Something troubling

Submitted by Peter Herz (United States), Sep 15, 2012 at 10:05

Has anyone else noticed that it wasn't until last Thursday (9/13/12) that our administration finally told the world something about America's First Amendment--and SecState Clinton sounded decidedly tinny, compared to the emphatic condemnations of __The Innocence of Muslims__ uttered right after the attacks; or, for that matter, the stridency of the attack on Terry Jones' burning the Qur'an?

I'm going to publicly wonder if a Chair of the Joint Chiefs calling up Terry Jones and the focus on a disgruntled, somewhat sleazy Coptic immigrant Nakhoula Bassiley Nakhoula--people who are otherwise justly obscure--may not be the Obama Administration's sending a subtle hint to us all that the First Amendment is too dangerous to be left lying around where the disreputable might actually use it, and hence certain limits on it need to be imposed.

Why can't out administration make the point that it doesn't control the American media, and that it would be illegal for it to try to do so? Why can't it politely tell the Islamic world that despite all that Goldziher and Weill bamboozled the post-Christian West into believing, that Islam's own bigotry and oppression towards its religious minorities may lie behind Nakhoula's work?

This being said, the timing of the attacks so close to 9/11 suggests that it really is a case of Qaida and its sympathizers letting the world know they're still out there.

In this case, my sympathies go out to all the non-Muslims living in Islamic countries, who will probably bear the brunt mob violence. And that mob violence, which seems as certain as water running downhill, gives me less and less respect for Islam.

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