Bigot vs free speech. No contest
Andrew Bolt:
The discrimination police are so short of business that they’ll take up the complaint of the very hate-merchants they’re meant to police. Janet Albrechtsen:
In January last year, 4BC Queensland radio broadcaster Michael Smith said he thought it dangerous to allow the burka in certain public places because it had been used as a disguise by criminals. He also said he thought the burka impedes vision in a car. Days later, a listener, Omar Hassan, wrote to 4BC and complained to the Australian Communications and Media Authority that Smith had breached the code by vilifying, inciting hatred and discriminating against Muslims.
Last year, ACMA tossed out the complaint. No matter. Hassan also lodged a complaint with Queensland’s Anti-Discrimination Commission. And the ADC accepted the complaint.
Never mind that countries such as France and Denmark are having robust debates about banning the burka for all sorts of reasons… (T)he purveyors of acceptable thoughts at the ADC now require Smith to attend a three-hour “mediation” session with Hassan.
Continued below the fold>>>
Australia:
Man Monis, aka Sheik Haron, in court again for harassing Australian war widows
His bail conditions were tightened to outlaw his plan to send letters to the families of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan. M & C
Mayor who wanted to build a “Christian community” caves in to CAIR
“We are a growing Christian community and don’t let anybody shy away from that. I need Lancaster residents standing up and saying we are a Christian community and we’re proud of it,” he said in his speech.
The Council on Islamic American Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, indicated that it plans to file a complaint with the Department of Justice, but the complaint has not been filed yet. The mayor is running for election this year. Mayor Parris apologizes for religious remark
Bombay High Court says Islam can be criticized, but not “maliciously”
The problem with this ought to be obvious: who decides what constitutes “malicious” criticism? Islamic spokesmen in non-Muslim countries routinely characterize any and every criticism of Islam, including any accurate depiction of the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism, as malicious. It is a central element of their playbook: characterize anyone who dares to speak the truth about these matters as driven by hate, as a profiteer, a liar, etc. etc. etc. They know that if they take that stance consistently — and they are nothing if not consistent in this — then they will be able to bamboozle many of the naive and unwary and turn them away from the truth and the truth-tellers. JW has more
Caving in on free speech: the Michael Smith case:
Call it a hunch, but I’m guessing mediation won’t satisfy Hassan. In his 15-page letter to 4BC, he described Australia as a “racist country . . . No. 1 on the world list for the violation of human rights”. He said Fairfax radio is a “human zoo owned by . . . pigs and monkeys”. He said of Smith – a former policeman – that “being a cop would write you off as a decent human being for life as you can never recover from that disease of being a cop, as once a cop, the dirt and filth stick to you forever and could never be removed”.
And he had plenty to say about women in short skirts. He expressed his disgust at being “forced to look at the backside of a woman who bends over in front of me in supermarket to pick an item off a bottom shelf”. It is a health hazard, he says. “Non-Muslim women do not use water to clean themselves when they go to the toilet.” Thus, bending over in a supermarket could cause serious health risks, Hassan wrote, especially for little children who “because of their height, may have such [a] scene right in their face”.
Instead of dismissing this barrage of invective from Hassan, the ADC has decided that Smith has a case to answer.
We’re mad, of course. We’re actually funding an Anti-Discrimination Commission that cannot recognise the real bigot even when it shoves its manifesto in its face.Result: free speech becomes that much less free,
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Bombay High Court says Islam can be criticized, but not “maliciously
It can be criticized nicely. Got that.
That’s what I have been doing. Offering constructive criticism!
If you don’t like it GO HOME!
Things are hotting up in Australia, now, on the e-news networks because we have a Victorian State Election on 27th November 2010 and a Federal Election due between May and October 2010. Already fair comments are being jumped on by the ‘intelligentsia’.
I am having fun!
Who exactly is forcing Hassan to look at the backside of women?
I guess it’s the result of being brought up in an Islamic culture, that you become obsessed with women in an unhealthy way and regard them as impure and filthy.
What a contrast from our egalitarian culture, where men and women mix freely and don’t has these hang-ups.
Maybe Hassan would be more comfortable in another country, where women are shrouded and the only backsides men can look at are the ones of goats and camels.