When Legal Behavior is made Illegal because of what the Lawless might do

The absurdity of the ruling by a federal appeals court, that high school students were rightfully instructed to turn their U.S. flag shirts inside out during the Mexican drinking holiday known as Cinco de Mayo, is trumped only by the court’s reasoning. You see, according to the court, the students had a right to wear the shirts but their safety was more important, which meant they didn’t have a right to wear the shirts.

Ruling: This is illegal because of what the lawless might do.

Ruling: This is illegal because of what the lawless might do.

Translation: Punish the law-abiding and reward potential law-breakers for fear of what they might do.

Via the AP:

Officials at a Northern California high school acted appropriately when they ordered students wearing American flag T-shirts to turn the garments inside out during the Mexican heritage celebration Cinco de Mayo, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the officials’ concerns of racial violence outweighed students’ freedom of expression rights. Administrators feared the American-flag shirts would enflame the passions of Latino students celebrating the Mexican holiday. Live Oak High School, in the San Jose suburb of Morgan Hill, had a history of problems between white and Latino students on that day.

Seems a little backward, doesn’t it? These types of rulings are incredibly dangerous, which leads us to the tactics of Islamic fundamentalists.

For example, the same court, earlier this week, ruled that Google must take the “Innocence of Muslims” video down from YouTube, while using a similar rationale, via the Los Angeles Times:

A federal appeals court Wednesday ordered Google to remove from the Internet all copies of an anti-Muslim film that forced an actress from her home because of threats on her life.

Part of the ruling included the actress’s demand that the video be pulled down because she was duped but at the heart of the case is rewarding the potentially lawless by giving them what they want so ‘no one gets hurt’.

For two weeks, the Obama administration blamed the anti-Muhammad video for the Benghazi attack. As we reported just two days after the attack, a clear motive to blame the video for violence in Egypt was to intimidate non-Muslim countries into passing laws that make any criticism of Islam a punishable crime.

Salafi Nour Party spokesman Nader Bakkar said at the time:

…after the movie that abused the Prophet (peace be upon him), none will dare object to our determination to put an article in the constitution that criminalizes insults of the divine through portrayal or animation of the prophet, His companions, and all His House and mothers of the believers… this is the least we can do.”

As Walid has clearly demonstrated, the circumstances surrounding the production of the video – to include the man behind it, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula –  leave open the possibility of some form of agitprop from Nakoula and others.

The Daily Beast reported that in 1997, there was strong evidence to suggest that Nakoula was a federal informant in a drug ring that involved money that was allegedly going to Hezbollah. In 2009, according to the Smoking Gun, Nakoula became an informant again in a plea deal that involved helping the Feds arrest Eiad Salameh, a bigger fish in the fraud scheme Nakoula was involved in. Salameh is Walid’s cousin and a Muslim fundamentalist who despises Coptic Christians, which Nakoula claims to be. In 2011, Salameh was arrested in Canada but the U.S. authorities refused to pick him up.

Nakoula: Was his film about agitprop?

Nakoula: Was his film about agitprop?

The tactics are what’s important here. When the 9th U.S. Circuit Court ruled that kids could not engage in lawful (and patriotic) behavior because of what lawless people might do, it aligned itself with the same tactics used by those who wanted to use the anti-Muhammad video to achieve similar ends. Such people are Islamic fundamentalists and… top officials within the Obama administration.

The mentality of rewarding would-be mobs by backing down to them is very dangerous indeed. In fact, if you want to see where it ultimately leads, look no further than Pakistan. Christians are being persecuted and police are arresting them in many cases, not because they agree with the mobs who demand the arrest of Christians for insulting Islam, but because they want to satiate the mobs.

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