ISLAM IS HATE CRIMES

                         FREE SPEECH VERSUS ISLAM HATE SPEECH/HATE CRIMES

U.S. Justice Department’s Initiative to Criminalize Anti-Islam Hate Speech and the Challenge of Criminalizing Islam Itself

Free Speech versus Criminal Hate Speech

The U.S. Department of Justice is waging a very serious challenge to Americans’ constitutional right to Free Speech by trying to criminalize the criticism of Islam utilizing the Civil Rights laws.

Bill Killian, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, was quoted by the Tullahoma News suggesting that some inflammatory material on Islam might run afoul of federal civil rights laws.

"We need to educate people about Muslims and their civil rights, and as long as we’re here, they’re going to be protected," Killian told the newspaper.

The Department of Justice did not respond Friday to a question about what guidelines it draws concerning offensive speech and Islam, or whether the department believes that civil rights statutes could be used to stifle criticism of Islam.

Freedom of speech, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, guarantees one the right to express one’s views, ideas and thoughts without interruption with some restrictions on hate speech. In the American legal system, “Hate speech is defined as a communication that carries no meaning other than the expression of hatred for some group, especially in circumstances in which the communication is likely to provoke violence. It is an incitement to hatred primarily against a group of persons defined in terms of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and the like. Hate speech can be any form of expression regarded as offensive to racial, ethnic and religious groups and other discrete minorities or to women.”

Hate speech, undesirable and even abhorrent, as it is, is not necessarily a criminal act. When hate speech calls for violence, murder, terrorism, enslaving or torture of any individual or groups, it is criminal. So long a hate speech does not incite violence against anybody, it is permitted. It gives you the right even to demean, make fun of, and even speak racial slurs against any person or group as long as it does not provoke violence.

ISLAM IS CRIMINAL HATE SPEECH

If the U.S. Department of Justice really wants to criminalize hate speech, what should be first on queue on its urgent checklist is Islam than anything else, because Islam is Hate Speech par Excellence. Islam is a cesspool of unbounded hateful teachings contained in the Quran and Sunna of Prophet Muhammad. Those hateful teachings are hate speech incite utmost hatred and violence against non-Muslims as well as wayward Muslims, including murder, torture, terrorism, genocide as well as pillaging, plundering, rape and enslavement of innocent “kaffirs”, Muslim apostates, gays and kafir women and children. Even the Muslim daily prayers are a good example of hate speech. In each prayer, Muslims have to recite the following verse from the Quran that calls non-Muslims to have gone astray and incurred God’s wrath: “Guide us to the straight path, the path of those whom You have favored, Not of those who have incurred your wrath, nor of those who have gone astray” (Surah 1:6-7). In the worse Friday congregational prayer,  Muslims also have to recite Surah 62 (The Friday Congregation) and Surah 63 (The Hypocrites) that condemns polytheists being “in gross error“, and Jews compared to “a donkey laden with books”, Surah 63 condemns wayward Muslims as “hypocrites”, calling them enemies: “They are the enemy. Guard yourself against them.” Such hateful utterances, when taught as part of divine teachings of God including daily prayers, they can be explosive in engendering oppression and repression and even violence. Therefore, the daily Islamic prayers are the very essence of hate crime.

Anti-Jewish Hatred of Islam: Here are a few verses of the Quran inciting hatred and violence against the Jews:

And you know well the story of those among you who broke Sabbath. We said to them: ‘Be apes—despised and hated by all.’Thus We made their end a warning to the people of their time and succeeding generation, and an admonition for God—fearing people. (Sura 2:65-66)

“God has cursed the Jews, transforming them into apes and swine and those who serve the devil.” (Sura 5:60)

So when they exceeded the limits of what they were prohibited, We said to them: “Be you monkeys, despised and rejected.” (Sura 7:166)

Anti-Christian Hatred of Islam: Islamic God also incite hatred, even violence, against Christians in His verses in the Quran, demanding their subjugation or murder. For example:

“Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book (i.e. Jews and Christians), until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.” (Sura 9:29)

Anti-Polytheist Hatred of Islam: Islam’s worst incitement of hatred—indeed violence and genocide—are reserved against the Polytheists or Idolaters, such as the Hindus and Buddhists. For example,

“Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due [i.e. become Muslim], then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.” (Sura 9:5)

Anti-Gay Hatred of Islam: One may not like Gays but he/she has no right to unleash against them because of their being homosexual. But Islam calls for murder of homosexuals. For example:

‘If you find anyone doing as Lot’s people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done’. (Abu Dawud 444)

"If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, Leave them alone." (Qur'an 4:16)

“If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, Take the evidence of four (Reliable) witnesses from amongst you against them; and if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, or Allah ordain for them some (other) way.” (Quran 4:15)

While the Prophet of Islam ordered for outright execution of homosexuals, the Quran too commands for the murder with the provision of male homosexuals only (4:16) to escape it with repent.

Hitler, using his hate manual, namely Mein Kampf, was able to inspire his countrymen to take on the mission of exterminating the Jewish people, which led to murder of 6 million Jews during the Second World War. But the Mein Kampf no where says anything as hateful and violence-inciting as verse 9:5, calling for extermination of the Polytheists. When those utterances come as divine teachings of God, the potency of such teachings in inciting violence and mass-murder is hardly difficult to conceive.

In summary, sacred Islamic scriptures are filled with exhortations, calling for attacking, enslaving, murdering and even genocide of non-Muslims in an open-ended manner until all peoples of the world become Muslim. Nothing can be greater hate and incitement to violence than such ‘divine’ teachings. Today, nothing in this world deserve condemnation as hate crimes as does Islam—the creed of hate speech par excellence. If the U.S. Department of Justice is really serious about criminalizing hate speech, the first and the biggest task it has in its hand is to criminalize Islam, particularly its sacred scriptures, the Quran and Ahadith.