On Freedom of Speech:

[underlankers]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/world/europe/05march.html?hp

In the article a group of Islamists are protesting the war in Afghanistan by honoring the corpses of British soldiers killed by other Islamists over in the Middle East. There is a movement of sorts to ban it. Now, personally, I find such behavior disgusting and repulsive, and bordering

Comments

[underlankers]

Repression and suppression of ideas amounts to the same thing. The former is when others do it, the latter is when we do it. The former is EBIL DICTATORSHIP the latter is for people's freedoms.

And not from the USA, no, but I'm also inviting opinions from the rest of the world.

[policraticus]

Choudary is a particularly vile and dangerous reptile with a following that dwarfs Phelps by several magnitudes and a message that is much more aggressive and militant. Which is saying something.

There really is no debate in the US, though. If Nazi's can march through Skokie IL, jihadist sympathizers can march at, say, Ground Zero. I don't like it, but I don't have to keep quiet about it, either. I'd be at the counter march, probably with a basket full of rotten fruit. Or bacon.

[underlankers]

And that's as I said, freedom of speech =/= mandate to agree/listen.

[sandwichwarrior]

In wich lies both the problem and the solution.

[the_rukh]

If Fred Phelps and his band can behave like douchebags here, then by the same token these Muslim real-life trolls should be allowed to do the same.

Here they would be allowed to, but Britain ain't here.

My personal opinion is that they should be able to march. They're not protesting funerals like that scum phelps, they're honoring innocent civilians that have died. I don't see why people are bent out of shape about that.

Yes the guy was critical towards the British troops, and said some untrue things. I'm sure this guy isn't helping Muslims with his hateful rhetoric, but that's not what their march is about.

[underlankers]

Well, those innocent civilians weren't Brits, you see, they are those dastardly gaijin-I mean foreigners, and we just can't have that mourned old chap. /snark cap off.

And I agree, the guy definitely isn't helping British Muslims with how he acts. But such people never think that way. It's both selfishness and arrogance.

[underlankers]

Shit, screwed up the HTML. >.

[the_rukh]

'salright, I got it. :P

[underlankers]

Agreed.

[htpcl]

Absolutely.

[mijopo]

I don't think freedom of speech entails the requirement to tolerate all and any uncivil behavior. I'm not sure where the line gets drawn but clearly we do draw such a line, probably when the rights of others to privacy and pursuit of happiness is clearly impinged upon. I'd have no problem with a court order preventing Fred Phelps from haranguing mourners at a funeral, I would have one that prevented him from any kind of public demonstration.

Now in this case, I don't see that the group's plans impinge very much at all on the privacy and/or on their pursuit of happiness, hard to justify a ban in my opinion. I'd argue it's an important act in a context in which people are unquestioningly revering war dead and just the kind of thing that freedom of speech should protect. But this is Britain, so who knows.

[underlankers]

A very agreeable point, especially if the injunction as such is legitimate based on Phelps' own actions. But a ban from all speech violates the First Amendment here.

And agreed, this is the government that bans knives. So it is an open question of whether or not Brown might not simply do this so as to keep Labor in Westminister....