EVA GALPERIN

U-Tube (Google) was faced with a very difficult decision when a Coptic Christian Islamaphobe produced and posted “Innocence of Muslims” a hateful video intended to inflame and insult Muslims. Despite the terrible content, U-Tube determined that the film did not violate their free speech standards and would not be censored. However, there were violent riots and demonstrations in reaction in a number of Muslim nations. People were being killed. So U-Tube decided to block the video in Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, and India (not a majority Muslim nation but had over 200 million Muslims). Galperin and others however made this important moral point. In essence to avoid unreasonable, and immoral violence, we censor materials and allow the perpetrators of violence to also force Americans to abandon the value of freedom of speech and freedom to read. There is a RIGHT to insult someone or their religion or their God. There is a right for all to, if they wish, view a video regardless of how hateful it is. There is NO moral responsibility for violence for ever publishing ANYTHING. The insulted person who resorts to violence is morally responsible and NO ONE ELSE. However some argue that, from a more fundamentalist point of view, the Muslim Holy Book REQUIRES blasphemers to be put to death. But, and often forgotten, the Jewish and Christian Old Testament requires the SAME death penalty for Blasphemy. So modernists insist that to follow holy books literally can often be immoral, and proper morality requires the ignoring of the “word of God”. It is a difficult question and while one can argue for or against the U-Tube Google decision, but taking either side of this question is reasonable and we all do the best we can with a ethically terribly difficult problem.

U-Tube (Google) was faced with a very difficult decision when a Coptic Christian Islamaphobe produced and posted “Innocence of Muslims” a hateful video intended to inflame and insult Muslims. Despite the terrible content, U-Tube determined that the film did not violate their free speech standards and would not be censored. However, there were violent riots and demonstrations in reaction in a number of Muslim nations. People were being killed. So U-Tube decided to block the video in Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, and India (not a majority Muslim nation but had over 200 million Muslims). Galperin and others however made this important moral point. In essence to avoid unreasonable, and immoral violence, we censor materials and allow the perpetrators of violence to also force Americans to abandon the value of freedom of speech and freedom to read. There is a RIGHT to insult someone or their religion or their God. There is a right for all to, if they wish, view a video regardless of how hateful it is. There is NO moral responsibility for violence for ever publishing ANYTHING. The insulted person who resorts to violence is morally responsible and NO ONE ELSE. However some argue that, from a more fundamentalist point of view, the Muslim Holy Book REQUIRES blasphemers to be put to death. But, and often forgotten, the Jewish and Christian Old Testament requires the SAME death penalty for Blasphemy. So modernists insist that to follow holy books literally can often be immoral, and proper morality requires the ignoring of the “word of God”. It is a difficult question and while one can argue for or against the U-Tube Google decision, but taking either side of this question is reasonable and we all do the best we can with a ethically terribly difficult problem.