Northwest Indiana Discussion

Arab governments are stepping up their demands for regulation of American media to ensure Islam gets more favorable coverage in the United States, while President Barack Obama used his weekend message to again condemn criticism of Islam and to reassure Americans worried war in the Arab region.

Egypt’s Prime Minister Hisham Qandil said Sept. 15 that he expected changes in U.S. law and media practice following the release of a 14-minute anti-Islam YouTube video and a week of ongoing unrest in the Middle East.

The violence has included numerous protests, riots and deadly attacks on U.S. and European facilities since Sept. 11, all of which have damaged Obama’s election-trail claims to foreign policy success.

The United States should “take the necessary measures to ensure insulting billions of people – one and a half billion people – and their beliefs does not happen, and people pay for what they do, and at the same time make sure that the reflections of the true Egyptian and Muslims is well [represented] in Western media,” Qandil added, according to the the English-language site of Egypt’s main newspaper, Al Ahram.

But Qandil’s statement also hinted at more violence if the Islamists’ demands were not met.

“I think we need to work out something around this because we cannot wait and see this happen again,” Qandil said.

And on Friday, a top leader of the multinational Cairo-based Muslim Brotherhood party used Western terms to call for greater restrictions on Western media.

It would be illegal to yell fire in movie theater and it could be illegal to make hate film which wasobviously designed to cause alarm?

— Russell Simmons (@UncleRUSH) September 15, 2012

As anger flared across the Muslim world Friday over an anti-Islam video from the U.S., the religious leader of Michigan’s largest mosque slammed Islamic extremists for attacking U.S. embassies and urged Muslims not to react violently to attacks on their prophet.

And he urged the U.S. to do more to stop the people behind the video and those who are promoting it.

“Somehow, they should be stopped,” said Imam Hassan Al-Qazwini of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn. “The U.S. response should be much more stronger than verbal condemnation.”

Al-Qazwini attended the annual Eid dinner Thursday night at the State Department in Washington with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who spoke about the attacks on U.S. facilities that resulted in four deaths in Libya.

Clinton said the violence was not justified, a view that was echoed by Al-Qazwini. He said Islam teaches that ambassadors and other guests should always be welcomed.

“This is not what Islam preaches,” Al-Qazwini said of the fatal attacks. “There is no way we can tolerate killing.”

At the same time, he said we can’t “sit and watch” as the anti-Islam video is promoted.

“We can do more to stop inciting violence,” he said. Allowing the movie has “broader ramifications for our troops, diplomats and Americans abroad.”

The filmmaker and those who support the movie, such as Quran-burning Pastor Terry Jones of Florida, “have blood on their hands,” he said.

“Now here’s the question though and the question that I ask you and it’s not an easy one, I understand that. What, if anything, should happen to the people who made this video? I gotta tell you, I think they are as guilty, that’s my opinion, I think they are as guilty as the terrorists who carried out those attacks against our embassy in Libya. Look, we don’t know everybody who was involved, but we’ve seen, I’ve seen some of them on television. This is a group of extremist, Muslim-hating, so-called Christians in southern California who are using their religion to stir up hatred against Islam. They’re basing this on their Christian beliefs. They are, I believe, every bit as guilty as al Qaeda members who, think about it, who use the Koran and abuse their religion to stir up hatred against the United States. These so-called Christians, anybody who uses religion to stir up hate, is not a true believer. And certainly Christians who do so are not true Christians.

So these so-called Christians using their faith to stir up hatred against another of the world’s great religions, it is absolutely disgusting and they’ve gotta know, they had to know what would result in that. After what happened with those Danish cartoons, right, or cartoons drawn for that Danish newspaper. After what happened with that nutjob Terry Jones down in Florida burning the Koran and people getting killed in Afghanistan over the protest that that, that that triggered. After what happened when we saw the video of American troops urinating on Muslim soldiers, right? After that, you had, they had to know that a video like this, not saying that the Muslims are not overreacting. I mean, they’re hypersensitive about this stuff, I mean, Jesus, you know, just cool it, right? I mean, we show Jesus naked all the time hanging on the cross.

