Sunday, October 14, 2012

Mona Eltahawy Still Has No Clue How the First Amendment Works





Mona Eltahawy recently became an American citizen. Maybe that accounts for her inability to process the First Amendment. But it’s not that simple. Reading her latest Al-Guardian rant is like an excursion into the mind of a literate but completely immature 5-year-old. Her only real theme is, “But I wanna. And I’m right!”

For those just joining us on the #Savages bus and subway tour, Mona Eltahawy vandalized a pro-Israel ad run by Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs. Except according to her, she wasn’t attacking free speech but expressing her own free speech. It’s kind of how a three-year-old thinks that drawing on a wall with crayons is artistic expression. Adults are supposed to be smarter than that. Mona Eltahawy isn’t.

 
I wanted to use my profile as a commentator to test “protected speech”: if hate speech is protected, is my protest at it also protected? And if not, why not?
Because putting up an ad legally is free speech. Vandalizing an ad isn’t.
Is Mona Eltahawy genuinely this stupid? Is this something we need to start adding to citizenship tests for people from the Muslim world?
Does she honestly not understand the difference between a letter to the newspaper and scribbling all over someone else’s newspaper? They’re both protests, but one is legal and protected, while the other is an attack on someone else’s property and is not legal.
I broke the law, yes. So what? I broke it to make a point of principle.
‘So what’, is the problem here. When Mona Eltahawy took an oath of citizenship, she swore to abide by American laws. And she took that oath in bad faith.
Her point of principle is that she should be allowed to vandalize forms of speech that offend her. That is not how the First Amendment works.
 
In the Muslim world, permitted speech is established through violence. In the free world it’s established through ignoring what offends you. Despite her facade of liberalism, Mona Eltahawy is still very much a creature of the Muslim world and does not understand how America works.

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