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@Andyb

"By not compromising on our fundamental principles and way of life such as freedom of speach and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from discrimination."
agreed , but hold that thought because you continue;

"Imams (or anybody else) who preach hatred should be dealt with"
but here we can readily get entangled with the right to free speech? i am an absolutist when it comes to free speech, so i defend the right of tasteless cartoons of Mohammed, in the same breath as defending the right of frothing Imams/Priests to say that gays will go to hell, or so and so should be wiped off the face of the earth. as long as it's words, then that's free speech, and i defend it.

"zealots who attack gays should be dealt with"
we already have laws against attacks on the person.

"honour killings should be dealt with"
we already have laws against murder.

"abuse of women should be dealt with"
we already have laws against attacks on the person.

"Threats against individuals for percieved slights against religious beliefs should be immediately condemned and acted upon(and we don't do that generally, instead, in our liberal naivety, we tend to blame the individual)."

not guilty personally. i do accept that politicians of all colours are pathetic whimps when it comes to defending free speech, and personally condemning the words of religious groups/individuals. they make me sick at times.

"Incidentally, your argument implies that we should have done nothing about the IRA because the threat of death from their actions was minute. That's a weird point of view, explain that to the victims (the live ones that is)."

well that is mighty weird. i did not imply any such a thing. i merely said the bleedin' obvious in that the IRA terrorist acts did not make us roll over and give in, so terrorism just won't work in the UK no matter who is responsible.

"Personally, when I look at the actions carried out daily by religious fanatics around the world and in particular the islamic world, I don't consider this threat small and unworthy of attention."

yet the threat to us as individuals is infinitessimally small. smaller than winning the lottery...but we're all encouraged, day in and day out, to shit our collective pants at the imagined potential for a UK Muslim to scream "Insha Allah!" whilst detonating his device next to us.

"I have spent many years working in different countries in the islamic world. So my perspective is slightly different from yours."

could be, though i have also worked in Muslim countries, but not for as long as you.

"I have seen how far certain individuals will go in the name of their interpretation of their religion."

and surely you have also witnessed the vast majority of ordinary Muslims going about their daily business, caring for their families, their communities etc without resorting to violence? because that is my personal experience.

"I will agree that threats do get hyped up by our governments for obvious reasons. But that doesn't imply that they don't exist."

so do you think that we as a nation have got the balance between reality and hype about right? i genuinely do not. and last time we allowed allowed the hype to overtake our senses, we ended up in Iraq and Afghanistan with a death toll that is truely breath taking.

my fear is that we just don't learn anything from these failures. perhaps because they're our failures?

@ Jankaas
not really I don't think.
Rules only make sense in a framework, as part of something larger e.g. a game.
Take your 'rule 'then, may i ask what is it based on? I ask because it's easy to disagree what you postulate as an axiom, axioms are self evidently true i seem to remeber, its been a while...
So the analysis of 'say what you want to say' yields nothing, which I find limiting.
You mentioned a 'concept of free speech', more interesting. It's easier to think of propositional functions and 'will of the people', generally derived from the zeitgeist. This 'delimiting'process is from whence i draw my validity for normative rules that are basis for laws (which then go on to get massively abused LOLOL!!!!)

It's a little diffferent to what you're saying, maybe over the top for here- we got onto this cos i was interested in your seeming fascination with free speach. I do understand more what u mean by it now though, so alls well that ends well...
PS so u see those islamist nut jobs get sent down yesterday? RESULT!!

jankaas

I feel we are getting away from the subject of this article a bit. Personally I feel that this article is a massive piece of deflexion. But you seem to disagree. I guess that's the nature of debate.

I agree with most of your points. But have one comment on this one:

"but here we can readily get entangled with the right to free speech? i am an absolutist when it comes to free speech, so i defend the right of tasteless cartoons of Mohammed, in the same breath as defending the right of frothing Imams/Priests to say that gays will go to hell..."

