The regular muslim has about as much to do with militarized cults engaging in terrorist activity as the regular Christian has to do with Christian warlords in Africa.
Burning the Quran in Norway, Sweden - Racism and Islamophobia Rampant in Europe
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Do you think these Koran burnings have anything to do with this serious problem? If not why are they doing this?
The acts committed by some muslims managed to be the loudest so ire was drawn there and since muslims were outsiders in a lot of places the ire stayed. If it hadn't been for 9/11 people would've chosen some other group for some other insane reason (insane because the 9/11 terrorists can in no reasonable way be considered representatives of the entire islamic faith or muslim population).
Apparently police and parts of the media think bombs and such are related to strife between criminal groups. Not really something that has a direct correlation with islam or burnings of the quran.
I say direct correlation because there is an unusually large segment of young muslims, typically men, who end up joining gangs. And it can typically be attributed to both a lack of opportunities in life as well as a feeling of marginalization that results in antisocial behaviour. Of course it isn't made any better when young muslim men see friends, or former friends, driving large cars, having lots of money, and being in a group that supports them.
That's not my point. You said people people became more prejudiced against Muslims because of a Muslim terrorist attack then say that people would have had the same anger against some other group who... had no connections to any similar terrorist attack? That makes no logical sense.
Why?
From an outsider, it seems to be an easy enough connection to make, although that connection might not be accurate (let alone justified).
For example
1. Gangs, "largely made up of second or later generation (Muslim?) immigrants", are "ruining the country!"
2. "This wouldn't have happened if we didn't let those (Muslim?) immigrants in!"
3. "Burn a Koran, this'll teach them they're not wanted here!"
Seems plausible, if you can imagine being a racist.
I'm always in favor of understanding WHY people do things, instead of just writing them off as "oh, this person is a racist, they're terrible and what they've done is terrible. Shame on that guy", as if just denouncing them will solve the problem.
I don't give much credence to random posts on the internet, but I could see that post being written by someone with a grasp of the Swedish language. Mostly due to your very last point: when not writing in your native language and switching in the middle of it you are forced to grasp the grammars of two languages simultaneously and therefore make mistakes where the grammar of either language bleeds into the other. In particular if the person in question's native language is not Swedish, a trait often found in people of Vårberg, a municipality with a very high proportion of the population of foreign heritage.
In particular there is one mistake they make that I doubt someone who's never learnt Swedish in real life would make: they use the word "flottig" when they meant "flott". ("greasy" versus "classy" for the people who do not speak Swedish). Similar sounding words in Swedish, but a machine translation would never mistake those words for each other.
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I don't know mostly nonsense, just vent my existential angst into a poor burrito before eating it and knowing that it's existence was probably more miserable than mine.
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Being an antagonistic prick is a valid standpoint. Especially if it forces people to confront their beliefs about the sacredness of things.
Book burning, like flag burning, is a speech act. It is stating that you hold the words written to be of so little value that they're not worth preserving. And let's be clear: book burning a book with millions of copies isn't remotely the same as book burning by authoritarian regimes to suppress information. It may be a "fuck you", but it's a principled "fuck you"
It also grabs headlines. And isn't that the part of any protest?
I would find that explanation a lot more convincing if the most violent responses didn't come from communities in other countries, far away from the burning. Which happens quite often. Past draw Muhammad and Quran burning events have resulted in deadly riots in countries far away. If you're willing to kill someone in your own country because someone you'll never meet in a country you've never been to burned a book or drew a picture, I think that fact needs to be drawn attention to.
Not that deadly domestic responses are unheard of. The murder of Theo van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri springs to mind.
Your understanding of the fighting words doctrine is not great. It's a narrow exception that has been chipped away at over the years, not because of any politicization but because the underlying case was weak. And the precedent was bad. Look at Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942). That's where the doctrine comes from, and it was someone prosecuted for calling a cop "a damned fascist". Just like "fire in a crowded theater" came from someone arrested for opposition to WWI conscription (Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919))
Basically, prior to the 1960's reversal of this trend, the Supreme Court held that through a poorly defined doctrine, you could be arrested for calling cops fascists or opposing wars, and your criticism is that this doctrine hasn't gone far enough.
This is a horrifying test that would subject speech to a popularity contest, which completely undermines the point of the first amendment. Popular speech needs no protection: unpopular and controversial speech does.
Do you have a citation for this case? Because unless it was a SCOTUS ruling, the decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) still stands.
Also, you can absolutely call a woman a hussy or a whore, if such a statement is true. Truth is, after all, an absolute defense.
You are trying to relitigate something that is essentially a settled issue in American jurisprudence, using arguments that the court has heard and rejected. I would advise not doing that.
I see this all the time, from people wanting to relitigate the New Deal (especially popular among some libertarian legal theorists). They tend to be blisfully unaware that the arguments they peddle were rejected in the 1940s and the caselaw built since then make it about as productive as trying to argue against the iceberg as the ship sinks.
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Racial slurs, random cuss words.. There is no real purpose for any of it. Besides, you should not legally be allowed to threaten or yell in anyone's face period. In some states that is considered verbal assault. Anything that is considered verbal assault would be covered here.
Because there is always going to be someone at the bottom, someone that, through no fault of their own, stands out and becomes the persecuted. Or at least that is how it has been historically. Just look at the US, never in history was there a time when there wasn't some internal group that was hated, usually for reasons that did in no way justify the degree of hatred or discrimination.
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If you've got people rioting over someone burning a book, or insulting their religion, that's an issue politicians should probably address in a head-on manner.
True threats are already illegal in the United States.
The big problem here is they ignore true threats until they kill you. The police usually just ignore all threats until someone winds up dead then they can do something about it. We have to go through hell to document enough evidence to prove harassment then enough harassment for a restraining order and even then they don't take the guy in for constantly violating it until someone is bleeding. It is always allowed to go too far.
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That's a problem with police effectiveness, not the law itself. It's already illegal to do the thing you want to be illegal. Making it double extra illegal won't really spur law enforcement into action.
Law enforcement, as I'm sure you know, doesn't really have an obligation to individual citizens. At least not in the sense that it is generally legally enforceable. See Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005)
Good, improvements. Hopefully, with repetition, we can get it to the point where someone deciding to insult Islam no longer becomes a headline.
I added more above. It is the Law+ enforcement. We need to make the threats illegal and not leave it up to cops to determine what is a true threat. Let the courts sort it out instead.
But the post I was responding to wasn't talking about that, it was talking about how 9/11 led to this with Muslims.
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As I've said before, they already are illegal.
Law enforcement discretion is an unavoidable fact of having humans enforce laws. You could change law enforcement liability through legislative action by requiring them to enforce restraining orders on pain of 42 U.S. Code § 1983 lawsuits. I would not be opposed to revisiting qualified immunity.
The courts have sorted it out. True threats are illegal. Racist statements are not. Nor does speech need to have much (or any) value to be protected. See Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443 (2011).
I've got a few things to take care of, but I will be back in a few hours to respond to any responses