Pamela Geller - Part 2 We Are at War with Jihad

Freedom of Speech at Temple University

Temple U. International Socialist Organization, do not rob our fellow students of a well-rounded education merely because you disagree with a point of view about which the majority of America wants to learn and understand more. In order to advance progress of oneself and our society, our sole aim throughout life cannot be to consistently disrupt or terrorize dialogue. Dialogue is a precious gift that we are privileged to have, free of retribution, in America. TU Purpose is not going to allow the TU Socialists or anyone to waste this privilege for us, our fellow Owls, the TU Administration, and the surrounding community.

Islam is the New Spectre Hanging Over Europe

Go, Wilders, go! The trial has been halted after the presiding judge made a prejudicial remark. This is magnificent.

Is a "fair" trial even remotely possible?

For the most reliable updates, go to Wilders on Trial. Previous Atlas coverage of Wilders' ongoing heresy trial (for insulting Islam) -- go here.

Back in early February, the Dutch court adjourned Wilders' trial for nine months to give the three witnesses testifying for Wilders' time to schedule their testimony (Wafa Sultan was one of the witnesses -- her historical testimony is here).

If you missed Wilders' opening remarks back in January in his free speech trial, go here.

"Freedom is the most precious of all our attainments and the most vulnerable. People have devoted their lives to it and given their lives for it. Our freedom in this country is the outcome of centuries. It is the consequence of a history that knows no equal and has brought us to where we are now.

I believe with all my heart and soul that the freedom in the Netherlands is threatened. That what our heritage is, what generations could only dream about, that this freedom is no longer a given, no longer self-evident.

I devote my life to the defence of our freedom. I know what the risks are and I pay a price for it every day. I do not complain about it; it is my own decision. I see that as my duty and it is why I am standing here.


I know that the words I use are sometimes harsh, but they are never rash. It is not my intention to spare the ideology of conquest and destruction, but I am not any more out to offend people. I have nothing against Muslims. I have a problem with Islam and the Islamization of our country because Islam is at odds with freedom.

Future generations will wonder to themselves how we in 2010, in this place, in this room, earned our most precious attainment. Whether there is freedom in this debate for both parties and thus also for the critics of Islam, or that only one side of the discussion may be heard in the Netherlands? Whether freedom of speech in the Netherlands applies to everyone or only to a few? The answer to this is at once the answer to the question whether freedom still has a home in this country.

Freedom was never the property of a small group, but was always the heritage of us all. We are all blessed by it.

Lady Justice wears a blindfold, but she has splendid hearing. I hope that she hears the following sentences, loud and clear:

It is not only a right, but also the duty of free people to speak against every ideology that threatens freedom. Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States was right: The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

I hope that the freedom of speech shall triumph in this trial."

Geert Wilders is our proxy. We are on trial. The Organization of Islamic Conference means to shut us all up. That's what they were doing in Chicago last week. Wilders is us.

Geert Wilders trial halted as lawyer accuses judge of bias (the notoriously leftist and morally bankrupt Guardian)

The opening of the trial, expected to last a month in Amsterdam, followed a successful weekend for the maverick Dutch politician, with his influence over a new rightwing government confirmed and a campaign speech in Germany aimed at establishing a trans-national European movement against Muslim immigration.

Wilders entered the dock amid heavy security and promptly affirmed his commitment to free speech, dismissing the charges against him while not entering a plea.

He faces a hefty fine or a year in jail if found guilty on five charges of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims and insulting their religion for likening, as he routinely does, the Qur'an to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and describing Islam as fascist.

"I am on trial, but on trial with me is the freedom of expression of many Dutch citizens," he told the Amsterdam district court. "I can assure you, I will continue proclaiming it."

Wilders then asserted his right to remain silent for the rest of the trial, prompting a comment from the presiding judge, Jan Moors, which was challenged by Wilders's lawyer.

Moors said Wilders was known for making bold statements but avoiding discussions, adding: "It appears you're doing so again."

Bram Moszkowicz, representing Wilders, said the comment gave the appearance that Moors was biased and moved to have him substituted.

The hearing was suspended while other judges consider the complaint. They are to rule tomorrow on Wilders's challenge, meaning that a new panel of three judges could be appointed, delaying the trial by several months.

"I thought I had a right to a fair trial, including the right to remain silent," said Wilders. "It is scandalous that the judge passes comment on that. A fair trial is not possible with judges like that."

At the weekend, rather than comparing Islam to fascism, Wilders argued that Islam was the new communism, paraphrasing Karl Marx to declare that Islam is now the spectre haunting Europe.

