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Network Solutions Suspends Site of Anti-Islam Film
Posted by
kdawson
on Sunday March 23, @05:11PM
from the pre-emptive-suppression dept.
from the pre-emptive-suppression dept.
h4rm0ny notes the furor over an anti-Islamic movie due to be released on the Web in the next week. After Pakistan disrupted YouTube worldwide over an interview with right-wing Dutch MP and filmmaker Geert Wilders, Network Solutions, acting as host as well as registrar, has suspended Wilders's site promoting the 15-minute film "Fitna" (a Koranic term translated as "strife"). The site now displays a notice that it is under investigation for possible violations of NetSol's acceptable use policy. According to the article the company's guidelines include "a sweeping prohibition against 'objectionable material of any kind or nature.'" The article describes the site's content before NetSol pulled the plug as a single page with the film's title, an image of the Koran, and the words "Coming Soon." No one but Wilders has seen the film to date. The Dutch government has distanced itself from the film, fearing Muslim backlash. A million Muslims live in The Netherlands. Wilders's party, which controls 9 of 150 seats in the Dutch parliament, was elected on an anti-immigration platform.
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Pakistan YouTube Block Breaks the World 343 comments
Allen54 noted a followup to yesterday's story about Pakistan's decision to block YouTube. He notes that "The telecom company that carries most of Pakistan's traffic, PCCW, has found it necessary to shut Pakistan off from the Internet while they filter out the malicious routes that a Pakistani ISP, PieNet, announced earlier today. Evidently PieNet took this step to enforce a decree from the Pakistani government that ISP's must block access to YouTube because it was a source of blasphemous content. YouTube has announced more granular routes so that at least in the US they supercede the routes announced by PieNet. The rest of the world is still struggling."
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I declare a fatwah! (Score:5, Funny)
No? Me either, but hey, it'd be fun to try.
I'm offended (Score:5, Interesting)
How many complaints does it take to shut down a site? Let's pick one at random, and get it shut down. Then pick another...
Re:I declare a fatwah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I declare a fatwah! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I declare a fatwah! (Score:5, Insightful)
no one is forcing these muslims to watch it, yet they think their being offended gives them the right to tell me what i can and cannot make up my own mind about.
Re:I declare a fatwah! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
I don't see anything about, "unless it's speech we really, really don't like," in there at all, do you?
Re:I declare a fatwah! (Score:5, Informative)
Because that directly hurts kids.
"I love violence. I love free speech. Pretty much everything that's 'dangerous to the mental health of out youth' kicks ass. But if the film, say, encourages people to go out and punch a muslim, then yes, it should be banned."
Well, no one has seen the film yet...which means no one knows if it says to 'punch a muslim'....however, I kinda doubt it does. I believe it probably shows islam in a less than admirable light...and just because those muslims get all up in arms (literally) when someone speaks ill of them or prints a cartoon of muhammad or whatever, the ISP pulled the plug.
This is hardly the same thing as banning kiddie porn. This is more being scared of religious idiot zealots acting out.
And no, I do not believe there is freedom from being offended. That takes a heck of a lot of fun out of the freedom of speech. I think even if they film did advocate punching a muslim...it would not merit pulling the plug on their website. No one is harmed by speaking about ideas.
Re:I declare a fatwah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite the fact that I think this guy is an islamofobic, racist and generally unpleasant guy, I still have to disagree with you here: before having seen the film, you can't assume it contains legally or otherwise unacceptable material. It will probably do so, but we'll have to wait and see whether this is indeed the case. Until the movie has been published, the benefit of the doubt should be given to Geert Wilders, regardless of his lousy reputation.
Re:I declare a fatwah! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're willing to give the Koran the benefit of the doubt, why wouldn't you extend the film the same courtesy?
Re:I declare a fatwah! (Score:5, Informative)
The verse of the sword [wikipedia.org]
Moderate muslims are simply deluded by the lies of their shieks. The language in the Koran is archaic and your average muslim rehearses it over and over without really understanding what's going on. If they ever wonder about the meaning of some particular verse, they usually turn to their shiek for explanation. The shiek can lie and twist the meanings of the words to give whatever explanation they want.