But, at any rate, their reaction is way overblown. But these, I hate to call them Christians, these so-called Christians had to know that that video would result in certain parts of the world, it would result in violence, it would result in lives being lost. I think, again, they are every bit as guilty and I think the United States, this is not freedom of speech. It’s just the old thing, you can’t cry fire in a crowded theater and have people trampled to death and say, oh, I was just exercising my freedom of speech. This is an abuse of the First Amendment. It’s using, abusing their freedom of speech to cost innocent lives and to cause the taking of innocent lives in certain parts of the world. So, I think the United States ought to identify, yeah, we oughta be going after these terrorists that carried out the attacks in Libya and we are. I think we also ought to be identifying the people who made this video and go after them with the full force of the law and lock their ass up.”

Does ‘Innocence of Muslims’ meet the free-speech test? — LA Times

In one of the most famous 1st Amendment cases in U.S. history, Schenck vs. United States, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. established that the right to free speech in the United States is not unlimited. “The most stringent protection,” he wrote on behalf of a unanimous court, “would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”

Holmes’ test — that words are not protected if their nature and circumstances create a “clear and present danger” of harm — has since been tightened. But even under the more restrictive current standard, “Innocence of Muslims,” the film whose video trailer indirectly led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens among others, is not, arguably, free speech protected under the U.S. Constitution and the values it enshrines. [...]

The current standard for restricting speech — or punishing it after it has in fact caused violence — was laid out in the 1969 case Brandenburg vs. Ohio. Under the narrower guidelines, only speech that has the intent and the likelihood of inciting imminent violence or lawbreaking can be limited…

As for imminence, the timeline of similar events after recent burnings of religious materials indicates that reactions typically come within two weeks. Nakoula’s video was deliberately publicized just before the sensitive date of Sept. 11, and could be expected to spark violence on that anniversary.

While many 1st Amendment scholars defend the right of the filmmakers to produce this film, arguing that the ensuing violence was not sufficiently imminent, I spoke to several experts who said the trailer may well fall outside constitutional guarantees of free speech. “Based on my understanding of the events,” 1st Amendment authority Anthony Lewis said in an interview Thursday, “I think this meets the imminence standard.”

Arab League chief Nabil al-Araby said Wednesday that the league, along with the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the European Union and the African Union are close to formulating an international agreement penalizing blasphemy and insults to religious figures.

States should not be blamed for insults to Islam made by some individuals, Araby told reporters at the league’s headquarters in Cairo. He renewed his criticism of the US-produced film that denigrates Islam’s Prophet Mohamed and has sparked protests around the world, describing it as “valueless and trivial.”

Araby also denied any disagreements between Arab states over efforts to solve the Syrian crisis. Saudi Arabia did not attend a meeting held earlier this week on the Syrian issue with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Turkey and Iran.

Egypt’s presidential spokesperson Yasser Ali and an official from the Arab League said the Saudi foreign minister did not attend the Monday meeting in Cairo due to health problems. But Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr said his counterpart’s absence was due to a busy agenda.

Araby recently attended a dinner at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, along with UN special envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi, and the foreign ministers of Egypt, Turkey and Iran. He said he had also met with Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi at the Arab League over several issues, adding that Salehi expressed his willingness to assist Brahimi and would soon visit Ankara.

An Egyptian Interpol official said Wednesday that theoffice sought the issuance of a red bulletin, an international wanted persons alert, against the eight defendants implicated in producing an amateur film that denigrates Islam and Prophet Mohamed.

“The warrant of arrest was issued [in Egypt] against the defendants after the prosecutor accused them of committing crimes harming the unity of the nation and defamation of the Islamic religion,” said the head of Egypt’s Interpol office, Brigadier General Magdy al-Shafei.

He added that his office had asked its counterpart in the US to arrest the defendants. While the US has condemned the film as reprehensible, it is unlikely the American government would prosecute the filmmakers given protections for free speech and expression in that country.

However, this has not stopped Muslim protesters around the world and some political leaders, including President Mohamed Morsy, from calling for action.

Responding to protests against the film last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton upheld the US Constitution and the First Amendment guaranteeing the freedom of speech.

“Our country does have a long tradition of free expression, which is enshrined in our constitution and in our law,” she said. “We do not stop individual citizens from expressing their views no matter how distasteful they may be.”

But no one asks … What about Bill Maher?

Bill Maher?

Bill Maher made a comedy/documentary called "Religulous" that's most famous for mercilessly mocking Christianity. But what people forget is that the last twenty-minutes or so of the film make a damning case against Islam.

Bill Maher made a film that mocked Islam.

Oh, yes, he did.

Bill Maher also contributed $1 million to a pro-Obama super PAC.

(Reuters) – The Danish cartoonist who outraged Muslims with a drawing of the Prophet Mohammad seven years ago has said the West cannot let itself be muzzled by fear of offending Islamic sensibilities.

