Free Speech and Riots

The first thing I thing I think about when I see the words “Free Speech” is, do I spell “speech” as speech or speach? One speaks, but this produces speech, not speach. I wonder what peculiarity of the English language arrived at this spelling convention? Can you think of any other verb/noun pairings that have the eak -> eech transition?

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Okay, more on topic. This week in the news:
On July 23, 2012, a YouTube video was posted titled The Real Life of Muhammad and another called Muhammad Movie Trailer. They were a 14-minute “trailer” of a supposedly feature-length movie regarding the life of Muhammad, of Islam fame. (More about the trailer later.)
From my understanding, the YouTube trailer went largely unnoticed until it was picked up by an Egyptian-American blogger and Coptic Christian, Morris Sadek, who dubbed the trailers into Arabic and uploaded them to YouTube in early September.
On September 8, an excerpt of the dubbed version was broadcast on Al-Nas TV, an Egyptian TV station.
On September 11 at 6:17 AM ET, a State Department official issued this statement on Twitter:
The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.
During September 11, unarmed protestors gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt. By nightfall in Cairo (about noon ET), some protestors scaled the walls around the compound and destroyed a U.S. flag inside. The incursion was contained and protests continued outside the embassy compound into the night.
By 5:41 PM ET, reporters in Libya heard shooting and saw smoke rising near the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
By 7:35 PM ET, Reuters confirms that an American consulate staffer has been killed in Benghazi.
By 10:09 PM ET, Mitt Romney issued the following statement:
I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.
By 10:44 PM ET, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the attack in Benghazi:
I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today. As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack.
This evening, I called Libyan President Magariaf to coordinate additional support to protect Americans in Libya. President Magariaf expressed his condemnation and condolences and pledged his government’s full cooperation.
Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.
In light of the events of today, the United States government is working with partner countries around the world to protect our personnel, our missions, and American citizens worldwide.
Sept. 12, 12:01 AM ET: RNC Chairman Reince Priebus tweeted, “Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic.”
5:41 AM ET: Reuters reported that U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other embassy staffers were killed in a rocket attack.
7:21 AM ET: President Obama issued an official statement condemning the attack in Benghazi:
I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Right now, the American people have the families of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers. They exemplified America’s commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives.
I have directed my Administration to provide all necessary resources to support the security of our personnel in Libya, and to increase security at our diplomatic posts around the globe. While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.
On a personal note, Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States. Throughout the Libyan revolution, he selflessly served our country and the Libyan people at our mission in Benghazi. As Ambassador in Tripoli, he has supported Libya’s transition to democracy. His legacy will endure wherever human beings reach for liberty and justice. I am profoundly grateful for his service to my Administration, and deeply saddened by this loss.
The brave Americans we lost represent the extraordinary service and sacrifices that our civilians make every day around the globe. As we stand united with their families, let us now redouble our own efforts to carry their work forward.
10:27 AM ET: Romney doubled down on his criticism of President Obama’s response:
It’s never too early for the United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values. The White House distanced itself last night from the statement saying it wasn’t cleared by Washington. That reflects the mixed signals they are sending to the world. The attacks in Libya and Egypt underscore that the world remains a dangerous place and that American leadership is still sorely needed.
<div style=”margin: 0in 0in 10pt”>Eventually demonstrations over the Innocence of Muslims YouTube video broke out in numerous countries in front of U.S. embassies and consulates, including Afghanistan, Australia, Belgium, France, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, and Tunisia.
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OK, hopefully I didn’t miss any major facts. Obviously I could add more to the timeline, but I think I’ve painted enough of a backdrop to talk about the issue within context. First, two points:
1)      The attack on the Benghazi consulate that resulted in the death of four Americans, including U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, appears to be premeditated by a group aligned with al Qaeda in response to a U.S. drone strike that killed an al Qaeda leader, Abu Yahya al-Libi, and was possibly unrelated to the demonstrations over the YouTube trailer. I think it’s too early to tell at this point. UN ambassador Susan Rice released a statement just today that said that evidence gathered so far shows no indication of a premeditated or coordinated strike in Benghazi. Whether a result from the protest in front of the Benghazi consulate, or an event that only coincided with it, it’s a separate issue from what I want to talk about.
 
