Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is wrong: Criticizing someone's beliefs is not a hate crime (especially when there is good reason to do so)

I like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  He was a great basketball player and I take what he says seriously, even if I don't always agree with him: But this latest from him is just complete nonsense.

What Ben Carson said was not a hate crime. You can disagree with Carson's take (obviously Charles Krauthammer did), but spare me the clap trap that Muslims lives become more unsafe when you criticize them. As demonstrated by events in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Nigeria (just to name a few) Muslims lives are mostly put at risk by other Muslims. But we can't let Muslims feel threatened by Ben Carson's rhetoric. Let's abolish all criticism of everyone because bad things could theoretically happen. What could go wrong with that?

As Ray Bradbury noted:

We can't have people's feelings getting hurt by books and ideas that offend them...

HE SAYS THE CULPRIT in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, in which the government uses television screens to indoctrinate citizens, Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate. In the book, Bradbury refers to televisions as “walls” and its actors as “family,” a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends.
The book’s story centers on Guy Montag, a California fireman who begins to question why he burns books for a living. Montag eventually rejects his authoritarian culture to join a community of individuals who memorize entire books so they will endure until society once again is willing to read.
Bradbury imagined a democratic society whose diverse population turns against books: Whites rejectUncle Tom’s Cabin and blacks disapprove of Little Black Sambo. He imagined not just political correctness, but a society so diverse that all groups were “minorities.” He wrote that at first they condensed the books, stripping out more and more offending passages until ultimately all that remained were footnotes, which hardly anyone read. Only after people stopped reading did the state employ firemen to burn books.

With all due respect to Kareem Abdul Jabbar, what ISIS does to women, people who disagree with it, homosexuals, and to cultural treasures are hate crimes. Boko Haram kidnapping little girls is a hate crime. Murdering people and threatening people with death for making cartoons you disagree with are hate crimes. Rather than criticizing Ben Carson's comments, why isn't there more support for reforming extremist elements of Islam?  Ben Carson is not the problem that Islam is facing: Islam itself has the problem and had to start reforming itself.

Mark Steyn: Steer Clear of Steyn, Wild Seadogs of the Øresund, Mohammed and the Movies, Last Laughs in Europe, and Two Faces of Facebook

Instapundit: ISIS plans a nuclear holocaust, the Islamic threat in the USA, Mark Steyn

EBL: 10th Anniversary of Mohammed Cartoon Crisis in Denmark, Charles Krauthammer is wrong, and Syrian and German Crises

Camp of the Saints: Meet the New Holocaust, Same as the Old Holocaust and Twisting The Revolution Away

Ben Carson Warns: Hitler Could Happen Here
AmPowerBlog: Larry Flynt calls out lamestream media