Category Archives: Free Speech

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) In U.S.-funded ads running on Pakistani TV, subtitled clips show President Barack Obama extolling America's traditions of religious freedom. For many watching, though, the message misses the mark in efforts to calm the Islamic outrage over a film denigrating the Prophet Muhammad.

America's free speech laws and values of openness are not in question, but rather there is confusion and anger over how they are applied.

A powerful theme binding the protests from Indonesia to Africa is the perception that the U.S. codes of free speech are somehow weighted against Islam permitting the Internet video that insults the faith but placing clear limits on hot button issues such as hate speech, workplace discrimination and even what is acceptable on prime-time network TV.

Beyond the rage, bloodshed and death threats churning now for two weeks is a quandary for American policymakers that will linger long after the latest mayhem fades: How to explain the U.S. embrace of free expression to an Islamic world that increasingly sees only double standards?

Although there are many nuances including strict U.S. laws when hate speech crossed the line into threats or intimidation they are mostly lost in the current outrage that included a peaceful march in Nigeria on Monday and Iran threatening to boycott the 2013 Academy Awards after the country's first Oscar-winning film this year.

With each protest, many clerics and Islamic hard-liners hammer home the narrow view that America is more concerned with political correctness or safeguarding children from sexual content than the religious sensibilities of Muslims.

In Gaza, preacher Sheik Hisham Akram said tolerance is the goal, but the "red line" is crossed with "anyone who insults our religion." Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now in New York for the U.N.'s annual General Assembly denounced last week the "deception" of U.S. laws protecting rights while allowing the clip from the film "Innocence of Muslims," which portrays Muhammad as a womanizer, religious fraud and child molester.

"In some extent, it's not an issue of condemning America's freedom of speech. It's become an issue, in the eyes of many Muslims, over where the lines are and why they are not protecting the feelings of Muslims," said John Voll, associate director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington.

It also turns the $70,000 U.S. ad initiative in Pakistan one of the hotbeds of the protests into a major challenge to gain any ground. Besides Obama, the spots include Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton repeating that U.S. authorities had no connection to the video.

It's part of wider U.S. strategies to use social media and other forums to reach out to moderates in the Islamic world including what the State Department has described as a "virtual embassy" for Iranian web surfers. But the fallout from the film has so far drowned out appeals for calmer dialogue in places such as Pakistan, where at least 23 people have died in unrest linked to the film.

Continue reading here:
Free speech 'red lines' feed Muslim film rage

Pakistanis protest this week in Karachi against an anti-Islam video made in the United States.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World Politics Review. A former CNN producer/correspondent, she is the author of "The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television." Follow her on Twitter: @FridaGColumns.

(CNN) -- A new battle has erupted on the global stage over the future of free speech. Its epicenter moved to the U.N. General Assembly, where world leaders expounded on the great issues of the day.

The annual U.N. gathering came just days after a chain reaction of ferocious protests in Muslim countries against a video on YouTube insulting Islam. Reaction to the video led to the deaths, at last count, of more than 50 people, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

So, the hateful video and the mass violence became an inescapable topic at the United Nations. And yet there was intense disagreement about what exactly was troubling about the events of the last few weeks and what action they demand.

In the view of some Arab and Muslim leaders, the time has come to draft new international rules limiting free expression for the sake of preventing insults to religions. The head of the Arab League, Nabil Elaraby, called for "criminaliz(ing) acts that insult or cause offense to religions."

Frida Ghitis

This move to impose anti-blasphemy laws should come as a call to action for democracy advocates everywhere: Freedom of speech, a most fundamental of human rights, a cornerstone of democracy, has come under international attack.

Certainly, non-Muslims living in some of those countries have had nightmarish experiences with them as the bans are used to target minorities and government critics. Among political leaders, however, the idea appears popular.

Continued here:
A war is raging against free speech

Mitali Saran: Free speech vs free-for-all Mitali Saran / New Delhi Sep 29, 2012, 00:59 IST

People love to talk about reasonable restrictions on free speech. Reasonable turns out to be what they personally consider to be reasonable. The most generous will draw the line at incitement to violence, asking rhetorically whether the freedom to create any book, painting, speech or act is really worth spilling precious blood and losing irreplaceable lives. But wherever they draw the free speech line, it is almost certainly different from the next guys. And thats why it doesnt work.

Im thoroughly sick of the reasonable restrictions argument. Subscribers place faith in their own benevolent despotism. But since, in the real world, Hitler can live alongside Gandhi, and Osama bin Laden alongside Mother Teresa, and Chetan Bhagat alongside J M Coetzee, and Justin Bieber alongside Leonard Cohen, one mans reason is clearly another mans insanity. Reasonableness is, therefore, not a terribly useful parameter for how to run society. Physical safety, of people and property, is.

Every time you give in, you are saying, loud and clear, that you dont have the power to enforce peace; and worse, you imply the legitimacy of violence. A government that can be duped into restricting individual rights under the misapprehension that it is upholding minority sentiments is a dream come true for political opponents, and for those who seek political power without political office a more comfortable, less accountable place to be, usually in the pulpit of a church, the sanctum of a temple, or the minaret of a mosque.

