Tackling a root cause of terrorism
By Bruce Fein
Washington Times
Published December 21, 2004
The United States should criminalize a root cause of terrorism: hate speech
teaching that indiscriminate murders are morally justified to further a
crazed religious, racial, ethnic or political cause. Europe has been more
perspicacious than the United States on that score. The splenetic epithets
heard in many madrassas or mosques or taught in many Islamic textbooks are
exemplary of the evil. The grisly carnage and generations of conflict born
of such appeals to madness justifies the prohibition. Freedom of speech does
not include expression that hopes to provoke violence in order to destroy
democracy, the rule of law or human rights. As Supreme Court Justice Robert
Jackson warned in Terminiello vs. Chicago (1949), the Bill of Rights is not
a suicide pact.
The Intelligence Reform Act initialed last week by President Bush
featured commendable anti-terrorism provisions. Terrorist offenses were
added to the category of crimes carrying a presumption of no bail. The
definition of "material support" for a terrorist organization was clarified
and expanded. So-called lone-wolf terrorist suspects were made subject to
foreign intelligence surveillance warrants. Receipt of military-type
training at a terrorist camp was made a federal crime. But attacking
terrorism closer to the source was neglected.
It is born of psychologically warped minds. As John Locke observed, the
mind begins like a blank slate. There is no predisposition towards
terrorism. But neither is mankind born with natural virtue. Moral acuity and
decency must be cultivated to prevent civilization from degenerating into
anarchy and a war of all against all. As Hamlet observed, "There is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
The causes of human behavior are too complex to know with absolute
certainty the constellation of motivations and circumstances that culminate
in terrorism. Osama bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh defy a common explanation.
But the overwhelming majority of Islamic terrorism -- which dwarfs all other
terror in magnitude and gruesomeness -- is sparked by indoctrinating Muslims
to despise Christians and Jews as infidels, and the United States and Israel
as enemy states. Imams in madrassas and mosques around the world regularly
instruct their followers in the necessity of jihad. Islamic textbooks
frequently teach scorn or contempt for Christianity or Judaism.
These Islamic fulminations do not ordinarily provoke instant violence.
They aim to plant seeds of fanatical hatred in the expectation that time
will ripen those vile thoughts into terrorism against the alleged infidels.
And the mullah success rate in breeding Islamic terrorists is too great for
the law to ignore. Think of the September 11 wretches, Richard Reid or
Zacarias Moussaoui.
The United States should thus make criminal the advocacy of jihad or
sister terrorist activity against any nation or racial, ethnic, religious,
or political group with the specific intent of provoking such terrorism. To
borrow from the Supreme Court in Chaplinsky vs. New Hampshire (1942), like
obscenity and fighting words, "Such utterances are no essential part of
expression of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth
that any benefit derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social
interest in order and morality."
When terrorism is the goal, the argument made by Justice Louis Brandeis
in Whitney vs. California (1927) that "the fitting remedy for evil counsels
is good ones" is unpersuasive. Those indoctrinated in jihad live in a
demented intellectual universe. They characteristically insist that
September 11 was perpetrated by the CIA and Jews to provide an excuse for
the United States to steal Arab oil. They are beyond reason. Osama bin Laden
cannot be talked into civilized behavior.
Justice Brandeis also trips in declaring that advocacy is shielded from
punishment under the First Amendment unless it aims at immediate or imminent
serious violence. The Supreme Court later embraced that maxim in Brandenburg
vs. Ohio (1969). It declared that "the constitutional guarantees of free
speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy
of the use of force or law violation except where such advocacy is directed
to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or
produce such action." No explanation is forthcoming, however, as to why a
democratic State should be arrested in fighting those who would destroy
democracy, free speech, and every other earmark of civilized life by banning
the punishment of advocacy with a delayed time fuse. Although the wildest
ravings of Adolf Hitler did not invariably produce immediate violence
against Jews, they set the stage for Kristallnacht. Weimar Germany was
destroyed by speech celebrating violence and terror.
Freedom of speech is cherished because it facilitates the search for
political truths and peaceful changes in the law in accord with majority
sentiments. It should not protect advocacy that champions change through
terrorism.
Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer and international consultant at Bruce
Fein & Associates and the Lichfield Group.
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Give underprivileged students the materials they need to learn.
Bring education to life by funding a specific classroom project.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/FHLuJD/_WnJAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
--------------------------
Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL
PROTECTED]
--------------------------
Brooks Isoldi, editor
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.intellnet.org
Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has
not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of
The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT
YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of
intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods,
techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other
intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes
only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material
as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use
this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,'
you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
