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Two Ways Not To Handle Free Speech
Two stories in the news offer contrasting approaches by Web companies to
questions of free speech. First YouTube: reader skraps notes that the Google
property has recently banned the popular atheist commentator Nick
Gisburne. Gisburne had been posting videos with logical arguments
against Christian beliefs; but when he
turned his attention to Islam (mirror of Gisburne's video by another
user), YouTube pulled the plug, saying: 'After being flagged by members
of the YouTube community, and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video below
has been removed due to its inappropriate nature. Due to your repeated
attempts to upload inappropriate videos, your account now been
permanently disabled, and your videos have been taken down.' Amazon.com
provides a second example of how to react to questions of free speech.
Reader theodp sends along a story in
TheStreet.com about how Amazon hung up
on customers wanting to comment on its continuing practice of
selling animal-fighting magazines. The article notes that issues of free
speech are rarely cut-and-dried, and that Amazon is doing itself no
favors by going
up against the Humane Society.
Update: 02/11 04:25 GMT by KD : updated Nick Gisburne link to new account.
Update: 02/11 04:25 GMT by KD : updated Nick Gisburne link to new account.
You have to remember this -- there is no guarantee of free speech from any corporation. The US Constitution guarantees that "government" shall not infringe the right to a citizen's free speech. Any time you have a non-governmental agency "it doesn't apply".
Amazon can cut off anyone they wish, so can Google. Google is not obligated to do a damn thing concerning free speech. They can censor anyone they want because they are a corporation, not the government. The law/Constitution isn't going to protect someone from posting in a forum/newsgroup ran by Google. Too bad, that's what you accept when you post in Google's forum/newsgroup; a place owned by essentially a private party.
The only repercussions from something like this (private censorship) is the free market system. Boycott, attention getting, etc. But you can't force them to make them accept your free speech.
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Unless the service is gov't regulated, like telephone lines. Common carrier status and all that. The telephone companies (at least the landlines) are not allowed to censor anything that goes over their lines. OTOH, without net neutrality, the telcos could very well examine packets and try to censor packets that are part of hate speech (or really anything they want to censor, like fluffy blue bunnies) with no legal repercussions. IANAL.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
English-language translations of the Quran vary so widely that Islam doesn't accept them as translations, they are all regarded as paraphrases.
If the Koran has a meaning, it can be translated, and of the millions of English-speaking Muslims in the world there must be a few who are up to the job of translating it correctly.
The variations between the examples you give are small and in any case doctrinally relatively trivial. I'd be more interested in seeing the various translations of things like 3:118, the gist of which is: "Do not be friends with unbelievers. They all hate you." Or 2:222-224, which has some pretty harsh things to say about women, likening them to fields that a man can go into any any time he chooses.
The difficulty of translation always gets raised any time anyone mentions any of the terrible things the Koran actually says that Muslims and Muslim sympathizers would like it not to say. It gets tiresome, particularly as it always gets raised as if it were a new and interesting issue instead of an old and tired one. Muslims have been complaining about this for decades. Don't you think its about time that some Muslim leaders got together and produced an authorized edition? Bible translations vary widely too, and there are a few cases where even good translations differ on substantive matters, but the gist of the sentiment is almost always clear: God loves everyone, unbelievers will burn forever in hell, stuff like that. It isn't self-consistent, but there is no major problem with what the text actually says. Whereas no one seems to agree on even the basic sense of the most trivial passages in the Koran.
Of course, for Muslims to get together and produce an authorized translation would first require Muslims to get together, which is something they appear to have a lot of trouble doing for purposes other than burning embassies because they have been offended by some silly cartoon ~0:-{=
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Mormons believe in and worship Jesus Christ as the Savior of all mankind, as the Son of God and as the only perfect man who ever lived.
What more does it take to be called Christian? Christians are followers of Christ and Mormons follow Christ. Mormonism rejects most other groups as well. The claim that Mormonism rejects other groups is false.
From the Articles of Faith :
"We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."
Many Mormon charity and humanitarian groups work hand in hand with Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and other religious and non religious groups.
I am a Christian and a Mormon. Some of my closest friends are atheists. I work with and respect people of all faiths.
"Can you prove that, assuming that that is true, that it is indeed a facet of the respective religions, and not the persecution of Muslims (don't tell me there isn't any)?"
Islamic countries have practiced institutionalized religious intolerance against unbelievers long before any decently founded complaint of "oppression" could be launched. (I.e. British and French (semi-)occupation of the non-Saudi ME between roughly 1920-1946 after the Ottoman empire collapsed. Also, the brunt of Islamic intolerance is not directed at westerners, but at any indigenous apostates.
"because of the actions of a few"
Well, the Talibs weren't *that* few. The idiots in the White House who thought the Iraq war was a good idea were indeed initially rather few in number though.
"the Christian world is bombing the shit out of Iraq and Afghanistan"
For the last couple of years, most of the bombing has been from various indigenous groups that blast the crap out of each other for religous and / or ethnic reasons. Mass bombing is not presently seen as an effective counterinsurgency tactic. (It can work, but it causes too much bad press)