In fact, the problem is deeper and more complicated than this. The Koran contains verses that incite violence as well as those which encourage mercy and coexistence. However, the violence-inducing verses override the other ones. This is because Mohammed was weak and without support when he started his religion, so he had to be peaceful. Later on when his army grew, he became merciless and commanded his people to violently kill their enemies.
The peaceful verses remain in the Koran today, even though muslim scholars agree that they are overridden. Your average Muslim does not know about any of that, and a shiek can easily manipulate an average muslim into believing that the Koran is a peaceful book by stressing the peaceful verses and avoiding the violent ones.
Re:I declare a fatwah! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's rather pointless to blame Islam, or Christianity for that matter. Both are in fact inert doctrines until they are taken up and interpreted by individuals. Martin Luther King was a Christian, but so was Jerry Falwell, and so were the Crusaders and Oliver Cromwell. Similarly, Osama bin Laden is a Muslim, but Avicenna, Abd Ar Rahman, and Suleyman the Magnificent were Muslims too.
I'm an atheist, but I admire many religious people and deplore others. It's a mixed bad. Idiots like Hitchens can pretend that religion has never done anything good, but has he ever listened to a Bach oratorio or stood in the Mezquita? Only an idiot could say religion has done nothing good.
Re:I declare a fatwah! (Score:5, Informative)
As the submitter of this story, I just wish to add that kdawson has rather heavily rewritten the original submission. Also, the link to the story on the BBC site, which was the original first link has been removed. It is here [bbc.co.uk] for those interested. I also had a look for the film on torrent sites and though I found something pretending to be the film, it turned out to just be some "music to inspire peace" and a README saying "we the Dutch don't support this politician."
On behalf of 95% of muslims everywhere: (Score:5, Funny)
Here's the BBC article (Score:5, Informative)
Serious Question: (Score:5, Insightful)
Now replace the same word with "Catholicism". Then "Buddhism". Then "Liberalism". Then Conservatism"...
Censorship over mere ideals? Sucks no matter what angle you view it from.
So, does anyone know what would happen if (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, not all Muslims are violent. Not all Muslims protest everyone else that does anything anywhere in the world that does not affect them. This whole 'insult to Islam' business is as out of control as political correctness in the US. We should start hanging signs up everywhere that state "Sharia Law not legal here" ()
The non-Muslim part of the world should be posting that loudly and proudly... to the point that ordinary Muslim peoples are ASHAMED of their violent militant Muslim friends. When other Muslims tell them to STFU and sit down perhaps the rest of us can stop worrying about stepping on the toes of Muhammed, prophet or otherwise.
No, I do not for an instant believe that Christians or Jews are any better. All the BS about Mr Gibson's movie was stupid. The crap about The Davinci Code was idiotic. The bruhaha about 'The last temptation of Christ' was ignorant. All of these religious groups that are claiming sacred right to this and that and feel they are being insulted actually need to adhere to the words in their books. Oh, but that's the problem... they think they are. Well, for all their 'righteousness' the have surely fucked this planet up.
If you feel insulted, take it as a reason to ponder for a few moments how well you live your religious beliefs. If you think I left your religion out SMACK!! You too can go ponder your religious beliefs. If when you are finished you still find that you are right to be intolerant of other people's belief systems I have a friend with a gun store and plenty of single use bullets. Use these to massage your temples and all will begin to get better in the world.
Personally I'd like to see more people making fun of ALL religions. ALL of them. If your god is almighty and doesn't want anyone to make fun of them, or tell jokes about them, or in some way portray them in ways that you don't like... well, then I suggest your god come right on down here to little old Earth and tell me about it in PERSON. I will not accept the likeness of his mother on a piece of burnt toast or a water stained wall as a sign. I will not accept that a human prophet speaks for an ALL POWERFUL god. If your god does not want me to draw cartoons or make films, he can come down and explain it in PERSON.
Perhaps that is the problem? god doesn't come down and explain things in person so when there is a challenge to god's authority religious zealots have to act before someone points out that there god is not much good at protecting his image, never mind the feeble lives of his followers?
If that makes you wonder about god... good. I do not want to believe in anything or entity whose supporters are so violent, militant, dogmatic, ignorant, disrespectful, hateful and
Yes, I know that only a small group of people hijack religion to server their militant causes. My point is that others of whatever faith should be rising up to stop such people from ruining their otherwise good intentions.
