The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Maher and UC Berkeley...

Maher and UC Berkeley...

Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Saturday, November 1 2014, 20:00:28 (UTC)
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...in response to moves by some UC students to revoke an invitation for Maher to speak at a graduation comencement Maher has great fun with the irony of the scene of the Free Speech Movement of fifty years ago now wanting to curtail his exercise of free speech...but he misses the point. Even fifty years ago, even in the height of that movement for free speech Maher would have been stopped or at least condemned for giving a speech slandering Judaism.

...it' been pointed out often enough that the right to free speech is not the right to ABSOLIUTE free speech...in other words you can't say anything to anyone, anywhere, and hide behind your constitutional right to free speech....you have the right not to be stymied by government institutions...but no one has an absolute right to slam Judaism, for instance....because these are hate-filled and ignorant words which the world has seen can lead to horrific acts...as they are right now in the MidEast.

...Maher can't get it into his head that his hate-filled ignorance of Islam is as false and offensive and even dangerous as the same being directed at Jews, as it once was, by "good" people, even "funny" people in Germany just a few decades ago....THAT is the issue, not some abstract whine about how it's funny that Maher can't speak "freely", especially at the home of that movement.

There's no mystery and no injustice here, except to say that it is fine to make these kinds of comments against THIS religion, "because we all KNOW them to be true"...it is NOT true, no more than the equally fervent views held against Jews and Judaism....that's the reason some students don't think Maher should get such a distinguished platform for his hate and ignorance.

Yes, Islam is ridiculous...but no, Islam is NOT the reason people are fighting against occupations and the murder of their children...it is these ACTS, by the Christian West which have brought about resistance...Maher and Hitchens and others seek to avoid that discussion to focus instead on religious condemnation.....even Maher should know that any people, regardless of religion, would fight back against oppression....to seek to explain away their righteous wrath as the mere dictates and orders of their religion is itself a hateful thing to do because it robs them of the justice of their feelings and makes it merely a question of blind and slavish obedience to a "stupid" religion. As if all would be well in the Mideast, and the world, if only there had never been a Muhammad.

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