Peaceful demonstrations, expressions and protests are the legal tender of democratic protest. Peaceful means without harm to anothers person or property not polite, or inoffensive, or without harm to a persons ego or feelings. It does not mean suppressing voices, or making arbitrary, pre-emptive artistic and social decisions; it means maintaining physical safety, to allow anyone and everyone to have their say non-violently, and taking violators to task. Barack Obama told the United Nations General Assembly that he felt for Muslim outrage over the anti-Islam video that provoked an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, but he also stood firmly by the filmmakers right to make the film. We need to make the distinction between upholding rights (constitutional mandate), and pandering to sentiment (cheap political gambit). Are you hurt and upset and angry? Talk about it, write about it, make art about it, protest it peacefully and if nothing changes, suck it up. Yes, suck it up.

But this only works when the political and administrative leadership believes in the constitutional rights of individual citizens, and throws its weight behind educated law enforcement. In our case, most mobs are led by political interests. It takes one person to tip the scales by committing the first act of violence. Chances are that that person is acting out of cold calculation, not white-hot anger; and that that person can assure rioters of immunity from the law.

Salman Rushdie talked, in a recent interview with Bill Maher, about the political manufacture of rage. As the dark star of this years Jaipur Literature Festival in January, when politicians whipped up anti-Rushdie sentiments because of a local election, Mr Rushdie should know. M F Husain, forced out of India, should know. Taslima Nasreen, virtually shoved out for being controversial, should know. Anyone who watched Congress workers lead a mob charge on the Bhubaneswar Assembly in early September, knows. Anyone who remembers Gujarat, 2002, or Delhi, 1984, knows. Any woman who has been blamed for getting raped should know. So, to those people who talk about incitement to violence: criminalise those who cast the first physical stone, not those who express themselves non-violently, no matter how disagreeable they may be.

A functioning democracy is not one in which everyone is unfailingly considerate, uncritical and agreeable. A functioning democracy is one in which people holler about whatever they want, create whatever art and speeches and acts they want, live under whatever customs they want, with whatever faith they want, insult or parody whoever they want and nobody gets hurt. Voltaires elegant summation has never been topped: I do not agree with what you have to say, but Ill defend to the death your right to say it.

Read the original:
Mitali Saran: Free speech vs free-for-all

UNITED NATIONS Egypt's recently elected President Mohamed Morsi on Wednesday rejected President Obama's view of free speech rights and made plain his ambition to seize greater influence for the Arab world's most populous country.

Morsi, in his debut speech to the U.N. General Assembly, said Egypt intended to lead the way in resolving Syria's civil war, pressing the cause of Palestinians and defusing the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.

He also said that though his country now embraces democracy and human rights, it would not accept the categorical approach to free speech that Obama urged at the United Nations and would not tolerate insults to religion.

"Egypt respects freedom of expression," he said, but "one that is not used to incite hatred against anyone. One that is not directed toward one specific religion or cult."

He called on the U.N. to consider international action to crack down on speech that defames religions.

Morsi's comments addressed a disagreement between Muslim and Western leaders that has surfaced this month since an anti-Islamic video made in the U.S. ignited protests and set off deadly attacks in nearly two dozen countries in the Muslim world. Muslim leaders have demanded that Western governments crack down on such expression, while Western governments have insisted that they must allow full free speech rights.

Yemen President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, in his remarks, also rejected protection of speech that criticizes religion. "There should be limits for the freedom of expression, especially if such freedom blasphemes the beliefs of nations and defames their figures," Hadi said.

Obama, in his U.N. address Tuesday, pressed Muslim countries to accept the Western approach.

World leaders have been studying Morsi closely since the longtime Muslim Brotherhood member became president in June. The Obama administration has been concerned that Morsi might take a more assertive stand on Israel than his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted last year.

Morsi said his "first issue" would be to press the cause of the Palestinians at a time when peace negotiations with a Palestinian state appear dead in the water. He also called for a regional conference this year on nuclear proliferation in the Mideast, and appeared to scold both Israel and Iran, condemning countries that don't join the international nonproliferation treaty and signatories that don't follow its rules.

Visit link:
In U.N. speech, Egypt's Morsi rejects broad free speech rights

25-09-2012 13:39 Barack Obama stated US won't block anti-Islam film for reasons of free speech. RT discussed Obama's speech in UN with journalist and anti-war activist Don DeBar. RT LIVE Subscribe to RT! Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Google+ RT (Russia Today) is a global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 500 million YouTube views benchmark.

Link:
'Free speech? Let Obama talk to Bradley Manning about it' - Video

25-09-2012 19:15 Despite not having any one-on-one meetings with foreign leaders during his visit at the UN General Assembly, President Obama's address was certainly aimed at leaders from the Middle East and North Africa. Nancy Cordes reports.

