With the OIC and the U.N. colluding in a serious effort to criminalize critical discussion of Islam worldwide, Eugene Volokh fights the good fight closer to home, in re an offensive flier at the University of Maryland:
Of course, there’s the now customary quote about the “difference between free speech and hate speech”:
“There is a difference between free speech and hate speech,” said government and politics and Spanish language and literature major Sana Javed, who helped to organize Palestinian Solidarity Week. “They were an irrelevant commentary on Islam, but we were talking about politics.”
No, there is no such difference under First Amendment law. Nor does First Amendment law draw a distinction between “commentary on Islam” (or Christianity or Judaism or atheism or whatever else) and “talking about politics,” since much commentary on religion is commentary on politics.
Just so. Don’t go the Euro-Canadian route, folks. Resist it on campus and anywhere else.