Youtube have refused a request from President Obama's White House to take down the anti-Islam film mocking the prophet Mohamed which sparked violent protests across the Muslim world. Youtube says that the video does not break their tos and they will not cave in to pressure to censor their content. The Electronic Frontier Foundation point out that this would be a slippery slope which would easily lead to mass censorship and 'thought police' style moderators trawling uploads to decide which videos the public should be allowed to see.
But why did Obama even try to get this video censored? Wasn't the act of even requesting that Youtube censor this video just selling out freedom of speech and the US constitution to please violent Islamist extremists?
From WNC: The question that I really want to ask is why President Obama would ask for this video to be censored in the first place, and whether that was the right thing to do. This video does not break any US laws – it does break Islamic Sharia laws forbidding blasphemy. The protests which have spread across the Muslim world are calling for Sharia law to be applied to the United States. Personally I see this as a manifestation of the kind of Islamic Imperialism which has swept the world in recent decades with the rise of Islamist groups. These protests are based on the idea that the laws of Islam are universal and must be universally applied, and that countries such as the United States do no have the right to determine their own laws if they conflict with Sharia law.
Does President Obama seek to censor media which Christians, or other religions, would consider blasphemous, or against their religious rules? No, of course not. So why is it that the President of the United States, when faced with a major assault on American law and American freedoms from the Muslim world, decides to take sides with the attackers rather than with American law and the American constitution? (Please note: what I am saying here is that by attempting to get Youtube to censor the video Obama was siding with the protesters attacking American freedoms by calling for their Sharia laws to be applied to the United States, I am not claiming that he sided with the militants who tragically attacked and killed American citizens in Libya).
Read more: http://worldnewscurator.com/2012/09/18/youtube-refuses-to-censor-mohamed-video-but-should-the-white-house-have-asked/#ixzz26pThwLwu
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