To a certain extent, you are right. I too am more of an absolutist on free speach and typically hate to see it routinely suppressed here in the UK in a number of areas. But I was obviously refering to a number of frothing preachers who are on record going beyond the pale and calling for people to be killed, for jihad etc i.e. incitement to violence. That is a different kettle of fish.

My children better read tha dead? Well, yes. But I must say that the idea of my daughters swathed from head to foot till they look like peripatetic pillaer boxes is a most disturbing one. They would have ceased to be my dughters, if you see what I mean.

Well its not all smoke and mirrors is it Mehdi?

The almost audible sigh of relief from the Norwegian government
realised the culprit wasn't an Islamist was disgraceful, as was the relish with which they tried to tie in every figure on the right they could, together with every person critical of islam to this maniac.

It was as if this one single atrocity somehow expunged all the islamist attacks, threats, hate campaigns and general intimidation that has been going on for the past god knows how many years.

Breivick is a loon and a racist and there may well be a growing threat from the far right, but at present the real threat is from islamism.

Thats the simple truth and if you think that people will simply fall into line and ignore the growing evidence around them you are very much mistaken.

@Awake

"so you're saying that free speach is the right to blurt out nonsense BECAUSE it's impossible to establish who might get to decide what is nonsense and what isn't."
no that is not what i said. it is becoming quite tedious to keep having to say that you must read my words, rather than imagine what they imply. failure to do so only means you spend ages typing up long posts where you build your response on your erroneous fantasy.

i repeat from upthread; here's the rub; ultimately who gets to decide what is acceptable and what is offensive?

just like i do not want an Islamic Fundamentalist, or The Pope telling me what i can and can't say, i do not want a Liberal Secularist telling me what i can and can't say.

and i have also stated that all acts of incitement to cause harm to others is already covered by UK Law. these laws were created exactly because of public consensus, and years of judicial review. so it's not that anything goes, it's that words are just words. we should accept and defend the right of others to cause offense, as long as no laws are broken.

do you understand now?

@Julia

"I run 3 businesses’s, am on the PTA and on several other committee’s "

lmfao

ok then, i run 4 businesses's's', am on the PTA of every school in a 50 mile radius, and am the Chairperson of a dozen or so committee's's's.

and did i mention my real name is Elvis Presley and i work in a chip shop...? as a result i declare myself the winner, and would like Sir M to know that i have plenty of "hap" to spare, and never leave the house without plenty of "hap" ;o)

p.s. well done Julia for not answering a single question put to you. ever. indeed you win that contest on every thread.

@Sir M

"I know for a fact that both myself and Jankaas utterly acknowledge and accept that we are idiots of profound completeness. That's never been a contention. The contention is your very plain and obvious bigotry."

just to say that i fully endorse the above statement.

ttfn

There is no threat at all from right-wing terrorists. There aren't any right-wing terrorists. There are Muslim terrorists and they are well to the right of Adolf. Perhaps those are the ones you mean. There are various IRAs and Patrick Pearse was certainly a fascist, so it could be them. The Scottish poet and plagiarist Hugh McDiarmid was the only man to join the communist party as a direct result of the Russian invasion of Hungary. And he was a nationalist loon. He's a long time dead, but perhaps you mean him

AndyB - If you are going to make the claim that Muslim communities in Europe seem to have adopted an isolated distain for their local population and this has a toxic effect on society you aren't going to get any argument from me. I wholeheartedly agree. But this has nothing at all to do with Islamic terrorism, this has been going on for decades now.

Let me give you a quick run-down as I have studied this at length.

9/11 was an attack by Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts for a few very specific reasons as spelled out in the 1996 Fatwa, chiefly the Palestinian situation (interestingly this fact is rarely brought up in relation to 9/11).

This had nothing at all to do with Muslims in Europe, the USA, or Southeast Asia, but in all three places the attacks were exploited and used to justify punitive actions against Muslims. The main groups were Christian fundamentalists in the USA, Islamophobics and intolerant atheists in Europe, and a bunch of multinational corporations who could see ways to make one hell of a profit out of all of this.

