25,000 Muslims March in England to call for laws to Silence Critics of Islam.

[Tonus]

In case you are not aware, hate speech laws do exist in Great Britain see here and here. Perhaps what the 25, 000 Muslims who marched wanted was the same speech protection afforded to dead British soldiers and dead police officers in the UK. What they are saying is, why can't those same laws extend to those who insult our dead Prophet? Which is a legally watertight argument, even if not socially.

I'm aware that the UK has ridiculous restrictions on freedom of speech. The best solution to that, IMO, is to get rid of the ridiculous restrictions. The worst solution (also IMO) is to layer additional ridiculous restrictions on top of the existing ones. In what universe does it make sense to continue to restrict freedom of expression every time some crybaby complains that his feelings are being hurt?

[pocaracas]

No, it is not.
You cannot insult a country's authority figures, or you undermine the legitimacy of the country's government.
It's the same "everywhere".

Of course, you can insult them in the privacy of your home, or when chatting with friends, but never to the face of those authority figures.... or you may faces charges.

I don't think we are talking about the same thing, really. Since when are dead people authority figures, and since when can you insult them to their face?

Incidentally, where I live, I can insult authority figures publicly. It's even somewhat of a cherished tradition. What I cannot do is threaten them.

I must have missed the "dead" part in the previous posts... sorry about that.
Then I agree, it IS a stupid law.

[ideologue08]

What country do you live in? I'm interested because you said you don't "let" the police officers search you. That's not possible in Great Britain.

I live in Scotland. You can most definitely prevent a police officer from searching you when you aren't doing anything wrong. I've done it quite often. So, yes, you can do it in Britain.

Nice to see another Brit on here I seriously never knew you could do that up in Scotland, I've never been able to dodge being searched by the police, (although it only happened twice and only occured in areas where there was high knife crime). But the idea of refusing a search is novel to me haha

[frankiej]

Nice to see another Brit on here I seriously never knew you could do that up in Scotland, I've never been able to dodge being searched by the police, (although it only happened twice and only occured in areas where there was high knife crime). But the idea of refusing a search is novel to me haha

There are tons of Brits here... just not many from Scotland. It can get lonely sometimes.

I always have added incentive to not let them search me though... I'm always carrying weed.
I believe they are allowed to randomly search people's cars though... but I don't drive, so it's all groovy for me.

[ideologue08]

What country do you live in? I'm interested because you said you don't "let" the police officers search you. That's not possible in Great Britain.

It is in the United States, if neither probable cause nor a warrant is present. I've had police officers request to search the trunk (boot, to you UKians) of my car during a traffic stop. I always decline to allow them. If they had probable cause, they wouldn't be asking (*).

(*) Not strictly true, as they'll usually be polite about it and try to get consent (as it's a lot more difficult to get evidence thrown out when consent is given). If you decline, and the officer thinks he has probable cause, his requests will rapidly escalate to demands. The point is, they aren't asking for consent because they're being friendly - and it is generally not in your interest to consent to a search (or resist, other than to indicate that your consent has not been obtained).

Thanks for that info. I've actually watched a lot of police videos about America and I would say that in general, you guys have it better than us in terms of how the police conduct searches (although not sure about blacks or hispanics, I hear every other black person gets stopped in red states or maybe they're heavily exaggerating lol, but it might slightly be more race based over there I don't know).

In any case, I don't ever plan to travel to the US unfortunately even for a holiday because I'm a Muslim and the authorities in the US are pretty hostile to people like myself. After hearing what my friend had to go through at New York, it's just not acceptable really. It's supposed to be called the "land of the free" but I would say that we have more freedom when it comes to border security and also the judicial system. To search somebody's background and double check their hotel etc. is all fine, but to subject a Muslim to 9 or 10 hour detention at the airport for interrogation just so they can see the statue of liberty or downtown Manhattan really is taking the piss haha

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Nice to see another Brit on here I seriously never knew you could do that up in Scotland, I've never been able to dodge being searched by the police, (although it only happened twice and only occured in areas where there was high knife crime). But the idea of refusing a search is novel to me haha

There are tons of Brits here... just not many from Scotland. It can get lonely sometimes.

I always have added incentive to not let them search me though... I'm always carrying weed.
I believe they are allowed to randomly search people's cars though... but I don't drive, so it's all groovy for me.

I see lol I didn't know that, thanks for the heads up

That's pretty funny, we should just have the damn thing legalised so the police can look for other things worthwhile.

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In case you are not aware, hate speech laws do exist in Great Britain see here and here. Perhaps what the 25, 000 Muslims who marched wanted was the same speech protection afforded to dead British soldiers and dead police officers in the UK. What they are saying is, why can't those same laws extend to those who insult our dead Prophet? Which is a legally watertight argument, even if not socially.

I'm aware that the UK has ridiculous restrictions on freedom of speech. The best solution to that, IMO, is to get rid of the ridiculous restrictions. The worst solution (also IMO) is to layer additional ridiculous restrictions on top of the existing ones. In what universe does it make sense to continue to restrict freedom of expression every time some crybaby complains that his feelings are being hurt?

You have a point there yeah. It's just that us Brits are not like other people, we're pretty conservative as a society (although this is slowly changing). Public vulgarity and obscenities are generally not allowed and I would prefer it that way. I certainly wouldn't want the US 1st Amendment rights here in the UK, it would never be acceptable.