Well, duh.
If someone sets out to write a book, make a speech, perform a song, or make a movie criticizing George Bush - is it really any surprise that the resulting expressive work is just a wee bit anti-Bush? Or similarly, if the object of criticism is Republicans, Democrats, or Catholics - that those resulting expressive works might, again, be a wee bit critical of their proposed subject? Ya think?
Islam does not merit (nor, for that matter, does anyone else) some kind of special "social justice exemption" to freedom of expression that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon seems to believe should be carved out, perhaps on the basis that Islamic sociopaths throw particularly devastating hissy fits when offended.
Apparently, such devastating hissy fits that LiveLeaks (the hosting ISP known for bearing up under unusual pressure) felt it prudent to pull Fitna from the web due to threats to the lives and property of employees and their families by Islamic sociopaths striving to demonstrate why the West should seriously consider an updated version of the Crusades.
Thankfully, today, once information that is the slightest hair controversial is out on the net with the tiniest bit of publicity - it finds itself mirrored in the wind and impossible to call back, as Fitna is here, here, here, and here. And, of course, below. (Thanks for the links to DiamondMair! ed. 3/29/08) WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC IMAGES, EVEN BY MY LOOSE STANDARDS.
Enough. While there may or may not be a large contingent of peaceful, rational, and generally worthwhile folks of the Islamic persuasion - we need leaders that clearly declare that Sharia law is abhorrent to any ethical person, that the hidjab is nothing more nor less than a visible sign of the frequently involuntary oppression of women, that honor killings are and will be treated as murder with malice aforethought and the killers like the two-legged rabid mongrels that they are, and finally that the Bill of Rights in the United States (and similar declarations of natural human rights in other nations, most specifically the rights of privacy, freedom of expression, and equality before the law) are non-negotiable.
It must be painfully clear that if one emigrates to a country, one plays by that countries rules, with no special exemptions for culturally ingrained sociopathic stupidity, aggression, and bigotry.
At the same time, counterintuitive as it may seem, we must modify our immigration policies. We must open our borders to women, girls, and demonstrably gay men fleeing Islamic nations under refugee status, and male children under the age of 8. It is observably much more challenging for someone, no matter how fanatic, to reproduce without a reasonable supply of women-folk about and is not made any easier when mothers know they and their kids have an easy way out.
Finally, sucketh as it might, we must continue to defend the rights of those we despise as we would our own for the old obvious reason that our own rights are only as safe as the rights as those we despise the most. Enlightened cynicism, if you will.
That means that barring a whole bunch of pardons, not only is torture by "our guys" or their agents (no, you can't dodge by handing the dirty work over to a third party and claiming ignorance while giggle madly over gathered intelligence) a bad thing, it is a chargeably bad thing that should see a whole bunch of folks up and down the appropriate chains of command (including elected type folks) going to jail for a very long time indeed.
That means that the Patriot Act and its ill-sired brethren must be abolished at the earliest opportunity, illicit monitoring of communications without judicially approved warrants promptly ended, and that executives of telecommunications companies that volunteered access to private communications without being given a warrant should join those government officials charged with torture related defenses before a wide variety of very busy Federal judges.
To grant the offenders a "wash" is to condone their behavior, and ensure that not only further similar behaviour takes place, but that it expands in intrusiveness until it reaches the limits of tolerance for most everyone - at which point it may already be too late to reign in short of truly unfortunate measures.
We live in interesting times - let us strive to be worthy of them.
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