By Andrew C. McCarthy
Monday, January 04, 2016
My weekend column profiled Bosch Fawstin, the intrepid
cartoonist who won last spring’s “Draw Muhammad” contest that was attacked by
two ISIS-inspired jihadists in Garland, Texas. (The terrorists were killed in a
shootout with police.) Fawstin compellingly argues that the best way to fight a
repulsive conquest ideology such as Islamic supremacism is to expose it. That
means an unstinting reliance on our constitutional right to free expression.
Apparently, Twitter has opted to join the campaign to
crack down on free expression. And one is left to wonder whether the big Saudi
bucks that have come its way are a factor in Twitter’s decision-making.
As I recount in the column, the top agenda item of
Islamic supremacists has long been the imposition of sharia blasphemy standards
on the West. This campaign is not waged exclusively or even primarily by
violent jihadists. Instead, its leading proponents are the Muslim Brotherhood’s
network of Islamist activist groups in the West and the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation (a 57-government bloc of, mainly, majority-Muslim countries).
The West should be fighting these anti-Western Islamic
supremacists in defense of our core principles. Instead, the Obama
administration — particularly the president and his former secretary of state,
Hillary Clinton — has colluded with them. So have other left-leaning
governments and institutions that are naturally hostile to free speech and open
debate. One prominent result, which I discussed in the column as well as in Islam and Free Speech, is U.N. Human
Rights Council Resolution 16/18. This blatantly unconstitutional provision,
co-sponsored by Obama, Clinton, and OIC members, calls on all nations to ban
speech that could promote mere hostility to Islam. Essentially, this is a
codification of sharia, which prohibits all expression that subjects Islam to
critical examination.
Twitter has announced new regulations on content
communicated via its social-networking service. They are prohibitions on speech
similar in effect to Resolution 16/18. As usual, this is shrewdly done under
the guise of suppressing “hate” speech. In fact, the regulations cast a much
wider net that potentially calls for the suppression of political and
educational speech.
Twitter’s policy, called “Hate content, sensitive topics,
and violence,” is here. The policy states that it applies to “Twitter Ads,” but
goes on to explain that these “paid advertising products” include all “Tweets,”
as well as “trends and accounts.”
The policy is then spelled out in question-and-answer
form. Here is the relevant part (the italics are mine):
What’s the policy?
Twitter prohibits the promotion of hate content, sensitive topics, and violence globally.
ACM: Note from
the get-go: We are not just talking about the incitement of violence here.
Twitter is laying the groundwork to regulate discussions of any topics it deems
“sensitive.”
What products or services are
subject to this policy?
This policy applies, but is not limited, to:
•
Hate speech or advocacy against an
individual, organization or protected group based on race, ethnicity,
national origin, color, religion,
disability, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status or
other protected status.
ACM: Note that
this prohibition expressly goes beyond “hate speech” (which itself is an
absurdly subjective term), additionally banning “advocacy against” people or
groups based on, among other things, “religion” (as well as “other protected
status” — who knows what that means?).
In essence, it is not different from Resolution 16/18’s
prohibition of speech that could “incite” mere “hostility” to religion — i.e.,
anything that could cast Islam in a bad light, regardless of whether it is
truthful. If they try to tell you this is just about banning insulting cartoons
and patently derogatory statements, don’t buy it. This is about permitting only
speech that conforms to the government’s official, smiley-face version of
Islam.
Twitter’s list of speech categories to which its
suppression policy applies continues:
•
Violence or threats of violence against people or animals
•
Glorification of self-harm or related content
•
Organizations or individuals associated with promoting hate, criminal, or terrorist-related
content
ACM: Again,
note that Twitter distinguishes “hate” from “terrorist-related content” and
seeks to ban both. Remember, it is not just terrorists who engage in
“terrorist-related” speech; it is also those of us who write about terrorism
and what motivates terrorism. As announced, the policy makes no distinction
between ISIS and, say, your humble correspondent.
Before concluding with a ban on “Offensive, vulgar,
abusive or obscene content,” the policy also bans “Inflammatory content which is likely
to evoke a strong negative reaction or cause harm.” This prohibition
continues a dangerous trend: codification of the “heckler’s veto” or the law of
the jungle. To the contrary, the First Amendment emphatically rejects the
notion that speech obviously not intended to incite violence (indeed, often
intended to expose savagery) should
be banned simply because uncivilized people might react to it with violence,
threats, and other perilous, intimidating behavior.
