Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech:
A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article's tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal. Things are different here. The magazine is on trial. Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean's, Canada's leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their "dignity, feelings and self respect." ... Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.
I have to say fuck their dignity. When Muslims redact the Koran so as to satisfy the affront to my dignity as a non-Muslim at its ethno-centric and triumphalist narrative I'll be willing to pay attention to this sort of stuff from those who claim special access to transcendental truth and presume that others live in darkness and falsity. And no, Scienceblogs.com servers are not hosted in Canada. (H/T Talk Islam)