[...] "I am standing trial … because of my opinions on Islam … and because the Dutch establishment – most of them non-Muslims – wants to silence me. I have been dragged to court because in my country freedom can no longer be fully enjoyed.

"In Europe the national state, and increasingly the EU, prescribes how citizens – including democratically elected politicians such as myself – should think and what we are allowed to say."

If you didn't see Wilders speak at our 911 Rally of Remembrance to Stop the Ground Zero mosque, go here.

Freedom of [Hate] Speech

As with any social networking site that is free and accessible to millions of people worldwide you are bound to have issues and therefore many rules as well. According to the Facebook “Terms” last updated April 22, 2010:

“Safety”

6- You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user.

7- You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.

10- You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.

How well is Facebook enforcing the Pages that blatantly break these rules?

There are 282 pages on Facebook of pages with the name “F*** Israel!”, or “F*** you Israel!” Some of these pages have over 30,000 members. I know that they have been reported because I had hundreds, if not thousands, of associates and their colleagues report these pages on several occasions since January.

Samplings of posts from some of these pages are vile to say the least (beware of clicking the links on account of foul language):

F*** Israel Page:

you F***in jew! do you wanna die or what? i am gonna make soap from you! from all jews! sieg heil!!!!!

F*** Jews Page:

Simona Liukenskiene: yup, kill them all \m/

Matt Kliethermes: Hey Simona my band has a song called Dead Jews Do No wrong

F*** You Israel Page, discussing Hitler:

Kamal Saba god rest his soul he is our man for burning and grilling the jews

Kamal Saba soon hes coming back to grill netenyaho and companyyyyyy hahahahah

And then there are those whose Page name says it all: Why didn't Hitler get Tactical Nuke first? He had a 6 million kill-streak.

Among the full page of various rules and regulations it is explained that Facebook can, of course, close your account at any time for the breach of any of these rules:

“Termination

If you violate the letter or spirit of this Statement, or otherwise create risk or possible legal exposure for us, we can stop providing all or part of Facebook to you. We will notify you by email or at the next time you attempt to access your account. You may also delete your account or disable your application at any time.”

One way, and undoubtedly the most commonly used way of having Facebook shut down a page is by sending a notification from your Facebook page to the Facebook Administrators. The problem with this is: the amount of people that send in notifications just because they don’t like what someone posted, even if it doesn’t break the rules.

From any page you can click on “Report Page” which then loads a drop down box of the following:

Nudity or Pornography

Impersonating me or someone I know

Racist/Hate speech

Targets me or a friend

Direct call for violence

Excessive gore or violent content

Spam

I personally know of over a dozen people who have had their Facebook pages removed due to a complaint by another Facebook user, and they had to fight to get it back. In some cases they were never able to get back their page.

In each and every case I know of, the person was accused of “Racist/Hate speech” because they said one or more things that offended a Muslim. Never, in any of these cases did anyone call for, hint or advocate violence of any kind towards any individual, group or religion. Every one of these cases people had stated things about terrorism, Islamic law (Sharia) and the Quran. I read the posts that caused these pages to be removed by Facebook and in every single instance, the statements were factual. At no time was anything personally derogatory either said or implied.

What started as a way for people to connect and re-connect with other people has become a place for everything from “Fan Pages” to “instant messaging” to “blogging” to instant news, politics and ultimately, even “cyber bullying” that ended in suicide.

In February 2004 Mark Zuckerberg was a sophomore at Harvard and started a website that was exclusive to Harvard students. The new idea that he started with three of his fellow students Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin was known as Facebook.

The original idea for Facebook was actually something borrowed from Zuckerberg's prep school Phillips Exeter Academy, which for years had published a manual of all students and faculty, unofficially called the "face book". In June of 2008 Facebook surpassed MySpace as World's Most Popular Social Network and in February of this year Facebook membership reached over 400 million people.

Now, according to NBC News from July 14, 2010, “Facebook has a new PR issue on its hands”:

“Apparently, it’s made as many as 2.5 million customers mad enough to threaten a boycott.

The group claims to represent Muslims who are mad about the removal of four Facebook pages.

These are the pages no longer available on the site:

Facebook.com/Rassoul.Allaah

Facebook.com/Logo.Ramadan

LikesFacebook.com/I.Love.Mohammed

Facebook.com/Quran.Lovers

They go on to list their demands:

1. Reactivating the four pages that have been disabled.
2. Adding a Facebook Term that illegalizes disrespecting all Islamic religious symbols, including Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and the Qur'an, as well as Prophet Moses (PBUH), Prophet Jesus (PBUH), and the original Bible.
3. Disabling any Facebook Page, Group, or Event that shows direct or indirect disrespect towards Islamic religious symbols.

