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April 04, 2005
Free speech or treason?
This story from WaPo:
Islamic spiritual leader Ali Al-Timimi's pen is mightier than his sword, prosecutors contend. It's not so much his actions but his words that make him so dangerous, they say.Timimi is charged with ten counts including "attempting to contribute services to the Taliban and soliciting or inducing others to commit a variety of crimes, such as conspiring to levy war on the United States, using firearms and carrying explosives." However, Timimi's supporters are framing this exclusively as a First Amendment issue. They've set up a pretty vanilla website posting links to news articles and soliciting donations. It also contains "support letters" and they make for some interesting reading. Here's some quotes:Less than a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Timimi told a group of Northern Virginia Muslims that it should train for violent jihad abroad and wage war on the United States, prosecutors say. In 2003, he celebrated the crash of the space shuttle Columbia in a message that prosecutors say reflected his view that the United States itself should be destroyed.
- There are orientalist and other quote unquote intellectualist ... Please do not be deceived into thinking that there is not a war again Islaam. There is and it is an ideological and actual taking up of arms.
- The only reason he is being attacked by the government is because he is calling to a pure form of Islam, and they will continue to twist words and come up with lies to try to prove a useless case.
- met him personally when he came to the United Kingdom where he did a series of lectures 2 years ago in defence of the life of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) whom the american media and all its evangelical cronies had begun to deride out of pure prejudice.
I'm a great supporter of the First Amendment. I think the government needs to be constrained to strict requirements when approaching a case that involves primarily speech. Current legal precedence derives from 1969's Brandenburg v. Ohio which holds the standard that even if the speaker is advocating violence, they cannot be prosecuted unless the speaker intends for his listeners to act or the words are likely to produce "imminent lawlessness." A pretty high standard.
Certainly, one only has to go to far leftist sites, like democraticunderground, to find anti-American sentiments and the call for the downfall of the government. The speech is ugly in the extreme but not illegal. However, I'm old enough to remember the Charles Manson case, and while he did not physically commit the murders himself, he did direct his "followers" to commit murder to further his ends. If the prosecutors have the evidence to show that Timimi acted more like a Manson and less like the demented of DU, then they should be able to get a conviction.
Of course, the understatement of the day belongs to Timimi himself
Timimi said that he never has advocated violence and that "many of my best qualities are simply because I am an American." He acknowledged that he "has opinions that go counter to the mainstream of American society."
Ya think?
Posted by Darleen at April 4, 2005 06:12 AM