Anyone can be a law professor these days, II.

I think in my previous post I made a dreadful mistake, which I should now clarify. I was too easy on our dear Professor Freamon. Let me at least begin to do him justice in this post.

You may recall the paragraph from his essay that I quoted before, about how people who want to scrub our public places with secular soap either didn't understand or didn't accept that Islam would condemn vilification. I was so flummoxed by that paragraph that I missed another important point: Does he know what this whole damned issue is about? The publishing of these cartoons has nothing to do whatsoever with keeping religion out of public space. The cartoons do not make the point that you shouldn't put up a Christmas tree in a courthouse. The point of the cartoons is that you should be able to openly talk about religion. Professor Freamon's problem is presumably not with the secularization of public space, but with saying things about religion that he doesn't like. Those are two extremely different issues. I'm not sure whether I'd rather think our good professor is so dishonest that he wilfully hides the distinction, or so simple that he doesn't understand it.

Wait, wait, it gets better!

Muslims are therefore very right to vigorously condemn the publication of the cartoons and to seek to punish the editors through the criminal law process. There is no room in the public square, it seems to me, for the race-baiter or religion-baiter who acts with the intention to injure or harm others. If these cartoons are in fact a Trojan Horse for such behavior the editors must be exposed and punished. We should remember that the Rwanda genocide was preceded by radio broadcasts that described Tutsis as “cockroaches” and supposedly innocently listed the names and addresses of people who were later murdered by Hutu mobs, simply because of their ethnic origin or association with the Tutsis. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda rightfully rejected the free expression defense offered by the radio broadcasters at their trial for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Ok, I don't know how our good professor did on the LSAT, but I'll hazard a guess: pretty piss poorly.

If his argument was that all speech that vilifies religion leads to bad consequences including death, he'd at least have a point; something we should take into account in writing speech laws. But that's not his point. If his argument was that all/most/many deaths are preceded by speech vilifying religion, he'd be on to something, but it'd be pretty weak. After all, all murders are also preceded by eating breakfast as well. There's plenty of speech mocking or vilifying religion all over the world, but so far the writers of Family Guy haven't had to go into hiding. But that's not even his argument. His argument is this: "I can name one instance where a radio program called a racial group 'cockroaches,' and published the names and addresses of people who were later amongst hundreds of thousands killed in wholesale genocide. QED."

What? This is at best an argument about why newspapers shouldn't publish cartoons that are maps to the houses of people the public hates, along with unflattering drawings of those people. At best. This says nothing about speech criticizing or vilifying religion. Remember, this is the best our friendly professor could do. This is his best argument. He gave an entire paragraph of his short op-ed to this point.

I only hope I've done our good professor justice.