Kurt Westergaard, whose lampoon of Mohammad in the Jyllands-Posten paper nearly got him killed by an axe-wielding assassin in 2010, told Austrian magazine News he had no regrets about his work and said freedom of speech was too precious to relinquish.

“Should we in future let ourselves be censored by Islamic authorities in deeply undemocratic countries? Should they be allowed to tell the German chancellor in future whom she should honor and whom not? Are we really this far along?” he asked, referring to Angela Merkel’s citation of his work.

For many Muslims, any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous and caricatures or other characterizations have provoked protests across the Muslim world – most recently after the denigration of Mohammad in an amateurish film trailer concocted by anti-Islamic campaigners in the United States.

Westergaard, 77, said he still lives in constant fear of another attempt on his life. His home has become a “fortress” with a police station in the back yard and bodyguards who ferry him and his wife around in the back seat of an armored car.

“I can’t even go shopping or sit in a cafe,” the cartoonist said in the interview published on Thursday.

(Reuters) — The UN’s human rights agency on Friday condemned French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s publication of cartoons mocking Prophet Mohammed amid tensions in the Muslim world over an anti-Islam film.

“Both the film and the cartoons are malicious and deliberately provocative,” said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.

“In the case of Charlie Hebdo, given they knew full well what happened last week with the film, it seems doubly irresponsible on their part to have published these cartoons,” he told reporters in Geneva.

Colville stressed that Pillay understood why people wished to protest against the film and the cartoons for their “disgracefully distorted image of Muslims,” but insisted they should do so peacefully.

He meanwhile harshly condemned the 10-day violent backlash over the low-budget US film “Innocence of Muslims” that has spread to at least 20 countries and left more than 30 people dead.

Tensions were heightened when the French satirical weekly on Wednesday published obscene cartoons that mocked both the film and the Prophet Mohammed.

There are religions that promote turning the other cheek even when mocked, but it appears Islam is not one of them. According to one of the most prominent imams in North America, Islam never condones violence, but it also, under no uncertain terms, “everaccepts” speaking ill of the Prophet Muhammad.

In fact, so grave is mockery of the prophet considered, that the cleric – Mohammad Qatanani, who leads one of the largest mosques in New Jersey – even believes free speech that criticizes Islam poses a national security threat to the U.S. and that those responsible should be investigated by the Department of Homeland Security.

“We, as Americans, have to put limits and borders [on] freedom of speech,” Qatanani, leader of the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC), told TheBlaze. He explained that while Americans may ”have the freedom“ to speak their mind, ultimately, they “have no right to [talk about Muslim] holy issues“ as it will incite ”hatred or war among people.”

Qatanani said he thinks agitators who slander Islam, or, more specifically, the Prophet Muhammad, incite violence and hence, pose a national security risk that threatens the safety of Americans at home and abroad. Thus, America should disregard its First Amendment as it is typically applied and instead act in accordance with sharia law for the ultimate “good” of society.

Obama prevaricated, “Innocence of Muslims” guy was incarcerated
Daily Caller


Remember just the other day, when President Barack Hussein Obama said, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam”? Well, it looks like that’s one of the few promises he’s ever been willing or able to keep.

Associated Press:

The California man behind a crudely produced anti-Islamic video posted to YouTube that has inflamed parts of the Middle East was arrested for violating terms of his probation, authorities said Thursday.

[Name and age withheld to spite fascists] was convicted in 2010 for federal check fraud and sentenced to 21 months in prison. Under terms of his probation, he was not allowed to use computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer.

Nakoula was arrested after federal probation officials determined he violated the terms of his supervised release, said Thomas Mrozek U.S. Attorney’s spokesman in Los Angeles…

Protests have erupted around the Middle East over a 14-minute trailer for “Innocence of Muslims,” which depicts Muhammad as a womanizer, religious fraud and child molester. Though the trailer was posted to YouTube in July, the violence didn’t break out until Sept. 11 and has spread since, killing dozens.

Notice how they continue to pretend that this guy’s dopey YouTube video has anything to do with rioting in the Middle East and a terrorist attack on Libyan ambassador Chris Stevens on the anniversary of 9/11, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. If they just ignore that evidence, then it doesn’t exist. Oh, and did you know that throwing this man in jail has nothing to do with him exercising his right to free speech? Total coincidence.

This is happening in 2012, in the United States of America.




Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/28/obama ... z27ltB82Ok