The deadline is a week from today. The group claims it has hundreds of thousands of users who are ready to jump ship to another site called madina.com, which is an “Islamic social networking site.”

Wait, let me get this straight… Make it “illegal to disrespect all Islamic symbols” as well as “Disabling any Facebook Page, Group, or Event that shows direct or indirect disrespect towards Islamic religious symbols”?

What about the over 300 Pages calling for the death and destruction of Israel, Jews, Christians and America?

Most of the hate posts on these pages are in Arabic which is easily translated, but some of the English posts on these pages call for “Death to Israel”, “Death to Jews”, “Finish what Hitler started”, They call all Jews “Pigs and monkeys”, etc. The profile pictures on these pages have everything from the Israeli flag in flames as well as the American and Israeli flags burning to Israeli flags with a swastika in place of the Jewish Star.

When it comes to Islam, we know how easily offense is taken. Pakistan shut down Facebook for 11 days back in May 20, 2010. Yes, Pakistan, as in the whole country, in protest against “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” on Facebook. According to “Inside Facebook”, an independent service of Inside Network, the first company dedicated to providing news and market research to the Facebook platform:

“Pakistani judges ruled to ban Facebook in the country Wednesday in anticipation of May 20, which a Facebook Page had claimed would be “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” The ban began Wednesday evening and is to be in effect at least until the end of the month. Tuesday the Page had about 42,000 fans and it’s since almost doubled to about 82,000; there are also countless imitation Pages and dozens upon dozens of opposition Pages.”

Bangladesh also banned Facebook from May 29, 2010 until June 8^th for the same reason – “Draw Mohammed Day”. A report from Asia News.it stated:

“Facebook is again accessible in Bangladesh after “offensive” cartoons were removed. The famous online social network was blocked on 29 May after the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad was deemed offensive to the religious sentiments of the Muslim majority of the population. In Bangladesh, Muslims represent 90 per cent of the population.”

Okay, so the “Draw Mohammed Day” was found to be offensive by Muslims. We all know what happened after the Danish Cartoons of Mohammed came out on September 30, 2005.

But here is the pot calling the kettle black; one of the “demands” as mentioned in the NBC story above is: “Reactivating the four pages that have been disabled”. Two of the page names on the list, Rassoul Allaah and Quran Lovers are both listed on the “info” portion page of the most popular “F*** Israel” page. I guess it’s okay to call for the death of Israel and the Jews, but “don’t disrespect Islamic religious symbols”.

There is really no surprise here. Radical Muslims and even Islam as a whole have always been hypocrites when it comes to freedom of speech. They can say whatever they want about Jews, Israel, America or Christianity. Say one thing about Mohammed and there will be a “Fatwa” on your head, calling for your death, faster than Ahmadinejad can deny the Holocaust.

As explained by “The Religion of Peace” website:

“The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding. Muslims who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter.”

According to the website “Secrets of Quran miracles” by Abduldaem Al-Kaheel where he wrote about the “mocking” of Mohammed he asks the question:

“Praise to Allah! How dare they, mocking Muhammad (peace be upon him), the greatest creature of Allah?”

Later in the same article he answers the question:

“But let's first read what Allah says about these mockers, God says in the Holy Quran:

Lo! those who malign Allah and his messenger, Allah hath cursed them in the world and the Hereafter, and hath prepared for them the doom of the disdained* and those who malign believing men and believing women undeservedly, they bear the guilt of slander and manifest sin. {Al-Ahzab: 57-58}.

These drawings are bad deeds to Allah, mockery of his messenger causes harm for every believing man and woman. So, we warn them of a painful punishment if they do not desist.”

Facebook has its hands full and I understand that, there are many other pages here that I have yet to mention from the KKK and White Supremacist groups to one page by the name of “F*** Palestine”. Yes, there is only page by that name as opposed to the 282 pages by the similar name with Israel.

Does Facebook actually believe that they may lose 2.5 million Muslim members if these demands are not met? For that matter, do they really care when these same people are calling for the death of Israelis, Americans, Jews, Christians and even other Muslims on a daily basis?

Not a day goes by without a terror attack in the name of Islam. At the time of this writing there had been only 2,973 days since 9/11/01, yet there have been 15,678 deadly terrorist attacks all in the name of Islam since 9/11/01. This past week alone there were 40 attacks with 276 killed and 595 critically injured.

