Out on a Limb

Morsi to Obama: Drop Dead 
Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s new president, spoke at the U.N. yesterday and delivered what one might construe as a rebuff of President Obama’s defense of free speech the preceding day, the Washington Post reports:

“Egypt respects freedom of expression,” said Morsi, who was the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood movement once banned by the U.S.-backed secular dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. But “not a freedom of expression that targets a specific religion or a specific culture.”

“The obscenities that I have referred to that were recently released as part of an organized campaign against Islamic sanctities are unacceptable,” Morsi said in reference to that stupid YouTube video.

But does Obama really disagree with this? Rereading his “defense” of free expression, we’re not so sure. When we discussed it yesterday, we didn’t notice one particularly telling line:

We [protect free expression] so because given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression; it is more speech–the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.

“The answer to offensive speech is more speech” is a standard First Amendment piety, and an excellent one. But that reference to “the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy” is downright Orwellian.

The idea of “voices of tolerance” objecting to “bigotry” makes sense (although in practice, people who think of themselves that way are often quite intolerant and bigoted themselves). But this may be the first time a leftist has made opposition to blasphemy a test of tolerance.

One wonders what Obama would make of this story from Morsi’s Egypt, reported by the Washington Post:

Egyptian blogger Alber Saber appeared in court here Wednesday, standing in a cage, pale and skinny, wearing jailhouse whites, his head shaved. He flashed a V for victory sign with his fingers to the spectators. His mother wept.

The 27-year-old computer science major from a Coptic Christian family, a few credits shy of his college degree, was arrested two weeks ago on charges of disdaining religion and ridiculing religious beliefs and rituals.

After a mob of his neighbors laid siege to his home, and after he was arrested by police, media reports suggested that Saber had posted a link to the infamous YouTube video “Innocence of Muslims” on Facebook.

The arrest points to stark differences in laws and attitudes regarding freedom of expression, especially as applied to religion, in the Middle East and the United States.

Saber’s lawyers deny that he had anything to do with the video, although they concede that he did ruminate on social media sites about the meaning of religion. Showing contempt toward what Egyptian statutes call the “heavenly” religions–Christianity, Islam and Judaism–is punishable by up to five years in prison.

If you take Obama at his word, he wouldn’t approve of Saber’s prosecution. The answer to speech is more speech. But if Saber were merely shunned or shouted down by those who “rally against blasphemy,” would Obama and his supporters really be prepared to defend the proposition that they are the “voices of tolerance”?