[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 14872]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            FREE SPEECH, UNJUSTIFIED VIOLENCE AND HYPOCRISY

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 20, 2012

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, the recent death of several 
American diplomats is an outrageous example of wholly unjustified 
violence that must be unconditionally condemned. The fact that some 
people were angry because of what other people put into a movie does 
not begin to be a justification for violence, even against those who 
made the movie, and it is certainly, not remotely in any logical world, 
an excuse for the murder of people wholly uninvolved in this.
  The question of the judgment of the people who made that terrible 
movie must be kept entirely separate from the question of whether or 
not there was any justification for any of the violence that it caused. 
The answer is, without any doubt, that there was not.
  It is bad enough when some leaders of the Muslim world suggest that 
there was some justification for killing people because someone felt 
that their religion was insulted. This error is compounded by the 
extraordinary hypocrisy involved when many of those who declaim what 
they found insulting are themselves guilty of equal vituperation of 
other religions and ethnic groups.
  In an extraordinary, eloquent and thoughtful column in the New York 
Times for September 19th, Thomas L. Friedman, a balanced commentator on 
the Middle East who has often been very sympathetic to the legitimate 
concerns of Muslim people, wrote an excellent column on the 
essentiality of free speech, the absolutely unjustified nature of 
violence, and the hypocrisy to which I just alluded--and to which, to 
be honest, I was not paying enough attention until I read Mr. 
Friedman's column.
  As Mr. Friedman says, ``an insult--even one as stupid and ugly as the 
anti-Islam video on YouTube that started all of this--does not entitle 
people to go out and attack embassies and kill innocent diplomats. That 
is not how a proper self-governing people behave. There is no excuse 
for it. It is shameful.'' Mr. Friedman goes on to note, with regard to 
some in the Muslim community who have been demanding that America 
apologize for this, said ``they might want to look at the chauvinistic 
bile that is pumped out by some of their own media . . . insulting 
Shiites, Jews, Christians, Sufis and anyone else who is not a Sunni, or 
fundamentalist, Muslim.''
  Thomas Friedman's column should be very widely read, both because he 
has earned the right to be taken very seriously on the crisis in the 
Middle East, and because of its wisdom and eloquence.

               [From the New York Times, Sept. 18, 2012]

                          Look in Your Mirror

                          (By Thomas Friedman)

       On Monday, David D. Kirkpatrick, the Cairo bureau chief for 
     The Times, quoted one of the Egyptian demonstrators outside 
     the American Embassy, Khaled Ali, as justifying last week's 
     violent protests by declaring: ``We never insult any 
     prophet--not Moses, not Jesus--so why can't we demand that 
     Muhammad be respected?'' Mr. Ali, a 39-year-old textile 
     worker, was holding up a handwritten sign in English that 
     read: ``Shut Up America.'' ``Obama is the president, so he 
     should have to apologize!''
       I read several such comments from the rioters in the press 
     last week, and I have a big problem with them. I don't like 
     to see anyone's faith insulted, but we need to make two 
     things very clear--more clear than President Obama's team has 
     made them. One is that an insult--even one as stupid and ugly 
     as the anti-Islam video on YouTube that started all of this--
     does not entitle people to go out and attack embassies and 
     kill innocent diplomats. That is not how a proper self-
     governing people behave. There is no excuse for it. It is 
     shameful. And, second, before demanding an apology from our 
     president, Mr. Ali and the young Egyptians, Tunisians, 
     Libyans, Yemenis, Pakistanis, Afghans and Sudanese who have 
     been taking to the streets might want to look in the mirror--
     or just turn on their own televisions. They might want to 
     look at the chauvinistic bile that is pumped out by some of 
     their own media on satellite television stations and Web 
     sites or sold in sidewalk bookstores outside of mosques--
     insulting Shiites, Jews, Christians, Sufis and anyone else 
     who is not a Sunni, or fundamentalist, Muslim. There are 
     people in their countries for whom hating ``the other'' has 
     become a source of identity and a collective excuse for 
     failing to realize their own potential.
       The Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri, was 
     founded in 1998 in Washington by Yigal Carmon, a former 
     Israeli government adviser on counterterrorism, ``to bridge 
     the language gap between the Middle East and the West by 
     monitoring, translating and studying Arab, Iranian, Urdu and 
     Pashtu media, schoolbooks, and religious sermons.'' What I 
     respect about Memri is that it translates not only the ugly 
     stuff but the courageous liberal, reformist Arab commentators 
     as well. I asked Memri for a sampler of the hate-filled 
     videos that appear regularly on Arab/Muslim mass media. Here 
     are some:
       ON CHRISTIANS Hasan Rahimpur Azghadi of the Iranian Supreme 
     Council for Cultural Revolution: Christianity is ``a reeking 
     corpse, on which you have to constantly pour eau de cologne 
     and perfume, and wash it in order to keep it clean.'' http://
www.memritv.org/clip/en/1528.htm_July 20, 2007.
       Sheik Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi: It is permissible to spill the 
     blood of the Iraqi Christians--and a duty to wage jihad 
     against them. http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/
5200.htm_April 14, 2011.
       Abd al-Aziz Fawzan al-Fawzan, a Saudi professor of Islamic 
     law, calls for ``positive hatred'' of Christians. Al-Majd TV 
     (Saudi Arabia), http://www.memritv.org/clip/en1992.htm_Dec. 
     16, 2005.
       ON SHIITES The Egyptian Cleric Muhammad Hussein Yaaqub: 
     ``Muslim Brotherhood Presidential Candidate Mohamed Morsi 
     told me that the Shiites are more dangerous to Islam than the 
     Jews.'' www.memritv.org/clip/en13466.htm_June 13, 2012.
       The Egyptian Cleric Mazen al-Sirsawi: ``If Allah had not 
     created the Shiites as human beings, they would have been 
     donkeys.'' http://www.memritv.org/clip/en13101.htm_Aug. 7, 
     2011.
       The Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan video series: ``The Shiite is a 
     Nasl [Race/Offspring] of Jews.'' http://www.memri.org/report/
en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6208.htm_March 21, 2012.
       ON JEWS Article on the Muslim Brotherhood's Web site 
     praises jihad against America and the Jews: ``The Descendants 
     of Apes and Pigs.'' http://www.memri.org/report/en10/0/0/0/0/
51/6656.htm_Sept. 7, 2012.
       The Pakistani cleric Muhammad Raza Saqib Mustafai: ``When 
     the Jews are wiped out, the world would be purified and the 
     sun of peace would rise on the entire world.'' http://
www.menuiorg/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6557.htm_Aug. 1, 2012.
       Dr. Ismail Ali Muhammad, a senior Al-Azhar scholar: The 
     Jews, ``a source of evil and harm in all human societies.'' 
     http://www.memri.org/report/en10/0/0/0/0/51/6086.htm_Feb. 
     14, 2012.
       ON SUFIS A shrine venerating a Sufi Muslim saint in Libya 
     has been partly destroyed, the latest in a series of attacks 
     blamed on ultraconservative Salafi Islamists. http://
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19380083_Aug. 26, 2012.
       As a Jew who has lived and worked in the Muslim world, I 
     know that these expressions of intolerance are only one side 
     of the story and that there are deeply tolerant views and 
     strains of Islam espoused and practiced there as well. Theirs 
     are complex societies.
       That's the point. America is a complex society, too. But 
     let's cut the nonsense that this is just our problem and the 
     only issue is how we clean up our act. That Cairo protester 
     is right: We should respect the faiths and prophets of 
     others. But that runs both ways. Our president and major 
     newspapers consistently condemn hate speech against other 
     religions. How about yours?

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