One reason people in the Muslim world are rioting is that they believe that the United States government supports blasphemy against Islam because it allows Americans to make blasphemous representations of Islam. They do not grasp the American concept of free speech – they think that if the government permits speech, the government agrees with that speech. 

So what does the White House do? Instead of using this as a moment to defend free speech and to explain what the American conception of free speech is, they decide to take an action that implies that the president does indeed have the power to control the speech of Americans. So now, going forward, every time an American makes an anti-Islamic comment, the presumption will be that the government has allowed it, and supports it. 

Moreover, you did not even address the real argument, namely that there is a big difference between the two positions. The strongest reactions to over-revealing pictures that I know of in the Western world are cases like a defaced mural in Georgia and vandalized buses in Israel. While those crimes should certainly be treated as such, property crime does not even approach church-sanctioned murder in terms of intimidation and how strongly a civilized country should reject arguments backed by that kind of threat.

There are colorable non-religious arguments that minors should not have unfettered access to sexual material (for example, that it would inaccurately inform their perception of what typical relationships look like).

OH NOES! The childrens might be exposed to non-typical relationships!

The taboo against widely available pornography is also not specific to any particular faith; in many ways, it more resembles a community or even a legal standard than a religious one.

Yet, funnily enough, sexually explicit material was common in temples throughout much of the world before the Abrahamic religions took over half the planet and made sex evil.

That is very different than direct criticism of one sect’s religious beliefs. [Added: This applies equally to non-religious beliefs, although those seldom provoke reactions as strong as criticism of Islam.]  In fact, when a religious group responds to criticism by demanding that their critics be decapitated, I think it becomes all the more important to defend the critics and the criticism.

See also The Onion’s amusingly sacrilegious cartoon and associated news story from this week.

Source: http://jonathanturley.org/2009/10/06/blasphemy-american-style-obama-administration-supports-resolution-on-limiting-free-speech-to-bar-criticism-of-religion/

… And I honestly hope the nuts behind this video are safe. Muslims get so much abuse heaped on them from the West but this is no excuse for extremists rioting in the ME. Fundamentalists over there will find anything to stir up a mob and flex their muscles post-revolution, like this trivial video..

However, if Google allowed a government or a frenzied mob to decide what should be allowed on their servers, then we are all in trouble.

But that’s exactly why Google restricts sexual material. So why is the narrative that The Muslims are trying to suppress free speech when The Christians have already done it so thoroughly and effectively?

Sure, you need the inebriated ghost of Christopher Hitchens if you want the riffing to also win on style points; but the incredibly sincere sordid ultrakitsch pumped out by the true believers definitely passes into the realm of the autoparodic at times.

Take Ron Paul, for example.

Or organized religion, for that matter.

Of course, as has been pointed out, this video was uploaded in early July, and has only now been used as an excuse to incite violence towards Western targets by certain hate-filled Muslim individuals and organisations with their own agendas.

As an atheist, I find this all incredibly disgusting.

Please keep all your filthy religions to yourself.

If it wasn’t this particular video, there would have been some other video that would have been found as the pretext for the “freakout”, which was a cover for the attack on the US Ambassador in Libya (angry mobs can’t direct mortar fire on safe houses and fleeing motorcades).