In the very secular USA government sponsored action against Muslims bumped up almost immediately against the first ammendment which guarantees freedom of religion in that country, thus efforts to supress Islam and isolate Muslims out of American society fell at the first hurdle.

Because we don't have any effective laws seperating religion in government they were rather more successful here. Banning burqas in France is a good example of where it's going badly wrong, with arrests being made, one community feeling more isolated and less welcome, other communities showing more distrust of them, and communications and shared interests breaking down. This will lead to the problems already caused by the isolation of Muslims getting worse... poverty will be worse, crime, lawlessness, etc. All over a nondescript garment.

Look at the effect on French society of this sort of abuse of Muslims. Estimates of the Muslim prison population in France are as high as 70% of inmates...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/04/28/ST20080428...

Compared with about 15% in the UK or 9% in the USA.

So in short, the attitude that Islamic hate needs to be stopped because it leads to terrorism itself is part of the problem. The hate leads to toxic effects on society in general and problems you are far more likely to feel (crime and poverty), but terrorism isn't a part of this equation. We desperately need a First Amendment of our own in Europe before this gets any worse.

i 'm surprised by all these quotes, have never read the Quran. So this is what the kids are reading in the Madrissas?
Does it make me right wing to be a bit concerned about this? Or more concerned about this than the clearly bonkers Brevik who guns 77 kids, whose wiring is faulty?
(preparing to be boarded from the left...)

'i repeat from upthread; here's the rub; ultimately who gets to decide what is acceptable and what is offensive? '
Jankaas this validly translates to:
'it's impossible to establish who might get to decide what is nonsense and what isn't', which is what i said.
Agreed Jankaas? I have IMPLIED NOTHING from what u said. You're statement isn't complex in the slightest (nothing wrong there), but it is just that, a statement- it draws no validity or justification from the acceptance that to belong to a society/culture/state means adherence to a set of rules/laws.
To make it even simpler- society is characterised by rules/protocols- and these are generated from a collective desire to co-exist peacefully-AND IF THAT SOCIETY DECIDES THAT IT DOSEN'T LIKE WHAT SOME ELEMENTS ARE SAYING E.G. HATE, it is at it's own discretion justified in asking the dissenter to leave. Logically one can't say 'I want to be part of your group that says i can't talk nonsense but by the way I want to talk nonsense'
Your only legitimate argument against me THEN is to ask by what authority can I make the value judgement it's wrong to talk nonsense? To this i have already answered.
Your position is built on 1 statement. You don't justify it, and it's hardly an axiom, so difficult to build on and leads into intellectual cul de sacs re the meaning of freedom.
I get bored of repeating economic stuff, but never this knowledge it leads to the most important things in life...seriuously, these arguments are 300 years old and been COMPREHENSIVELY dealt with LOL... u may become angry with me, that is a natural response when one finds out they're belief system is shifting- fixed neural pathways don't like that!!!

'and i have also stated that all acts of incitement to cause harm to others is already covered by UK Law'
So Jankaas, if it's against the law to incite hatred, that ranks above free speach for you?
Without a framework u can't reach for the stars brother

@ Jankaas

I believe the actual offence was 'engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism, contrary to section 5(1) of the Terrorism Act 2006.'

Seems they had experimented with making pipe bombs and had al queda material in their posession. And yes no doubt plea bargained. But I can't find anywhere what the exact motives were? I'd be interested to know if they were specific or just anti-west?

delighted to see you've got 'back in the saddle' Julia. tears all dried up have they? can't wait for your next list and valuable insights regarding the most evil religion in the history of mankind.

@Andyb

"I feel we are getting away from the subject of this article a bit. "

i know, but that is not too bad if we do tie it back to the article. i think we do manage this.

"I too am more of an absolutist on free speach and typically hate to see it routinely suppressed here in the UK in a number of areas."

glad to hear it. free speech is a basic requirement for a free society, and crucially, to realise what the real nutters think.

