1. First, he clearly and unambiguously threated the USA and its Empire by stating that the consequences for releasing the full movie "Innocence of Muslims" would be extremely severe. The Americans seem to be so afraid that they began burning classified materials in the US Embassy in Beirut.
2. Second, he demanded that all the websites which would be showing the movie be shut down by national governments.
3. Third, he demanded nothing short of a worldwide legal ban on blasphemous attacks against the major figures of Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
4. Fourth, he warned any nominally "Muslim" leader who would not do their utmost to support these steps that they would be considered inadequate.
5. Fifth, he indicated that all of these demands were non-negotiable and that the Islamic world would have to choose between humiliation and martyrdom, in other words, that the price to pay for insisting on these terms did not matter.
This is, in my opinion, nothing short of amazing and even somewhat disturbing.
One one hand, in a world ruled by an Empire with no other morals than hedonism and greed, with no sense at all of right and wrong and whose arrogance and hubris has exploded beyond anything imaginable, it is deeply moving and exhilarating to see that somebody has finally dared to say that "enough is enough" and that there will be a real price to pay for such infinite arrogance. On the other hand, I am disturbed when I see a political and religious figure like Hassan Nasrallah (whom I immensely admire) take it upon himself to set demands about what should be done not only inside the Islamic world, but globally, world-wide.
For all my numerous and recent articles condemning what I call "modern blasphemies as a quintessential hate crime", it is unclear to me by what authority Hassan Nasrallah would have the right to decree that, say, Papua New Guinea or Paraguay would have to ban a movie or shutdown a website. I would have felt more comfortable if Sayyed Hassan had invited all the countries of the world to ban insults to the religious figures central to any major faith, but what I heard today sounded less as an invitation than as an ultimatum and that is problematic to say the least.Finally, I profoundly believe in the right to freely choose between right and wrong. That right, as far as I am concerned, was granted to mankind by God in the Garden of Eden already, and I am therefore fundamentally opposed to censorship. I find any attempts at censoring the Internet as particularly dangerous because if/when the technological tools to do so are developed with the express purpose of fighting that which is fundamentally bad, the very same tools can then be used to suppress what which is fundamentally good.
I have to stress here that I am basing all of the above on the on-the-fly interpretation of Nasrallah's speech by Press TV, which one can hardly consider an official position of Hezbollah. I also am not sure as to whether Hassan Nasrallah has the rank and authority to make such global statement in the name of his followers or whether he should have waited for an official position on this matter by his spiritual guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Whatever may be the case, it sure looks like there is going to be hell to pay for the US Empire for is systematic lack of even minimal respect for that which other nations or religious hold for sacred. In that sense, what is happening today is a much needed wake-up call for the rest of the planet indeed.
What I see here is what I would call a "return of the sacred" and I welcome it with all my heart. That sense of sacred is, I strongly believe, a central characteristic of the truly civilized human being (as opposed to the only technologically advanced one but with the conscience and morals of an amoeba) and while the Western world, terminally brainwashed by secularism and Masonic propaganda, thinks that it can "de-sacralize" the rest of humanity it appears that these attempts are resulting into some rather nasty blowback.
If the translation by Press TV is correct and if, indeed, Nasrallah's reaction is a bit over the top and raises all sorts of delicate issues with its "planetary scope", I still can't say that I feel very sorry for those who, by design or by crass ignorance, never bothered to contemplate the potential consequences of their actions or their allegiance.
The issue of freedom of thought versus blasphemy is an important and complex one and, at least so far, the utter lack of anything worthy of being called "thought" in the imbecile movie which triggered it all does not quite call for a discussion of it. However, Hassan Nasrallah's speech might provide an excellent opportunity to ask the right questions about how to deal with true thought which might still be perceived as blasphemous by some.
Your thoughts?
The Saker