COMMENT | What can we do to make hate speech irrelevant?

COMMENT | Nobody should ever be arrested or have criminal action taken against them just for saying or writing things. In my personal opinion, it shouldn’t matter even if it is hate speech.

The reason for this is that I believe in total freedom of speech, and if anything, there should just be societal censorship instead of a systematic one.

But I know that I will have my critics on this issue and they will say that total freedom is risky and impractical.

How can you be sure that an entire society would make the right decision if we only depend on societal censorship? For the most part, I can understand where they are coming from. Sometimes I lose hope in society too.

For the time being, I can go with the flow just as long as there isn't an abuse of laws or suppression of expression. So having properly defined laws and a responsible and fair government is very important. But freedom of speech is just a side issue and not what I really want to discuss.

The main objective of today’s piece is about PAS’ Maran MP Ismail Abd Muttalib’s questions in...