creates a hyper-polarised, good-versus-evil frame through which to understand Islam.

Nor does the AFDI ad make any distinction between the greater, internally oriented jihad, known as Akbar jihad , or the lesser externally oriented Asghar jihad . The former is an internal struggle that instructs a Muslim believer to be more righteous and pious; the latter is an external struggle that instructs a Muslim to defend against religious persecution. Neither is explicitly instructed to be violent and for the AFDI ad to intimate that anything jihad - and thus anything Muslim - is savage and must be defeated, the ad categorically calls all Muslims savages.

Prior to the US District Judge's court ruling the Washington Post editorial board , disappointingly, defended the "offensive ad's right to offend", citing free speech. Contrast the Washington Post's approval with countless Jewish, Muslim and Christian organisations that have come out in protest of New York City subways' running of the very same ads.

The freedom of speech argument is spurious. Why? Because if it were a different race or religion we'd have a whole different conversation and a lot more public protest. The US has a racist and discriminatory political pecking order that allows some prejudice to continue while prohibiting others.

Take, for example, the Washington Redskins or even the Cleveland Indians . We'd never allow - nor should we allow - a Washington Blackskins or a Washington Yellowskins. Nor would we have the Cleveland Jews. And yet, thanks to our prejudicial pecking order, we somehow justify keeping Native Americans - and in the ad's case, Muslims - at the bottom of societal barrel, treating them in ways that we'd never tolerate for another race and religion.

It is ironic, in fact, that the US District judge is ordering WMATA to begin running the ads on Monday, which coincidentally is Columbus Day , a day that marks the man who began the genocide against indigenous Native Americans.

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'Free Speech' on the DC Metro

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) In a story Oct. 6 about an Indiana attorney's free-speech lawsuit, The Associated Press reported erroneously that attorney David J. Kolhoff had sued an Allen County library for refusing to let him protest the federal health care law in its plaza. Kolhoff supports the law and has sued because he wants to hold a demonstration to educate people about it.

A corrected version of the story is below:

Attorney says Ind. library violating free speech

Ind. man claims library's policy against plaza demonstrations violates his free speech rights

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) An Indiana attorney is suing a public library for refusing to allow him to use its plaza for a demonstration to educate people about the federal health care law.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed the lawsuit against the Allen County Public Library Friday in federal court in the northeast Indiana city of Fort Wayne.

Attorney David J. Kolhoff's complaint claims a library policy banning demonstrations and exhibits on the plaza violates his First Amendment right to free speech.

"Given the broad use of the library's public spaces, we don't believe it can sincerely assert that Mr. Kolhoff's educational activity would be disruptive," ACLU of Indiana Executive Director Jane Henegar said in a statement.

Court documents said officials offered to let Kolhoff use a library meeting room or air a program on the library's public access television channel.

"We do provide ample opportunities for people to convey their views," library Director Jeffrey Krull told The Journal Gazette (http://bit.ly/TeaeLG).

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Correction: Library-Free Speech story

A new cybercrime law in the Philippines poses serious risks to freedom of expression and must be reviewed, Amnesty International said.

Under the new law, known as the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 101750), a person could be sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for posting online comments judged to be libellous.

The cybercrime law rolls back protections for free speech in the Philippines. Under this law, a peaceful posting on the Internet could result in a prison sentence, said Isabelle Arradon, deputy Asia director at Amnesty International.

The law, which came into effect on Wednesday, broadly extends criminal libel (defined in the Philippines as the public and malicious imputation of a discreditable act that tends to discredit or dishonour another person and which currently exists under the Revised Penal Code) to apply to acts committed through a computer system or any other similar means which may be devised in the future.

It also increases the criminal penalties for libel in computer-related cases.

In January 2011, the UN Human Rights Committee found the Philippiness criminalization of libel to be incompatible with the freedom of expression clause in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The Human Rights Committee said that, in the case of Alexander Adonis, a journalist who was imprisoned for libel for two years in 2007, the Philippines was obligated to take steps to prevent similar violations occurring in the future, including by reviewing the relevant libel legislation.

Instead of bringing its libel legislation in line with its UN treaty obligations, the Philippines has set the stage for further human rights violations by embedding criminal libel in the cybercrime law, said Arradon.

The law gives the Department of Justice the power to close down websites and monitor online activities without a warrant. This violates due process guarantees and will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

To date, at least five petitions have been filed asking the Philippine Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of the new law.

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Philippines: ‘Cybercrime’ law threatens free speech and must be reviewed

BERLIN ?? Bans on an anti-Islam video. Forbidding protests against it. Arrests for blasphemy.

The ongoing furor over a video and cartoons mocking the Muslim prophet Mohammed has reignited old dilemmas over free speech in Europe, with calls for stricter blasphemy laws, bans on protests and debates over how much free speech to allow.

"I don't think we can get into the situation in which any minority sect, any religion, is allowed to demarcate the things that other people are allowed to say," said Ben Tonra, who specializes in European relations at Dublin University in Ireland. "For me personally, the primacy has got to be given to free speech."

But not all agree with this in Europe, which has a history of curtailing speech the government deems offensive or disruptive. Governments here do not have constitutions that enshrine the rights of individuals to express themselves, and are looking for ways to legally prevent their citizens from criticizing Islam however crudely.

