In many criminal prosecutions since 9/11 Muslims have been convicted and sentenced to as much as life in prison for expressing their political opinions, giving fatwas (religious opinions), feeding children, providing educational materials, translating documents, uploading videos on websites, or singing in a band.
In one case involving American-born Tarek Mehanna, Yale Professor Andrew F. March wrote in the New York Times, "As a political scientist specializing in Islamic law and war, I frequently read, store, share and translate texts and videos by jihadi groups. As a political philosopher, I debate the ethics of killing. As a citizen, I express views, thoughts and emotions about killing to other citizens. As a human being, I sometimes feel joy (I am ashamed to admit) at the suffering of some humans and anger at the suffering of others." He further wrote, "At Mr. Mehanna's trial, I saw how those same actions can constitute federal crimes, because Mr. Mehanna's conviction was based largely on things he said, wrote and translated."
What these examples and many others illustrate is that the protection of the constitutional freedoms of speech, expression, and association are used selectively in the U.S. on the basis of political judgments. American officials, public intellectuals, and opinion makers revel in invoking the first amendment as an inviolable principle when Islam or its sacred symbols are attacked, and then find rationalizations and loopholes when American Muslims engage in objectionable free speech activities. However, this double standard is not lost on the majority of people in the Muslim world and across the globe.
The criteria to judge whether a society values and respects free speech is when the most vulnerable members of society, those who might be the targets of the majority, can feel safe and free to say what they think when they want on any subject without fear, intimidation or negative repercussions. In other words, to know whether America today honors free speech one must ask one hundred random American Muslim activists that question to get the real answer.
In a nutshell, America shall only have credibility as a champion and guardian of freedom of speech and expression when the thoughts, speeches, writings, fatwas, translations, poetry, and web browsing of Mehanna and his colleagues are not criminalized. Only when they are set free can America reclaim back the mantle.
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