{"id":47505,"date":"2013-06-11T15:00:18","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T14:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=47505"},"modified":"2014-07-07T18:14:57","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T17:14:57","slug":"hate-speech-should-be-challenged-not-silenced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=47505","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Hate speech should be challenged not silenced"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennessee Department of Justice Attorney William Killian has recently raised eyebrows for suggesting<\/a> that anti-Muslim messages online could be prosecuted under federal laws. Sara Yasin questions if his approach will help anyone<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"barrywest\"<\/a> The comments in question were made after local politician Barry West\u00a0shared<\/a> a photo of a cowboy-hat clad man aiming the\u00a0barrel\u00a0of a gun at the camera, with the caption “how to Wink at a Muslim” last month. The controversial post led to an event held last week by the American Muslim Advisory Council\u00a0in West’s constituency, where Killian and FBI special agent Kenneth Moore spoke about civil rights and hate speech. The meeting, however, was interrupted<\/a> by a group of anti-Muslim hecklers — enraged by Killian’s previous comments, taking them as yet another sign of the ever expanding creep of “Sharia law” in the United States.<\/p>\n

There is a brand of “Islamophobia” that seems to be trendy in the United States these days, that seems to move seamlessly between the right-wing blogosphere, and the rhetoric of Tea Party darlings like Michele Bachmann. But,\u00a0I’m not sure how policing “hate speech” online would decrease the number of offline threats faced by Muslims.<\/p>\n

This more\u00a0prevalent\u00a0movement has no doubt helped contribute to a more\u00a0visible battle against Islam in the United States. According to a Gallup study on anti-Muslim sentiments in the US, there has been an increase in “Islamophobia” in the decade since 9\/11. The poll showed that<\/a> 48 per cent of Muslims, and 52 per cent of Arabs in the United States have experienced discrimination.<\/p>\n

The FBI\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0157 hate crimes against Muslims in 2011, only a slight increase compared to the 50 per cent jump in attacks in 2010. It’s been unclear previously if these statistics include attacks against individuals “perceived”\u00a0to be Muslim, so it’s good news that the FBI\u00a0will start reporting<\/a>\u00a0hate crimes against Hindus, Sikhs, and Arabs.\u00a0It might be more worthwhile to investigate how many of the recorded attacks also involve threats online, as anti-Islamic rhetoric online doesn’t always necessarily translate into a real-life threat.<\/p>\n

Shutting down anti-Muslim voices online, it also misses the point. In times like these, we should be challenging these voices head on, rather than silencing them in the hope they’ll go away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tennessee Department of Justice Attorney William Killian has recently raised eyebrows for suggesting that anti-Muslim messages online could be prosecuted under federal laws. Sara Yasin<\/strong> questions if his approach will help anyone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4880],"tags":[5317,571,60,4890,5566,700,7403],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47505"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48253,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47505\/revisions\/48253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}