Russia, which recently jailed a rock band for singing a song against President Vladimir Putin, ordered the video The Innocence of Muslims banned. And Putin announced he is pushing for an anti-blasphemy law on "insulting religions and people's religious sentiment."

The German government is considering whether to find a way to prevent a group from showing the video to the public. France has banned other mocking images of Mohammed and it continues to face protests over a French magazine publishing provocative cartoons of Mohammed.

Unlike the United States, free speech is limited in Europe with numerous statutes that ban hate speech, blasphemy, Holocaust denial and even phrases deemed insults to bureaucrats and police officers.

When Germany's far right political party, Pro Deutschland, announced it planned to screen the video The Innocence of Muslims politicians responded by trying to tighten 140-year-old blasphemy laws. After all, Germany has an estimated 4 million Muslims and its embassy in Sudan was set on fire last month by men egged on by Islamist leaders.

But German Interior Minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich opposed the measures, saying that German law also protects "freedom of expression and artistic freedom."

Muslim nations say Europe's reluctance to ban insults to Islam show that the West is anti-Islam. Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf demanded an international ban on a film he equated to "hate speech" and "blasphemy."

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Europe's fight over free speech flares up again

The American left used to champion free expression. We were lectured correctly that the price of being repulsed by occasional crude talk and art was worth paying. Only that way could Americans ensure our daily right to criticize those with greater power and influence whom we found wrong and objectionable.

When 1950s comedian Lenny Bruce titillated his audiences with the F-word and crude sex talk, liberals came to his defense. They reminded us that vulgar speech is not a crime: The First Amendment was not just designed to protect uplifting expression, but also rarer blasphemous and indecent speech.

For liberals, the burning of a flag on campus and the full frontal nudity of Penthouse magazine were also First Amendment issues.

When artist Andres Serrano photographed a crucifix in a jar with his own urine (Piss Christ), the avant-garde left not only protected Serranos constitutional right to offend millions, but also saw no problem in the U.S. government subsidizing the talentless Serranos sophomoric obnoxiousness.

But the worldview of the left is self-contradictory. One of its pet doctrines is multiculturalism or the idea that non-Western cultures cannot be judged critically by our own inherently biased Western standards.

Female circumcision or honor killings in the Muslim world dont merit our attention in the way that a womans right to free abortion pills from her Catholic employer does in the West. When it comes to the Middle East, we neither criticize strongly enough the regions sexism, homophobia or racism, nor do we defend without qualification our own notions of free expression as inherently superior to the habitual censorship abroad.

Fear plays a role, too. Championing the right of Andres Serrano to show his degrading pictures of Christ wins liberal laurels. Protecting novelist Salman Rushdies caricatures of Islam might earn death.

The Obama administration went to great lengths to blast and even arrest an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian for posting on the Internet a juvenile movie trailer ridiculing Islam and offending Muslims. After riots across the Middle East and the murder of the U.S. ambassador in Libya, American officials did not wish to concede that radical Islam hates the United States even when Barack Obama is president. And they did not want to admit that their own lax security standards, not a film trailer, led to the horrific murders in Libya, or that in an election year their Middle East reset policy is in shambles.

No obnoxious American in the last half-century not Larry Flynt, not Daniel Ellsberg, not even Julian Assange has warranted so much condemnation for his antics from the president of the United States, the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as have one crackpot preacher in Florida and an inept Coptic film producer.

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Terrible Inconvenience of Free Speech

A Billings minister has prevailed in his federal suit against state and Yellowstone County officials who he alleged violated his free speech rights when he was arrested while collecting anti-abortion petition signatures at MetraPark.

Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull on Tuesday approved a joint settlement in which the state and county agreed not to enforce an obscure state law that limited the speech of ministers, clergy and church regarding candidates and ballot issues.

The stateacknowledged in court records that the law was unconstitutional and that it had not been and would not be enforced. The state also said it would not include the law in so-called warning posters in future elections.

We are very pleased that yet another absurd, anti-free speech Montana election law has been struck down, said Bozeman attorney Matthew Monforton, who represented Cal Zastrow, a Billings resident and minister for the Assemblies of God.

This means that Cal and other pastors have the same right to engage in the political process that everyone else has. The state is no longer permitted to tell voters through 'warning posters that pastors who engage in political speech are criminals, Monforton said Wednesday.

Assistant Attorney General Michael Black, who handled the case for the state, said on Wednesday, To the best of our knowledge, the statute has never been enforced. Based on our review we chose to allow the court to enter the judgment that it was unconstitutional.

Yellowstone County, Monforton said, stopped harassing Mr. Zastrow after the filing of the lawsuit. Because Zastrow can engage his First Amendment right to collect signatures at MetraPark, that portion of the suit also was settled, he said.

Deputy County Attorney Ryan Norlund said the county was prepared to proceed with the false arrest claims but, at Monfortons request, reached agreement on where and when Zastrow could collect signatures.

He followed those parameters. There were no further incidents, he said.

Zastrow could collect signatures in places that didnt interfere with pedestrian trafficat events, Norlund said.

Originally posted here:
Minister wins free speech suit against state, county