Twitter elaborates that its suppression policy does not
apply to “News and information that calls attention to hate, sensitive topics,
or violence, but does not advocate for it.” So does that exemption include commentary on “news and information”?
Apparently not. In the next sentence, Twitter provides a separate exemption for
“commentary” that is much more narrow: The prohibition does not apply to
“commentary about products, services,
companies, or brands, including potentially negative commentary.”
The patent implication is that if “commentary” “calls
attention to hate, sensitive topics, or violence,” Twitter reserves the right
to ban it even if the commentary “does not advocate” hatred, violence, or other
offenses to someone’s delicate sensibilities.
Is it a coincidence that Twitter is pushing the
anti-speech agenda in the same direction as the OIC? Consider this: One of the
prime movers in the campaign to impose Islamic blasphemy standards and other
aspects of sharia law on the West is Saudi Arabia. In 2011, Prince Alwaleed bin
Talal — a prominent member of the Saudi royal family with a prodigious record
of buying up and influencing Western media and educational institutions —
ponied up $300 million to purchase Twitter stock. By the end of 2015, bin Talal
had doubled his investment in Twitter: His stake now has a market value of
approximately $1 billion, good enough for a 5 percent share.
The sharia justice system that bin Talal’s family
enforces is currently drawing attention due to its mass executions, which
include putting to death a prominent Shiite activist, drawing the wrath of
rival Iran (another prominent OIC country that imposes sharia law and executes
dissenters). For present purposes, though, our focus is blasphemy. The Saudis
strictly enforce sharia blasphemy strictures that the OIC — wittingly aided by
Obama and Clinton — would thrust on the rest of the world. It is a commonplace
for Saudi blasphemy prosecutions to be based on social-media postings on
Twitter, Facebook, and the like.
By spreading his fortune around, tens of millions at a
clip, Prince bin Talal attracts many admirers in the Western commentariat. He
is thus depicted as the tolerant, progressive face of Saudi moderation. The
image masks the ugly reality of the royal family and its sharia enforcement.
For a more realistic take, and to grasp the perilous specter of
Islamic-supremacist influence over Western free-speech standards, here is
something worth perusing: last year’s Saudi court ruling that upheld the
blasphemy conviction of human-rights activist Raif Badawi. He was sentenced to
ten years’ imprisonment and a thousand lashes for writing such social-media
posts as: “The combination of the sword and the Quran are more dangerous than a
nuclear bomb.”
After explaining that “liberalism is parting away from
religion according to the Western definition of it,” the court held that Badawi
had shown
disparagement of the one who made the Quran and the Sunnah as a guiding
light and a law that equates the ruler and the ruled. And based on these
thoughts that spread doubt in the fundamentals of the religion and its values,
[Badawi] violate[d] the five essentials which sharia came to protect, and
spread sedition and conflict among the people in society.
Hence, according to Act 23 of the basic law of governance, which says:
“the government protects the Islamic doctrine, applies the laws of the Sharia,
and promotes virtue and prevents vice”; and according to Act 11 of the same
law, “the Saudi people live based on the tenacity of its individuals to the
rope of Allah, and cooperate on righteousness, piety and interdependence among
each other, and never be separated” . . .
The statements he confessed to writing . . . contain overall the
perverted liberal thought and a call to embrace it and to reject the way of
people of goodness and righteousness. It is a call to liberation from the
duties of religion and its values, and to disrespect its [tenets].
The convict’s acts are condemned and considered a crime according to
sharia and according to our government [law] combatting cybercrime, which says,
“any person who commits the following cybercrimes is to be sentenced to serve a
maximum of 5 years in prison [and fined:]. . . . Forming whatever affects
public order and religious values, and public manners and the privacy of
personal life via composing, sending or publishing the compromising material on
the cyber web or any other electronic device.”
Yes, what could be better for Twitter than Saudi money
and all the progressive enlightenment that comes with it?
We must hasten to add that Twitter is a private service.
It is not bound by the First Amendment. Unlike the government, it is permitted
to suppress speech disseminated through its own system. But that system has
millions of users (including me, and most National Review writers). The new
Twitter policy is clearly an effort to shape the public’s understanding of what
is and is not tolerable speech. The question is: Is Twitter influential enough
to have that effect . . . or will its obnoxious policy prompt protests by users
that induce Twitter to rethink its course?
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