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| Why banning "Jihadist" websites is a dangerous idea |
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Posted on May 21, 2008 at 00:30:00 EST
In recent days and weeks, Fox News and other major news media have reported on the existence of a "Jihadist website" run by Samir Khan of Charlotte, NC. The website of the 22 year old Khan is said to be the "Gateway Drug" to terror, due to it promoting terrorism in English for a Western audience. Of course, the ATC and our allies have seen many such websites before. In fact, there are countless websites of this kind all over the internet. They primarily exist for recruiting and propaganda purposes. This fact has prompted many anti-terrorists and even government officials to call for the shut down and banning of such websites. Just two days ago, US Senator Joe Lieberman asked Google, the parent company of YouTube, to "immediately remove content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations" from YouTube. Google denied the request. However, this very same company has removed videos that have "dared" to criticize Islam or its supporters even slightly. Other major companies such as Network Solutions, Yahoo, and MSN have taken similar actions against anti-terrorism websites, forums, eGroups, videos, and even individuals! This has happened all while these companies have continued to host terrorist-supporting material and even the websites of terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda, Hizbullah, Hamas, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and others. In fact, Islamic websites that call for the extermination of Jews, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and other non-Muslims are not being shut down. Even websites that feature videos of, and promote terrorist attacks are not being shut down. In one of the most publicized examples, one of the biggest domain name registrars and hosting companies, Network Solutions, shut down the website of Geert Wilders' film, Fitna. The film exposed the Koran for preaching terrorism, violence, and hatred, specifically against non-Muslims, as well as discrimination of women. The very same company hosts the websites of Hizbullah and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), as well as numerous other terrorist and hateful organizations and groups. Thus, these companies already have a blatant disregard for free speech (especially in the case of Western patriots). If we were to start passing laws or simply continuously urge companies to shut down certain websites (in some cases, this is already being done), then we would set a precedent that would completely destroy the freedom of speech. Sure, it is despicable and disgusting that some barbarians half way across the world (or their supporters right here in the West) can post content that promotes the killing of innocent civilians, attacks on our troops, and a war of extermination against civilized nations, but, at the same time, these Western nations have freedom of speech. Taking away an individual's to post something, no matter how vile it can be, is a violation of that individual's right to free speech, and thus, an attack on freedom. Instead of focusing on telling companies to take content off, we should be telling them to stop taking content off because doing just that is the biggest attack on freedom one could possibly make. And, above all, anti-terrorists are currently being silenced the most by these major companies. Furthermore, no company will ever be able to keep even half of the terrorist and hateful content offline. The reason is that there is simply too much of it online already, with more being put online every day. It is just impossible to find it all. Thus, not only is it an attack on free speech to ban and take offline a certain kind of ideology or a certain kind of content, it is impractical to even attempt to do so. Instead, people should be allowed to post whatever content they wish (as long as it is legal - that is, anything other than child pornography), and, people should then choose for themselves what kind of ideas they will support and what kind of ideas they will oppose, for if us anti-terrorists were allowed to post our ideas and facts without censorship, we would instantly crush the theocratic fascists in any sort of ideological war and prevent them from gaining any new significant support because reason and rationalism are on our side!
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