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Friday, September 14, 2012

Special Report: Anthea Butler advocates censorship and jail for those who denigrate Islam

If this was Stalinist Russia her statement would not surprise me.  The fact that she is an American living in America and is advocating for punishment of free speech is especially troubling, and that she is a tenured professor makes it even more heinous.  We are doomed if this is how our future is to be defined.

From USA Today September 13 by Anthea Butler

Opposing view: Why 'Sam Bacile' deserves arrest
Words have consequences. I know that because one of my tweets asking "when Sam Bacile would be arrested" drew wide attention on Wednesday.

My initial tweet about Bacile, the person said to be responsible for the film mocking the prophet Mohammed, was not because I am against the First Amendment. My tweets reflected my exasperation that as a religion professor, it is difficult to teach the facts when movies such as Bacile's Innocence of Muslims are taken as both truth and propaganda, and used against innocent Americans.

If there is anyone who values free speech, it is a tenured professor!

So why did I tweet that Bacile should be in jail? The "free speech" in Bacile's film is not about expressing a personal opinion about Islam. It denigrates the religion by depicting the faith's founder in several ludicrous and historically inaccurate scenes to incite and inflame viewers. Even the film's actors say they were duped.

Bacile's movie is not the first to denigrate a religious figure, nor will it be the last. The Last Temptation of Christ was protested vigorously. The difference is that Bacile indirectly and inadvertently inflamed people half a world away, resulting in the deaths of U.S. Embassypersonnel.

Read it all

1 comment:

Jay Knott said...

Thanks for posting this. Even though I called you an "Islamophobic idiot", I realize there are people even more idiotic - like this mad professor who thinks the 1st amendment should be withdrawn from Islamophobes.