I'll drop this here.
What Adnan Rashid got wrong ( which is just about everything)I was scrolling though my youtube links when I saw that iERA uploaded this video featuring Adnan Rashid talking to Press TV about the video "Innocence of Muslims" and the reaction these last couple of days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUp07IiDrcMStarting off the title is pretty bad. It's pretty obviously trying to implicate Tom Holland with the makers of "Innocence of Muslims", which is pretty obviously a stretch. Tom Holland did ask Muslim scholars if his documentary was offensive to Muslims, the makers of this movie obviously didn't.
Anyways this has been nitpicking. He brings up the "Clash of Civilizations" theory but it's kind of jumbled and doesn't have a clear point so I don't care too much, though I do chuckle when someone who believes the world is divided into two camps and one camp will inevitably take the other over, gets incensed at someone else proposing that the world could be divided into different camps trying to take each other over as well.
So he brings up that the film has nothing to do with freedom of speech and he says,
" In fact freedom of speech, the Founding Fathers, people like John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine, how did they propose the idea of freedom of speech? They stated .... the purpose to spread justice, progress, and individual freedom, and this cannot be done outside the moral norms of a society. Now this movie breaks all norms, all moral conventions by any standard. You go to any society, people would never insult someone who is held dear. Prophet Muhammud ( HEY! YOU FORGOT PEACE BE UPON HIM) has a special place for billions of Muslims. In fact, Muslims have to believe that you have to love the prophet more than your own family"
First, I'm assuming he means Founding Fathers of Liberalism? Maybe? Because John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine were not the Founding Fathers of the USA, though Paine should have been.
Secondly, wait a second. Thomas Paine would never support freedom of speech that impugned on the beliefs and moral norms of society? Thomas Paine? The guy who wrote
The Age of Reason? The diatribe against the religious attitudes of the day and who earned his notoriety and derision in the Colonies? Whose language is the pamphlet was described as so "irreverent" and "vulgar" that lead him to be called " a dirty little atheist" by a US President 100 years later?
To quote an actual historian, "the age of reason could perhaps more eloquently and adequately be called the age of ridicule, for it was ridicule, not reason, that endangered the Church." and to quote a reply to Pain's pamphlet by Watson "I am unwilling to attribute bad designs, deliberate wickedness, to you or to any man; I cannot avoid believing, that you think you have truth on your side, and that you are doing service to mankind in endeavouring to root out what you esteem superstition. What I blame you for is this—
that you have attempted to lessen the authority of the Bible by ridicule, more than by reason.Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill both thought that though freedom of speech justice, progress, and individual liberty would be achieved. What Adnan is actually promoting is censorship though quality. "What purpose does it serve?" That's only a question he can answer for himself, he can't answer it for others. More importantly he completely misunderstands, as does HuT, the difference between freedom of expression and evaulating content. Freedom of expressions is enshrined in the US Constitution that the government is value neutral in regards to speech. It must uphold Martin Luther King's right to express himself just as much as the KKK. In fact, in the 1920's the ACLU petitioned and won the right for the Brownshirt fascists, the KKK, and black civil rights groups to march all in Atlanta at the same time. The American government cannot interfere with the video in any way, so sending a petition to the US government about anything related to the video is petitioning the US Government to change water from H20 to H30. It's not possible.
That's doesn't mean Americans don't condemn the video and evaluate it to be the piece of trash that it is. So protesting the video is fine and even welcomed, but petitioning that Muslims can't stand for it or that Muslim's feelings ( he actually says Muslim's feelings!) have to be protected isn't the prerogative of the government. So Muslims are in the same boat that everyone else is. And I think Adnan subtly agrees with that, he welcomes discussion or so he says so he shouldn't have a problem with people voicing their opinions, even one's he doesn't agree with.
Topic: US official killed in US Embassy Libya due New Anti Islamic Movie