See original here:
Obama defends free speech at UN General Assembly - Video

My View from the Sept. 24, 2012, edition of Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer.

Eliot Spitzer:

As world leaders descend upon the United Nations this week for the annual meeting of the General Assembly, plenty of voices will be heard, including one voice notorious for the hateful words he speaks: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran.

While the topics will cover a broad spectrum, the focus will surely be on the continuing unrest in the Middle East and, most recently, North Africa. Yet, most importantly, no voices will be censored.

The arc of the unfortunate story is now well told: Using a perceived attack on the Quran by a private voice as a pretext to ignite anger, forces of intolerance incite riots against visible U.S. interests and representatives often diplomats usually causing damage of some sort, and in the most recent incident in Benghazi, leading to a tragic and devastating loss of life.

One of the tough questions that follows is, how should we respond, both to the initial provocation and then as well to the assault on U.S. interests?

We should be clear in understanding that these attacks are the price we pay for believing in free speech, especially in a world where such tolerance is not universally accepted. We are used to dismissing as cranks and crazies the fringe voices who preach everything from anarchy to wild conspiracy or who feel compelled to elevate their own religious or political views by speaking in venomous terms about those of others.

Yet in parts of the world where the notion of free speech has not become an accepted part of the political or social fabric, such speech can be used by those with multiple motives to incite. As Bill Keller points out in his op-ed in todays New York Times, it is often the intent of those causing the riot that tough restrictions on speech be imposed the very violence they cause being the argument they can then use to stifle opposition voices.

All of which brings me to a simple point: By appearing at all queasy in our dedication to the founding principle of free speech and tolerance for that right in others, we give sustenance to those who would squelch it and weaken the overwhelming long-term appeal we have in those nations now going through a tumultuous upheaval.

Of course, we cannot expect the end result to be universal adoption of our vision of freedom, but if we at all waver in defending it as a principle, then we will give up hope that we can move toward that goal.

View post:
Viewpoint: Spitzer: Free speech should be protected at all costs

September 23, 2012 in Nation/World Speakers may revive debate onblasphemy

Hannah Allam McClatchy-Tribune

UNITED NATIONS The divide in world opinion over what constitutes free speech will be on display again this week at the United Nations, where arguments over a proposed blasphemy law were an annual feature for the past decade. This time its the global reaction to a YouTube video that disparages Islams Prophet Muhammad thats sure to roil the meeting of the U.N. GeneralAssembly.

Muslim leaders have vowed to discuss the offensive video from their U.N. platforms, sowing concern among free-speech activists of a fresh push toward an international law that would criminalize blasphemy. Human rights groups and Western democracies resisted such a law for years and thought they had finally quashed the matter after convincing enough nations that repressive regimes use blasphemy laws to imprison or executedissidents.

I expect that well regress to where we were a couple of years ago, said Courtney C. Radsch, program manager for the Global Freedom of Expression Campaign at Freedom House, a Washington-based nonprofit group that promotes democraticvalues.

Human rights are not about protecting religions; human rights are to protect humans, Radsch said. Who is going to be the decision-maker on deciding what blasphemyis?

At one end of the spectrum is France, where a magazine last week published cartoons of Muhammad as a naked, cowering man to underscore a point that even the most offensive expression should beprotected.

At the other end of the spectrum is U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who surprised and disappointed many free-speech activists by suggesting limitations to freedom of speech when its used to provoke orhumiliate.

We are living through a period of unease. We are also seeing incidents of intolerance and hatred that are then exploited by others, Ban told the 193-member General Assembly at the gatherings opening last week. Voices of moderation and calm need to make themselves heard at this time. We all need to speak up in favor of mutual respect and understanding of the values and beliefs ofothers.

Visit link:
Limits on speech to get U.N. hearing - Sun, 23 Sep 2012 PST

THE division in world opinion over what constitutes free speech will be on display again this week at the United Nations, where arguments over a proposed blasphemy law have been an annual feature for the past decade.

This time the global reaction to a YouTube video that disparages Islam's prophet Muhammad is sure to roil the meeting of the UN General Assembly.

Muslim leaders have vowed to discuss the offensive video from their UN platforms, sowing concern among free-speech activists of a fresh push to criminalise blasphemy internationally. Human rights groups and Western democracies resisted such a law for years and believed they had finally quashed the matter after persuading enough nations that repressive regimes use blasphemy laws to imprison or execute dissidents.

''I expect that we'll regress to where we were a couple of years ago,'' said Courtney Radsch, program manager for the Global Freedom of Expression Campaign at Freedom House, a Washington non-profit group that promotes democratic values. ''Human rights are not about protecting religions; human rights are to protect humans,'' Ms Radsch said. ''Who decides what blasphemy is?'' McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

Advertisement

Link:
Speeches at UN likely to attack free speech

21-09-2012 06:14 Oral arguments are scheduled for Friday morning in US District Court to determine if a website criticizing former gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler qualifies as free speech. News 8's Thema Ponton reports.

Originally posted here:
Oral arguments scheduled for Cutler Files case - Video