a few years ago a government party known as the National Front (NF) marched through my town of Oldham demonstrating, quite within their right to, against immigration laws and the loss of true british culture, they were attacked by muslim youths and, when they fought back, they were locked up for racial violence.

i would not be suprised if America is soon headed in the same direction and i pray for you all that you are not left with a nation, like mine, which is well and truly buggered beyond belief

My point was that my example of setting it on fire and throwing it at a Muslim would be more under the umbrella of what a hate crime is, or even assault and battery. More so than putting a book in a toilet, thats all.
I agree with Stephen, “hate crime” needs to just go away all together.

It would be different if he set it on fire and then threw it at a Muslim, that I could see as a hate crime.

No, that would be assault and battery.

Like Stephen said, we really don’t need nebulous concepts like “hate crime”.

My mistake, I thought the article was saying that he took the library’s copy, but I misread it so I retract my last comment about him deserving to be prosecuted for vandalism (as long as the book was his, of course). You’re right…if someone owns a book, regardless of significance of the book, they’re free to do whatever they want to it. I wouldn’t try to say otherwise.

Nowhere in the article did it say he trashed someone else’s copy. It never had a quote from a Muslim saying “He took my copy and threw it in the toilet”.

If this guy went out and bought a copy just to put it in the toilet, so what! It would be different if he set it on fire and then threw it at a Muslim, that I could see as a hate crime. At the most, he should be charged with littering in a public toilet : )

Next time I go and see Penn and Teller, I plan on having them autograph a blank page in a bible, is that considered a hate crime or even vandalism? If so, too bad.

Yup, that’s my understanding too, although I got from the article that their complaints were against the university ignoring warning signs of potential violence in general as opposed to the actions of Shmulevich specifically. If they were attempting to target just this specific action, I agree that they’re wrong for doing so. I think a fatal flaw with Islam currently is that they embrace the concept of collective rights while eschewing the concept of individual rights and this instance would be indicative of that. Or perhaps we’re wrong and all the Muslim groups were trying to do was keep Shmulevich’s actions from inspiring other people to take things to a more violent level (equally plausible). The article should have been clearer I think.

That said, however, the Muslim groups peacefully petitioned the university (just like a lot of groups do) to punish this act under a ridiculous law enacted by the state. The worst you can accuse the Muslims of in this case is using a corrupt system to achieve a short-sighted and somewhat hypocritical end. But it’s the university that agreed with them and the state that put those tools in place to be abused, so they’re the guilty parties in this all, not “Islam”. You could substitute just about any group that often falls back on the discrimination defense in this story instead of Muslims, and few of them would look out of place.

My understanding is that the pressure to charge him with a hate crime came from Muslim student groups, but I may be wrong about that.

And I’ll agree that Islam’s got a checkered past, same as any other religion. But its adherents are still people capable of thought and evolution, so I hardly think they or their religion are incapable of change. The Catholic church had a long history of crushing freedom in Western civilization back in the day, but we eventually had the Reformation and lo and behold the situation changed. Islam’s capable of the same sort of evolution, especially if we quit trying to interfere and dictate our preferences to them.

You know, I was referring to Islam but I guess you could read what I wrote to refer to the U.S. in general. This isn’t all that different from the controversy that abounded when that artist in NY put a crucifix in a jar of urine. The difference being that he was never charged with a crime.

You are right that Islam has a far less checked past than we’ve been led t believe, but a story like this strikes me as disturbingly similar to the Mohammed cartoons incident.

Are you referring to the Muslims or us? Because as far as I know Gallagher and O’Reilly aren’t Muslim and neither seems to have much of a comprehension of free speech or individual liberty.

As for Islam, it would be provincial and historically ignorant to claim that the “culture” has no conception of ideas like free speech and individual liberty. Read stories about the life and times of Ibn Battuta sometime (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_battuta). Or ask the average Pashtun or Tajik in Afghanistan what he thinks of centralized government. Many of them see it as a prelude to slavery (just like many of us do) and are opposed, and they’re devout Muslims. Or read Tariq Ramadan’s theories about the need for reformation within the religion and the need to assimilate to other cultures(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariq_Ramadan). The beliefs in the ideal form of government within the Islamic world vary just as much as they do in any other culture…claiming otherwise is usually just generalization based on ignorance, exemplified by many of those useless assholes on Fox News.

And as the Crusades and the post-WWII gifting of Palestine showed, Western civilization has hardly been the champions of liberty when it comes to dealing with the Muslims. People who truly support freedom don’t selectively apply that ideal only to the cultural group they happen to be a part of.