But I was obviously refering to a number of frothing preachers who are on record going beyond the pale and calling for people to be killed, for jihad etc i.e. incitement to violence. That is a different kettle of fish."

i do agree with you, and to sound like a stuck record, we do have laws against inciting others to riot/kill/rape/etc. i agree that such law is part of a functioning free society, and essential to protect citizens.

what we must accept though is that this is not a reason to restrict free speech.

so the arsehole known as john holz has the right to say he would like a British Breivik, as he did about an hour ago, no matter how offensive that idea clearly is. he is just a petty little shit who get's his rocks off that way. he needs pity more than anything else. and that's me exercising my right to free speech.

@Des

"Actually a tricky question. If number one was allegedly the word of god, jehova, allah, shiva, Darth Vader, Henry V111, or Robert Mugabe then I'd call it a draw."

fair point. however we can get past that by the fact that god, jehova, allah, shiva, and Darth Vader are not human. and clearly anyone with authority, such as Henry 8th & Mugabe, are to be obeyed hence 'incitement' is the only fitting definition.

zzzzzzzzz....

Incorrectly calling me a bigot wont change the facts and wont provide any sympathy or empathy to countless victims of Islam.

Keep your head in the sand and keep focusing your indignation at me instead not at the acts of violence.

@Awake

"What is your fascination with free speach above all else?"

in a nutshell; you can't stop others from thinking, so we may as well hear what they think. 'we' can then judge them by their words, and treat them accordingly. but i will not ever try and silence another merely because their words are deemed offensive to some.

does that make sense?

The left are just as bad. Flip side of the same rotten coin. The left/right paradigm is outdated and the cause of all the problems in the western world.

@ Jankaas

Indeed. So in reality free speech can depend on the level of potential obedience/obsequience to whoever utters the 'hate speech' shall we call it for want of a better description.

Darth Vader isn't real???

@ plaintruth
k, i actually have a job, but this stuff is a base line for the most important aspects of human life so here goes.
u wrote
'Page 580 of Maktba Dar-us-Salam's publication of Sahih Al-Bukhari : "Jihad is holy fighting in Allah’s Cause with full force of weaponry. It is given the utmost importance in Islam and is one of its Pillars. By Jihad Islam is established, Allah is made superior and He becomes the only God who may be worshiped. By Jihad Islam is propagated and made superior. By abandoning Jihad (may Allah protect us from that) Islam is destroyed and Muslims fall into an inferior position. Their honor is lost, their lands are stolen, and Muslim rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligatory duty in Islam on every Muslim. He who tries to escape this duty dies as a hypocrite."
k, that may mean something very different to u then it does to me.
A spiritual interpretaion focuses Jihad as an INTERNAL battle, an internal dialectic of premise/antipremise and then synthesis, the synthesis then becoming the next input for the next iteration in the dialiectic.
In this process belief and understanding of God and almost as importantly, FAITH in God, is strenghtened with each iteration, eventually yielding a promised land. demarcations between dark/light are thus underlined because the goal is so great- indeed it becomes the only realistic purpose in life.
That's all I read there. U have to know that Jihad though is internal. Go talk to the Sufis if u really want to know more...

@Des

"So in reality free speech can depend on the level of potential obedience/obsequience to whoever utters the 'hate speech' "

i think it easy to get into the realms of fiction and 'what ifs', the real world is already challenging enough. the space between free speech and hate speech is not insignificant, and hence i do think it essential to review existing laws when they are found to be inadequate. this is part of the challenge of our secular society.

hence i insist that no-one can resort to 'the word of god' defense, and i would argue this should be written into law regarding hate speech. the theist making the claim to 'channel' their deity's aspirations is the one responsible. same as we don't allow blame to be passed to bands like Judas Priest for alledgedly forcing dysfunctional teens to murder others.

but i also maintain that we all have the right as individuals to offend one another. so i should be free to say (not to you btw) "i think your god is a prat and so are you for believing in that bollox", as the theist i say that to should be able to tell me "my god will make sure you burn in hell for all eternity"

p.s. sorry to have crushed your notion of Lord Vader...do forgive me ;o)