2)      Romney’s original criticism of President Obama that happened while the Benghazi consulate and Egyptian embassy attacks were still happening were completely out of line and clearly demonstrates Romney’s un-statesmanlike character. I don’t want Romney representing the U.S. to the rest of the world. But that’s a separate issue as well.
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Let’s look at the relationship between the YouTube trailer for The Innocence of Muslims and the protests that have broken out across the world. When I first heard the news story, all the articles referenced “a YouTube video,” without citing the video title or the maker of the film. Well, that’s awfully vague, I thought. I went on YouTube and tried searching for it. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, after all. I gave up when Meg came home from work.
A few days later the news started citing the name of the video as The Innocence of Muslims, which finally allowed me to find the thing on YouTube. There are several different versions of the same film, several with over 3 million and 5 million views by now. There appears to be two main videos, a 1:32 minute video and a 13:51 video. The shorter clip contains excerpts from the longer one. And supposedly these are trailers for a feature-length movie, which has allegedly been screened only once for a small audience in Hollywood. I say supposedly and allegedly, because I don’t think it’s clear whether a full feature-length movie exists. (Another title for the video was Innocence of Bn Laden. I’m not entirely sure what any of the titles have to do with the contents of the movie.)
A few observations about the video (I will refer to the longer 13:51 version from here on).
Trailer – Calling this video a “trailer” is generous. Last time I checked, most trailers don’t last nearly 14 minutes. Scenes were inexplicably spliced together. There wasn’t the typical trailer music, voiceover, or screen text. There wasn’t the “In a time when…” gravelly man voice. Two timelines were bizarrely involved, leading to anachronistic scenes, like military piling out of a hummer in modern day, and then cutting to Muhammad emerging from a tent 1,400 years prior.
Cinematography – On a scale of 1 to 100, the video scores -50 in regards to cinematography. Some scenes involved a desert scene with several people standing on the sand outside a tent, except they were clearly floating several inches above the sand with the obvious use of green screen. It led me to quickly believe that this video was made by someone who had no understanding of how Iraq looked in 600 C.E., and didn’t care to actually film anywhere near a real desert location. California isn’t exactly that far from the desert. It shouted “low budget.”
Makeup – Some actors had clearly fake beards. So fake that you could see where their face started and their fake-fakey-fakidy beard started. In one scene, an “Arab” had the dirty face of a car mechanic, to indicate his poverty I guess.
Special Effects – one of the cheesiest moments was the end, when a blood-streaked Mohammed brandished a sword which inexplicably turned the screen into CGI flames somehow. I guess it was supposed to feel like the Scorpion King or something?
Voice acting – The actors talked in English, some with heavy fake “Middle-eastern-y” accents. Worse than that, the actors were often dubbed with other English-speaking voices. And the dubbing appeared to make the video more incendiary than it already was. For example, a scene between a Mohammad’s wife Khadija and an old man (Mohammad’s uncle? Khadija’s cousin?):
               Khadija: Please, my cousin you must help us.
Old Man: [dubbed] I will help you, Khadija. I will make a book for him. It will be a mix between subversions from the Torah and subversions from the New Testament, and mix them into false verses.
This also is evidence that the actors themselves did not know exactly what the film was about, which is what the actors are now saying.
Content – The video essentially accuses Mohammad of being a polygamist, a homosexual, a child molester, a thug, a murderer, and a womanizer. Had 61 wives and was gay? There was even a weird scene where Mohammad pressed his face into his wife Khadija’s crotch and stopped seeing demons as a result. I don’t even know what to say about that.
So the video was poorly made and designed to be offensive to Muslims. As an atheist, I even felt offended by it at times. If it was intended to be a criticism of Islam as a religion, it failed in a big way. Any legitimate criticism of Islam was lost amidst the poor acting, dubbing, unsubstantiated scenes, stereotypes, and all the rest.
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Rachel Maddow made an interesting point on her show several days ago, which was this: free speech in the U.S. is not understood largely by citizens in other countries. Largely in Muslim-populated countries, any speech is speech that is implicitly approved by the country’s government. If a video appears online that the country’s government disapproves of (like one that is blasphemous), then it is banned and no longer publicly viewable.
So, essentially, if an Egyptian sees a YouTube video online that is hosted in the United States, the Egyptian believes that the video was approved by the censors in the United States. When an Egyptian demonstrates against the U.S. embassy over an offensive YouTube video, they believe that the U.S. government censors approved the video and it represents the views of Americans in general.
As an American, this doesn’t make much sense to me, since I know that the U.S. government doesn’t censor YouTube content. If anything, Google censors YouTube content according to its posting guidelines, but this doesn’t involve the government or legislation directly, with the arguable exception of DCMA rules with copyright violations and censorship involving national security.
How do I respond when I see offensive material on the Internet (which is often)? I can use my free speech rights and respond to it (online or offline); I can boycott the people saying the offensive things and thus economically “sanction” them; and yes, I can protest against the offending party, as long as I do so peaceably and in a public area.
What I don’t do, when I see something offensive on the Internet, is to jump to the conclusion that it represents the U.S. views at large. Usually offensive Internet material is the view of a U.S. minority fringe. What I don’t do is protest violently, like jumping over walls into private property, burning or damaging private property, spraying graffiti, throwing rocks, and so on.
When I see Muslims violently protest over things that offend them—Danish cartoons, videos that criticize Islam (à la Submission Part I and Fitna), throwing rocks and vegetables at diplomat’s motorcades, YouTube videos, and so on—this leads me to conclude a few things:
1)      The protestors are grossly ignorant. If they were educated about how free speech functions in other nations such as the U.S., Denmark, etc., they would know that the government is not responsible for its citizens’ speech. They would know that their protests were misplaced and inappropriate.
 
2)      Protests do have their place, but when they turn violent, it undermines the protest’s efficacy. It reinforces the idea that Islam is not a religion of peace despite the meaning of its name, but rather strengthens the perception that Islam promotes violence, and that Muslims are temperamental, are irrational, and approve of terrorism.
 
3)      Protesting on a large scale sometimes backfires by bringing more attention to the opposition. If The Innocence of Muslims hadn’t been protested, then it would have been mostly unnoticed by most of the world. Instead, millions of people have now viewed it.
 
4)      I might as well add that there are some things that won’t help your protests in the eyes of Americans. These include:
a.       Burning U.S. flags
b.      Waving the flag of al Qaeda
c.       Holding up portraits of Osama bin Laden
d.      Chanting “Death to America” or “Obama, Obama, we are all Osamas”
e.      Spray-painting graffiti condemning the United States and supporting al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden on our embassy’s security walls
f.        Holding signs that say “Behead those who insult Islam,” “Behead the man who insulted our religion,”“Shariah will dominate the world,” or “Obama Obama we love Osama”
 
5)      If there is a dissenting view in the Islamic world, please stand up and make yourself heard. If you’re a religion of peace, please clearly demonstrate it. I think the Arab Spring is a great first step. Maybe the protestors in these nations aren’t representative of the majority view; but then, where is the majority view? From the U.S. perspective, I don’t see much rational proponents of free speech and peace standing up. Maybe I’m wrong?
At the end of the day, I watch the news and lean over to Meg and say, “Let’s not visit Egypt anytime soon, okay?”