Belgian minister says many Muslims 'celebrated' after attacks

What a stupid line of argument. Whether something is legal or not has no relevance to whether it should be discussed or not.

What makes the difference between a "discussion" and "hate speech" ? or "discussion" and "religious hatred" ?

There's no objective demarcation. It depends on the observer.

Here the objective demarcations for them.

Discussion: an act or instance of discussing; consideration or examination by argument, comment, etc., especially to explore solutions; informaldebate.

Hate Speech: speech that attacks, threatens, or insults a person or group on the basis of national origin, ethnicity, color, religion, gender, genderidentity, sexual orientation, or disability.

Hatred: the feeling of one who hates; intense dislike or extreme aversion or hostility.

Source: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/hatred?s=t

Implying that a group of people performing terrorism actions or celebrating terrorist actions in an insult, this makes the conversation a "hate speech" more than a "discussion".

Sure, but the complete refusal by people to even acknowledge there is an issue will ensure that this will remain the case.

These aren't any more objective than the people who wrote them. Which is to say, they aren't objective at all. Consider the categories included in the definition of hate speech -- who decided which ones to include and which ones not to include? What was their criteria for including these? Why is it hate speech to criticise a religion, but not a political ideology? Or a political or state religion (of the kind that they have in closed, totalitarian societies like North Korea, where the leaders are elevated to god-status)? Why isn't social class/status included in this particular definition, as it most probably would be in another definition in a different dictionary?

The definitions included in any dictionary reflect the biases and shortcomings of its writers and the times. Quoting them in the way that you have doesn't prove that they are objective, only that enough of the people who deliberate on the contents of the dictionary agreed on what should and shouldn't be included. Use an old enough dictionary, and the term 'hate speech' and any equivalent disappear altogether, which says much about the objective truth of it.



Hardly. It's no insult to say that the Islamic State, a group of people, commits terrorism -- it's just a statement of fact. Similarly, while I'm not convinced that there is enough evidence to substantiate the Interior Minister's claim about celebrations of the Brussels atrocity, I don't think that, if true, it would be abhorrent to say that that was the case.

One must remember that 'hate' isn't universally a bad thing, as the increasingly ludicrous standards of speech would have you believe. There is nothing wrong with hating -- verbally, even -- those who perpetrate or celebrate an atrocity, if there is evidence to suggest that either of those things has happened.

I didnt read your post after the first sentence.

As usual, this will turn out to be a gross distortion of the facts. We've had exactly the same thing in relation to 9/11 in the US and 7/7 in the UK, with scores of allegations emanating from reactionary sources that 'Muslims were dancing in the streets', etc, which have all turned out to be false on close examination.

That says more about you than it does about my post.

In the absence of any convincing evidence for either position, why are you so sure that what happened after 9/11 and 7/7 must necessarily be the case this time as well? I'm sure you can see that that's a The Boy Who Cried Wolf approach to determining the truth of a statement (even though the 'boy' in this case is a government minister, not a reactionary source, as you claim).

You denied a language to justify your claim. No sense to talk more.

In the case of the US, it was John McCain, a leading Republican, making the false statements, recently repeated by Donald Trump. (amongst others) So seniority is no guarantee of accuracy in these things.

In the absence of any convincing evidence for either position, why are you so sure that what happened after 9/11 and 7/7 must necessarily be the case this time as well? I'm sure you can see that that's a The Boy Who Cried Wolf approach to determining the truth of a statement (even though the 'boy' in this case is a government minister, not a reactionary source, as you claim).