I am scheduled, despite protests and roadblocks, to speak at the Florida State University School of Law on Tuesday, March 30 at 12:30PM. And on Monday, there is this — from Facebook. Here is the whole announcement first; then I will intersperse some comments:
The 1st Amendment & Professional Responsibility in a Republic!
Type: Education – Lecture
Date: Monday, March 29, 2010
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Location: Bk Roberts Rm 101
Description
MLSA, BLSA, OUTLaw, ACLU, AIRR, JLSA, ACS, and ILSA would like to invite you on Monday, March 29 @12:30 in Rm 101 for a presentation by Professor Nat Stern and Professor Rob Atkinson on the topic of “What we need to remember about: The 1st amendment and Professional responsibility in a Republic!”***Gourmet food and dessert will be provided.***
Thank you for your support in such an important cause. After speaking to Dean Weidner yesterday, it looks as though the school is going to be developing a policy for regulating what goes up on our campus.
Best thing to do, COME TO OUR EVENT, learn, and ask questions!! It should be great and we’re gonna try to get middle-eastern food for our great event 🙂
**Cultural sensitivity as professionals is a main point that will be addressed. Dean Weidner and many other faculty have accepted our invitation and will be in attendance of our event!**
And now with commentary:
MLSA, BLSA, OUTLaw, ACLU, AIRR, JLSA, and ACS would like to invite you on Monday, March 29 @12:30 in Rm 101 for a presentation by Professor Nat Stern and Professor Rob Atkinson on the topic of “What we need to remember about: The 1st amendment and Professional responsibility in a Republic!”
The drift is clear: this will be about how one has a “professional responsibility,” despite the First Amendment, not to insult others, specifically Muslims regarding images and mockery of Muhammad. One has a “professional responsibility” to practice self-censorship. Who gets to determine what constitutes an insult, and on what grounds, and the implications of the power that individual or group will consequently have to control the political and societal discourse, will almost certainly not be considered.
***Gourmet food and dessert will be provided.***
Thank you for your support in such an important cause. I spoke to Dean Weidner yesterday, and he assured me that after this very shocking, hateful, and disrespectful spur of events, the school is going to be developing a policy for regulating what goes up, so at least we’re growing out of it!
Dean Weidner assured me that he would enact restrictions on the freedom of speech so that protected classes are not challenged in any way! So at least we’re growing out of it! Free inquiry and free thought, that is.
However, the Federalist Society continues to maintain an irritating attachment to the idea that free dissent and free discussion ought to be allowed, and even unpopular views ought to be aired and discussed rather than forcibly suppressed:
Unfortunately though, they are not able to get the Federalist society to take down these fliers. Even though this matter is still extremely offensive in many ways i.e. racist and prejudice [sic], portraying images of Prophet Mohammad for Muslims is beyond taboo but forbidden, so as you can imagine not just is he drawn in the image but portrayed as a terrorist.
Racist? What race is Islam again?
Prejudice? In what regard? Jihadists do invoke Muhammad to justify terrorism. And that is what this cartoon is, quite gently, lampooning. The point is not to insult someone’s religious figure gratuitously, but to illustrate the nature of living in a society in which people of good conscience and good will differ on essentials: we all have to put up with certain annoyances. To place any religious figure, or anyone else, beyond criticism, is to establish a protected class that is beyond accountability — and that’s the road to tyranny.
Here are a few old examples from the archives:
“¢ On November 21, 2003, Muslims poured out of the Maiduguri Road Central Mosque after Friday prayers in the Nigerian city of Kaduna, demanding the implementation of Sharia law and distributing flyers stating: “The only solution is Jihad, the type of jihad put into practise by Prophet Muhammed and exemplified by Shehu Usman Dan Fodio and the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. We Muslims should unite and embrace this concept of Jihad that will undoubtedly empower us to destroy oppression and oppressors, and in its place establish Islam.”
“¢ In December 2003, an Iraqi jihad warrior explained why he was fighting against the American troops there: “The religious principle is that we cannot accept to live with infidels. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be on him, said, ‘Hit the infidels wherever you find them.'” The man was, of course, quoting not a saying of Muhammad but Qur’an 9:5, the “Verse of the Sword” – but it is easy to see why he would confuse the two.
