Dual Standards of western nations is nothing new or unknown to the world. We have discussed this before that how differently and strictly they deal with situations that harm their own beliefs but they will show utter disrespect for situations that hamper Muslim beliefs.
Under the umbrella of “Freedom of Speech and Press”, the west will allow any kind of content regardless of how disrespectful it is for Muslims or how much hatred and unrest that content could cause in Muslim world. But the content (can be video, drawing or images) will not be removed because doing so will curb their “Freedom of Speech”, for which west is so proud of.
But, same “West” will get so seriously involved and provoked if topless pictures of their princess are published somewhere because such acts are considered shocking, disrespectful, crossing the line, absolutely shameless and particularly indecent to the Royal Family. Same west will in fact take such a publisher to court in the respect of their monarchy to get the publisher fined and possibly the imprisonment too for the disgrace that he/she has caused for their Royal Family. And by the way, all this will never come under “Freedom of Speech and Press”.
Just to clarify, before I move forward, I am not advocating the the publication of pictures. But rather I wanted to make a point that publication of such pictures is being challenged legally, despite all the slogans of “Freedom of Speech and Press” that are chanted by the west.
Talking specifically about the movie, which mocks Islam and Holy Prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H). YouTube said that this video in question doesn’t violate its community guidelines and will not be removed from the website, despite the fact that White House had itself to request the Google, the parent company of YouTube, to reconsider whether the video had violated YouTube’s terms of service or not.
Just to add, YouTube’s Terms of Services or community guidelines, under which the website operates, are available here.
I will pull a section from these guidelines for your review here:
We don’t permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity).
YouTube community guidelines further explain the term “Hate Speech” as following:
“Hate speech” refers to content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group. For instance, racist or sexist content may be considered hate speech. Sometimes there is a fine line between what is and what is not considered hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation, but not okay to make insulting generalizations about people of a particular nationality.
So apparently, as it seems, over two dozen deaths and millions of Muslims protesting over the video clip is not considered as a “Hate Speech” and YouTube (or Google) isn’t really convinced that video is spreading hatred amongst the humanity.
However, the same company, i.e. YouTube, removed a series of 10 animated movies just earlier this year which it thought came under “Hate Speech” and guess what, these animated videos were about Holocaust Denial.
Here is the complete report about the removal of these Holocaust Denial Clips.
There are countless other examples available when YouTube removed video clips because it were hurting their own beliefs, despite they allow “Freedom of Speech”, meaning that anyone could say, draw or paint anything.
Just to add here, there are laws for Holocaust Denial in at least 20 countries (including Israel) where you could be charged for denying Holocaust. Even in United States, local state laws can be used to prosecute blasphemy and Holocaust Denial.
So anything against Holocaust will come under “Hate Speech”, or anything against the Royal Family will be rated as indecent but anything against Muslims will come under “Freedom of Speech and Press”.
What kind of a world we are living in, I leave it to you to decide.
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