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My short answer is the first question is: No. Well, not unless the speech in question starts to demonize and dehumanize people who don't follow the religion of the speaker. Attacking mere ideas does not mean the denigration of people and groups. The second question I'll address further down.
First off, I need to state that "hate speech" has become a horribly-abused weasel term and has thus lost whatever meaningfulness it once had. The regressive left (SJWs, Neomarxists, Intersectional cultists, ect.) considers "hate speech" to be any form of speech which challenges their ideology and agenda. And of course big corporations (particularly Silicon Valley) have jumped on the "hateful bigots are under every couch cushion" moral panic bandwagon and used it as an excuse to engage in draconian censorship campaigns.
Having gotten that out of the way, I can get to my main point here: that many conservatives today can be rather schizophrenic and hypocritical when it comes to the hate speech concept. Take the popular conservative stance on Islam, for example. More specifically, the role of Muslim communities in Western countries. Christian conservatives in particular will waste no time in getting outraged at any unflattering things Islamic preachers say about the Christian religion, yet fail to apply that standard to Christian preachers who constantly denigrate other religions and worldviews like atheism.
I would argue that when an Imam tells his congregation things like, "the belief that Jesus was the son of God is offensive/blasphemous!" Zzzzzzz....boring. Such utterances are no worse or extreme than Christians claiming that nonbelievers are going to burn in hell for eternity. Islamic preaching in the West however becomes dicey when preachers:
(1) tell their congregants to self-segregate and resist assimilation, and worse,
(2) incite their followers into committing violent acts. Any responsible Western government would be vigilant toward discovering and rooting about those above two actions.
The first is a direct violation of the good-will and good-faith inclusiveness of Western society. And of course the second is a manifest national security threat. The second can easily be classified as hate speech when violent rhetoric and open calls for violence is directed toward specific groups of people.
What conservatives do rightfully point out though is the fact that Muslim hate speech often gets treated leniently or is even gets a free pass nowadays. Under the new "rules" dictated by intersectional leftist/SJW dogma, Muslims are monlithically deemed to be an "oppressed group," because a lot of Muslims happen to have brown skin or something (yeah, Islam isn't a race), and that the Muslim world as a whole is much poorer and undeveloped compared to the West. And voila, Muslims as a whole are victims of the evil West!! (and white people by proxy). As a result of this nonsensical leftist ideology, Muslims are now free to spew the most vile hate speech imaginable, while anything a white Christian says that doesn't bend the knee to Neoliberal globalism is put under a microscope and scrutinized down to every last detail. Islamist ideologues in the West have taken advantage of this new (anti)intellectual climate and have used it to advance their own agenda. The can freely spew their own bigotry and can act in bad faith all they want; but when any non-Muslim dares to call it out, they can simply claim the challenger is being a hateful bigot who is "punching down" at their poor little oppressed self. And the cultural left today totally eats up that (non)argument. Farcically, many regressive leftists now consider Islamists to be their "allies" in fighting "the man." This should be the dictionary definition of Useful Idiot.
In all fairness, if any speech criticizing Islam is "hate speech," then the same can be said of, any speech critical of the ideas/doctrine contained within ANY religion. Yeah, let's go ahead and apply that fair-and-balanced standard and see where we end up on the debate stage.
So back to the title: Is sectarian-dick waving hate speech? No, not when it merely denigrates ideas and abstract concepts. But when that speech starts going after specific people according to ethnic, racial, religious criteria, then sure. Otherwise, no idea, set of ideas, dogma or abstract concepts are sacred and protected in the general sense; there's simply too many competing belief systems among humans for that sort of thing to be even remotely tenable as enforceable policy.
First off, I need to state that "hate speech" has become a horribly-abused weasel term and has thus lost whatever meaningfulness it once had. The regressive left (SJWs, Neomarxists, Intersectional cultists, ect.) considers "hate speech" to be any form of speech which challenges their ideology and agenda. And of course big corporations (particularly Silicon Valley) have jumped on the "hateful bigots are under every couch cushion" moral panic bandwagon and used it as an excuse to engage in draconian censorship campaigns.
Having gotten that out of the way, I can get to my main point here: that many conservatives today can be rather schizophrenic and hypocritical when it comes to the hate speech concept. Take the popular conservative stance on Islam, for example. More specifically, the role of Muslim communities in Western countries. Christian conservatives in particular will waste no time in getting outraged at any unflattering things Islamic preachers say about the Christian religion, yet fail to apply that standard to Christian preachers who constantly denigrate other religions and worldviews like atheism.
I would argue that when an Imam tells his congregation things like, "the belief that Jesus was the son of God is offensive/blasphemous!" Zzzzzzz....boring. Such utterances are no worse or extreme than Christians claiming that nonbelievers are going to burn in hell for eternity. Islamic preaching in the West however becomes dicey when preachers:
(1) tell their congregants to self-segregate and resist assimilation, and worse,
(2) incite their followers into committing violent acts. Any responsible Western government would be vigilant toward discovering and rooting about those above two actions.
The first is a direct violation of the good-will and good-faith inclusiveness of Western society. And of course the second is a manifest national security threat. The second can easily be classified as hate speech when violent rhetoric and open calls for violence is directed toward specific groups of people.
What conservatives do rightfully point out though is the fact that Muslim hate speech often gets treated leniently or is even gets a free pass nowadays. Under the new "rules" dictated by intersectional leftist/SJW dogma, Muslims are monlithically deemed to be an "oppressed group," because a lot of Muslims happen to have brown skin or something (yeah, Islam isn't a race), and that the Muslim world as a whole is much poorer and undeveloped compared to the West. And voila, Muslims as a whole are victims of the evil West!! (and white people by proxy). As a result of this nonsensical leftist ideology, Muslims are now free to spew the most vile hate speech imaginable, while anything a white Christian says that doesn't bend the knee to Neoliberal globalism is put under a microscope and scrutinized down to every last detail. Islamist ideologues in the West have taken advantage of this new (anti)intellectual climate and have used it to advance their own agenda. The can freely spew their own bigotry and can act in bad faith all they want; but when any non-Muslim dares to call it out, they can simply claim the challenger is being a hateful bigot who is "punching down" at their poor little oppressed self. And the cultural left today totally eats up that (non)argument. Farcically, many regressive leftists now consider Islamists to be their "allies" in fighting "the man." This should be the dictionary definition of Useful Idiot.
In all fairness, if any speech criticizing Islam is "hate speech," then the same can be said of, any speech critical of the ideas/doctrine contained within ANY religion. Yeah, let's go ahead and apply that fair-and-balanced standard and see where we end up on the debate stage.
So back to the title: Is sectarian-dick waving hate speech? No, not when it merely denigrates ideas and abstract concepts. But when that speech starts going after specific people according to ethnic, racial, religious criteria, then sure. Otherwise, no idea, set of ideas, dogma or abstract concepts are sacred and protected in the general sense; there's simply too many competing belief systems among humans for that sort of thing to be even remotely tenable as enforceable policy.