“¢ Fawwaz bin Muhammad Al-Nashami, the commander of the jihad group that killed twenty-two people in a jihad attack in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, on May 29, 2004, said that he acted in accord with Muhammad’s wishes for Arabia: “We are Mujahideen, and we want the Americans. We have not come to aim a weapon at the Muslims, but to purge the Arabian Peninsula, according to the will of our Prophet Muhammad, of the infidels and the polytheists who are killing our brothers in Afghanistan and Iraq….We began to comb the site looking for infidels. We found Filipino Christians. We cut their throats and dedicated them to our brothers the Mujahideen in the Philippines. [Likewise], we found Hindu engineers and we cut their throats too, Allah be praised. That same day, we purged Muhammad’s land of many Christians and polytheists.”
“¢ In the run-up to the 2004 American presidential election, a Muslim preacher invoked Muhammad to denounce democracy: “Our Prophet did not run for office in any election…He did not win any political debate. [Instead] he won the war against the infidel.”
“¢ A jihadist explaining that the Israeli/Palestinian struggle was more than just a nationalist conflict over land declared: “But all of these people don’t realize that our struggle with the Jews goes way back, ever since the first Islamic state was established in Madeenah with Muhammad (SAWS) the Messenger sent to all of mankind, as its leader. Allaah has related to us in the Qur’ân, the reality of the Jews’ malice and hatred for the ummah of Islaam and Tawheed, as he says: ‘You will surely find that the people with the most enmity towards the believers are the Jews and the polytheists.’ (Surah Al-Maa’idah: 82) [Qur’an 5:82].
“¢ In October 2004, Sheikh Aamer Bin Abdallah Al-Aamer wrote this in the Al-Qaeda online journal Sawt al-Jihad: “Perform the Jihad against your enemies with your [own two] hands, sacrifice your souls and your property in fighting your enemy, as an imitation of [the acts of] your Prophet [Muhammad] in the month of Ramadan [and in order to] enrage your enemies.”
“¢ London Muslim leader Hani Al-Sibaai in February 2005 justified the slaughters being perpetrated by Al-Zarqawi’s mujahedin in Iraq: “Do these people base themselves on Islamic law or not? They claim that they do, and to support it, they say that slaughtering appeared in a hadith by the Prophet, which was pronounces authentic by Sheik Ahmad Shaker. The Prophet told the Quraysh tribe: ‘I have brought slaughter upon you,’ making this gesture. But these are religious issues that may be disputed….[T]he Prophet drove nails into and gouged out the eyes of people from the ‘Urayna Tribe. They were merely a group of thieves who stole from sheep herders, and the Prophet drove nails into them and threw them into the Al-Hrara area, and left them there to die. He blinded them and cut off their opposite legs and arms. This is what the Prophet did on a trifling matter – let alone in war.”
Dean Weidner and Prof Atkinson have been receiving hatemail all day yesterday.
I doubt it, but it is possible. I asked people to “be polite, courteous, respectful, and on-point.” A good many people have forwarded me the messages they sent, and the ones I saw all were in this general vein: “I understand that there is considerable protest against the appearance of Robert Spencer scheduled for Tuesday. Robert Spencer is perhaps the leading scholar on the ideology of Islam in America today; and everyone would benefit from hearing what he has to say. Even if some people do not like what he has to say, those people should not be allowed to prevent others from hearing him. The opponents of free discussion must not be allowed to intimidate others or infringe upon the rights of the rest of us. Peaceful protest is one thing, but interference should not be permitted. Please ensure that Mr. Spencer has the opportunity to address his audience without interference.”
That doesn’t seem like hate mail to me. What do you think?
So we have all realized that there is no reasoning with them.
On the contrary. I’m ready to reason with Weidner, Stern, Atkinson and anyone else. Somehow I doubt, however, that they will be willing to discuss these issues with me.
We do not want to give them the attention they want so we’ve decided to just ask everyone in our organization (unless they want to go that’s up to them) but it would make a stronger statement if we boycott their event all together!
Sure. Witness here again the brittleness of the thought of the Leftists and Islamic supremacists. They can’t answer the truth or stand up to it. They can’t debate on the facts. And they know it. So instead, they claim victim status and call for a boycott.
Best thing to do, COME TO OUR EVENT, learn, and ask questions!! It should be great and we’re gonna try to get middle-eastern food for our great event 🙂
Sounds great!
*Cultural sensitivity as professionals is a main point that will be addressed. Dean Weidner and many other faculty have accepted our invitation and will be in attendance of our event!**
Of course they will. They wouldn’t dare not be there.