Sheikh Mahandi
Posts: 47 Joined: May 2005
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Oriana Fallaci should of course be allowed to speak her mind, the fact that she resorts to stereotyping, and seems to be on her way to creating a modern "protocols" casting Muslims as the adversary in place of Jews is neither here nor there. Reasoned responses to her emotive articles would be far better in this case, after all although she may equate all Muslims as Arabs, and all Arabs as suicide bombers, she does not call for the murder of individual mullahs, political figures or suggest the genocide of Muslims in general, the main criteria I would use for "hate-speech".
As an example - Oriana mistakenly generalises Islamic response to 9/11 as "millions and millions marching in support of Osama Bin Laden", I agree that a number of distateful demonstrations glorying in this monstrous crime did take place, however it should also be noted that (a) a candle lit vigil for the dead was held in Tehran (b) Crowds gathered to lay flowers at the U.S embassy in Jakarta © Similar expressions of shock and sympathy occurred in places such as Tashkent, Baku, Ankara, Sarajeveo, and Tirana. Thus the reasoned response to Oriana is to specify these examples of common humanity again and again when faced with her emotive generalisations.
To conclude - Oriana's writing (at least those I have seen) contain misconceptions and generalisations bordering on the racist, they do not contain terroristic threats against individuals or groups, therefore as a rational human being I concede that distasteful as they may be they are indeed protected speech, as a direct comparison however Pat Robertsons call for the assassination of President Chavez is a terroristic threat, and he is more deserving of prosecution than she is.
-------------- "Love is in the air, everywhere I look around,.....Love is in the air, every sight and every sound,......"
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