Two Cases Challenge Clampdown on Terrorism Talk

First Amendment

Two Cases Challenge Clampdown on Terrorism Talk

Posted Oct 22, 2007, 01:02 pm CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

The First Amendment is being cited in two cases challenging the government’s attempt to bar controversial Muslim views from being voiced here.

“The question before the judges considering the two cases is thus a difficult one,” Adam Liptak writes in his Sidebar column for the New York Times. “What role should the First Amendment play when foreigners are doing the talking and the topic may be terror?”

In one case, the government cited the USA Patriot Act in denying a work visa to Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan, who wanted to travel here to teach at the University of Notre Dame.

Three academic and literary groups filed suit asserting their members have a First Amendment right to hear Ramadan speak. The government responds that Americans can still receive information about his views without seeing him in person.

A New York federal judge holds a hearing in the case on Thursday.

In a second case, the Times reports, the government is prosecuting two Brooklyn businessmen for providing material support to the radical Islamic group Hezbollah by carrying its TV station on their satellite service.

They contend the prosecution is “nothing less than a full frontal assault on the fundamental values inscribed in the First Amendment.” The government counters that the prosecution involves business rather than speech.

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