January 22, 2006
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:The unspeakable pursues the incredible
Is 'religious hate-speech' an oxymoron, or a tautology? If the argument described below is actually a legal defense, it certainly highlights the recursive logic of hate speech laws:
COPIES of the Koran were handed to the jurors in the Abu Hamza trial yesterday as his defence argued that some of the cleric's "offensive" statements were drawn directly from Islam's holy book....Edward Fitzgerald, QC, for the defence, said that Abu Hamza's interpretation of the Koran was that it imposed an obligation on Muslims to do jihad and fight in the defence of their religion. He said that the Crown case against the former imam of Finsbury Park Mosque was "simplistic in the extreme".
..He added: "It is said he was preaching murder, but he was actually preaching from the Koran itself."
Mr Fitzgerald cited two verses of the book that Abu Hamza would rely on, among many others, as theological justification for the words that had led to him being charged. They were Chapter 2, verse 216 and Chapter 9, verse 111. He said that all the great monotheistic religions had scriptures that contained "the language of blood and retribution"
via LGF who calls it the 'absurd dead end of multiculturalism'.
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at January 22, 2006 11:00 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksThe popping sound you hear is the heads of CAIR members exploding. If the defense wins, Ann Coulter was correct.
This case is in the UK, so the court doesn't have to take into account that pesky First Amendment. But what are we going to do over here when (not if) we have duly accredited clerics of major religions advocating killing members of other religions in accordance with their holy scripture? (And they probably want to kill atheists like me twice!)
The Koran is clear that "people of the book", i.e. Christians and Jews (later amended to include Zoroastrians and, eventually, Hindus) are allowed to live so long as they pay tribute ("jizya") and live a miserable life rather like black people under Jim Crow, as "dhimmis"...or they can "revert" to Islam. See the extensive work of Bat Y'eor for the details.
Athiests, like polytheists, get a much simpler choice: "revert" to Islam or die.
Down in Australia a Pakistani convert to Christianity was convicted of "hate speech" for essentially saying some of the above. When he tried to read from the Koran in court to prove his point, this was objected to by Moslems as more "hate speech"...
Finally, bear in mind that all the English-language translations of the Koran are likely to be incomplete, to have some parts redacted. Given the amount of naked hatred, blood and so forth in the Koran I'm reading, I have to wonder what is in the archaic Arabic version that infidels aren't supposed to see?
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