Payne: Free speech for Quran burners (The Michigan View 04.19.11)

Posted by hpayne on April 20, 2011

Publicity hogs like Quran-burner Terry Jones feed on publicity. It’s the fuel for their bonfires. So naturally, Wayne County authorities delivered him a tanker of gasoline this week by trying to force Jones to pay for his own police protection.

The attempt to stifle free speech only emboldened the pyro-pastor. Imagine an anti-war flag burner having to pay for police escort. Or an anti-Snyder union organizer being shut down for carrying a “Snyder is Hitler” poster. .

“Nothing has changed. Nothing will change,” exulted Jones of the misnamed Dove World Outreach Center in Florida, wrapping himself in the First Amendment.

Worse, the reckless Wayne prosecutor’s action feeds the stereotype of intolerant Muslims trying to silence anti-Mohammed speech. Muslim leader Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, immediately criticized the filing, recognizing the harm that Kim Worthy’s office was doing to American Muslims’ cause.

“Their action innocently played into Jones’ objectives, which is to paint Dearborn as a pro-Sharia city that’s oppressing Christians, which is of course not true,” he said. The court filing inaccurately tries to “equate the actions of zealots in Afghanistan with Muslim-Americans in Dearborn.”

Jones says he fears the “potential” of Sharia law in America without any evidence. Indeed, American Muslims have come to Michigan precisely because they want to escape the intolerance of the Mideast.

“This is not Afghanistan,” Imam Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Center of America in Derabron told Frank Beckmann on WJR-Radio Tuesday. “We do not want Sharia law here.”

Jones has the right to burn the Quran. Farrakhan has the right to burn the bible. Cartoonists have the right to draw Mohammed. If Americans silence free speech for fear of its consequences, then there is no end to fear – and then the extremists win.

And free speech loses.

 

 

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