Barack Obama Quotes
You [Bill Maher] seem to have done alright with your TV show... I mean, I don't get a sense... to the extent that they're boycotting you, it's because of your other wacky views rather than your particular views on religion.
Obama, Barack. Interview by Bill Maher. Real Time with Bill Maher, HBO, 4 Nov. 2016.
Marlette was inundated by complaints from Muslims for his 2002 cartoon depiction of Muhammad driving a Ryder rental truck like the one used by convicted Oklahoma City terrorist bomber, Timothy McVeigh. The caption was, “What would Muhammad drive?” He was front-page news in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations. He received death threats. The Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim World League both demanded an apology. Marlette refused. When he was killed in an automobile crash in July of 2007, many Muslims believed that this was the retribution of Allah.
In September of 2005 a Danish Newspaper published some political cartoons showing the hypocrisy of some Muslims who use Islam to justify murder of innocents and terrorism. Months later, many in the Middle East protested vehemently and Muslim riots broke out because the Prophet Muhammad's visage was depicted against Islamic tradition. Many Muslim leaders claimed that insulting religion was an “abuse” of freedom of speech including those from nations which regularly publish material that is virulent against Christians and Jews.
The Vatican Congregation of the Index had banned Greene’s Book, The Power and the Glory. See {598544}.
In some universities would sometimes protest the selection of a commencement speaker and demonstrate. On some of these occasions the school administration withdrew the invitation. In addition to the problem described by Beckel, the university sells out its basic intellectual commitment to hear all ideas and points of view—regardless of how repugnant or evil. Commencement speakers tend to create a bigger problem because of the custom of the university granting the speaker an Honorary Degree. Whereas it is against the academic tradition to censor a speaker and having a speaker does NOT associate the University, the faculty or the students with the views of the speaker. But the granting of the Honorary Degree does imply an institutional approval and admiration of the speaker, and that is fair game for student protest. However in the beginning of the 21st century some extreme left wing students succeeded in intimidating spineless university administrators and trustees into censoring speech and the ideas of the speaker. This was typical behavior of the right wing brownshirts of the 1930s when it was the Fascists who were prohibiting certain speakers—usually left wingers. 80 years later it was the left wing extremists engaging in this undemocratic behavior.
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