Final point is that when good people let bad people ruin their faith and do nothing to stop it, it denigrates all of them. Where are those Muslims that renounce violence? Where are the Muslims that renounce suicide bombings? Why did the Iranian vigils after 9/11 get no real news airplay?
Thanks to all the high profile religious people in the world, Atheism is the fastest growing set of beliefs in the Western World, if I can say it that way.
Re:hum (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hum (Score:5, Informative)
No, I guess they just go regular bombing. [cnn.com]
Re:hum (Score:5, Insightful)
As you can read on the wikipedia page you linked, the dutch were hopelessly outnumbered (400 lightly armed soldiers vs 1k-2k serbs with tanks and morters). The dutch troopers weren't given the mandate, the manpower, the reinforcements or the air-support required to fight back.
I wouldn't know what I would have done in their place, and I hope I never will know. Either way, it shames me that the dutch and the UN were this toothless faced with genocide right under their noses.
Re:hum (Score:5, Informative)
I will say that generally people that hate each other tend to use religion as a motivating factor to get people to rally around their cause and war. I can't speak for Muslims, but Christians, specifically Catholics are opposed to almost any war. The last Pope (John Paul II) who lived through WWII and saw many horrible things even mentioned that it was ok to fight in a war but he had never seen an instance of a time when it was warranted. This coming from a man who saw Hitlers army crush Poland and kill many innocent people. Granted there are many different sects of Christianity and I will concede that almost every religion has their weird splinter groups, but the VAST majority of Christians (and I bet Muslims) do not promote violence in any way. Just the opposite they promote peace, sometimes at the sacrifice of their own lives.
Re:hum (Score:5, Informative)
What I heard that happened was that the Dutch UN soldiers were in Srebrenica, lightly armed and not authorized to open fire. They radioed for back-up from the other UN (and NATO?) forces, but got nothing.
It must have been terrible being one of these soldiers: knowing it is your duty to protect these people, but not allowed to open fire, and not receiving back-up, despite supposedly having allies nearby. Supposedly, they got the medals in recognition of that.
The medals certainly weren't pinned on them in a move by the politicians to save their asses. Far from trying to save their asses, the whole Dutch government resigned [bbc.co.uk] is response to a report about the incident.
Maybe it is my national pride (I am Dutch - and, as many Dutch, I have little national pride, but I do have some) that is being injured here, but I don't think it's fair to blame it all on the Dutch. Sure, it's convenient; the Dutch were there, so it's all their fault. But the Dutch weren't there alone: this was a UN mission, and so it was ultimately the UN and everybody who was there that failed. Yet I hear nothing about that. It's only the Dutch who are getting the blame.
That's what censorship is (Score:5, Insightful)
if he said what you wanted to hear instead of what you don't want to hear.
That's what censorship is. That's also why we have free speech protections in the USA -- because speech that everyone wants to hear doesn't need protection. It's only the "flamebait" and other stuff that someone might disagree with that needs protection.
Re:I am a Muslim and I renounce all violence and t (Score:5, Insightful)
A hate crime has to have SOME criminal element to it. If I say 'Muslims suck', I made a blanket statement, but to even think of elevating it to a crime is absurd. Now, I can run around all day spouting blanket staments, and eventually people will learn that I am acting like a crackpot and have nothing important to say. (Example, Twitter [slashdot.org]). That is punishment enough.
To start deciding that unpopular content is a crime in itself is the first step in the end of free speech.
I've seen some of the cartoons, I have not seen the film. The cartoons are tasteless, they are not criminal.
Re:I am a Muslim and I renounce all violence and t (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I am a Muslim and I renounce all violence and t (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it is mere insult. Insult is not a crime, except under Islam, which does not tolerate a wide variety of other Free Speech.
You are invited to make all the derogatory cartoons of me you like, and of my beliefs (I'm theism-free). It bothers me not.
I've deployed to the richest Muslim societies on the planet, and seen the best they can do under the guidance of your oppressive, barbaric, pseudo-Nazi superstition. I will not yield to demands to change our social discourse just because it is not on Islamic (or Christian, Jewish, Scientologist, etc) terms.
Your Prophet can kiss my fat white arse.