At what point do we stop this politically correct madness and draw the line between freedom of speech and hate speech? At what point do we look at what culture or group is asking us to never say anything negative about them, their so-called religion or their Prophet while all the while they spew their hate, celebrate and call for death of others?

It is near impossible to “police” the internet and certainly Facebook cannot control over 400 million pages. As Pakistan and Bangladesh have shown, it is just easier to shut an entire site down rather than trying to pick and choose.

Facebook is a free site and anyone who finds anything offensive has the same rights as everyone else, Muslim or otherwise. I only hope that those threatening to leave if “their” demands are not met do what any one of us can do, stop using it and click the little “X” in the top right corner of the page.

Trust me; your hate speech will not be missed.
Gabi Adelman, Family Matters

Uzbekistan: Blogging Fosters Freedom of Speech

by Tolkun Umaraliev

Recently, the U.S. State Department has ranked Uzbekistan among "top ten" of the most authoritarian countries in the world. During almost two decades of his reign, president I. Karimov and his clan have taken control of all spheres of life in the country – political, economic and social. Civil society, which emerged and was developing in the country after the collapse of Soviet Union, has felt the severe pressure of Karimov's regime, especially after the Andijon events in 2005 that resulted in international sanctions on Uzbekistan. The state has full power over mainstream media in the country. Even though Karimov glorifies democratic values in his public speeches, there is no freedom of speech in the country. However, today, voices are breaking through via new media – blogs.



One of such cyber-activists is Gerchik, discussing sociopolitical problems in the country in his blog. In his most recent post, Gerchik writes about the reasons why people may leave Uzbekistan and lists vital social problems that his community is suffering from [ru]:

1. Electricity cut-offs in the cities for two and more weeks, even on holidays. Reason: disorganized work of the State Electricity Department staff, which collects payment for electricity. Moreover, they take bribes by "rewinding" the electricity meter back.

2. Electricity supply is limited to 4 hours a day in rural areas;

3. There is a great shortage of natural gas in public use, despite the fact that we the country is rich in natural gas;

4. An average Uzbek can't feed family doing his job in Uzbekistan, so people are forced to become migrant workers;

5. An average Uzbek family is not able to pay for utilities;

6. The state officials are impudent enough to publicly lie that an average Uzbek citizen earns 200 USD per month;

7. And these state officials are re-elected to the third term!

The post, which reflects reality in most parts of Uzbekistan, has generated lots of comments from other people, who suffer from the same problems. One such comment reads [ru]:

I live in the suburb of Tashkent [capital city]. Cuts of hot water and gas were regular during the whole winter. Electricity was cutting off repeatedly during a day… My parents live in Syrdarya. They didn't have gas for the whole winter. Even now its supply is very low. People don't have access to drinking water in their houses and are to go a long way round for it.

In another post, Gerchik opines on the politics in Uzbekistan and asks readers a question that was raised by one of his friends, who apparently tried to justify the current regime's actions [ru]:

Imagine a situation: you have been making your way up in your career for very long time. Finally, you become a president. What will you do? Will you try to make your life better by gaining enormous fortunes and taking your nation's wealth – big luxurious houses, top brand cars, yacht, house on the seashore and big businesses – or, will you try to change the situation in the country for the better by spending all the money for, say, development of education in the country?

This post provoked a heated discussion among readers. Each of them gave their own view on the situation.

It is hard to answer this question. Why? First, I will never become a president. Second, the problem is not only in the president. But if I became a president, I would first take care of myself. Who would do the opposite? I guess no one.

Khorezm writes about the recent rally of several hundreds of women in the center of Urgench. They were complaining about relocation of the city market to the suburbs and about the distribution of sales outlets on a new place. As Khoresm reports, the protesters wanted a dialogue with the governor. However, when they approached Hokimiyat [city administration building] they were stopped by a chain of policemen [ru]:

The crowd was stopped by a chain of Special Squad… Even though women had no arms, the policemen were wearing helmets and body armors… As a result, the crowd jammed up the traffic… The atmosphere was tense. A rumor that the policemen had allegedly beat up one of the demonstrators made the situation worse… There was a mobile headquarters of Special Squad nearby, which, if the situation went worse, could give orders for more drastic measures… However, police managed to split the protesters into groups and finally disperse the crowd by the noon… Demonstrators decided to address their problem to the local TV channels or to RFE/RL reporters.

Also posted on Global Voices Online.

You may view the latest post at

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/04/03/uzbekistan-blogging-fosters-freedom-of-speech/