Top 10 Islamist Victories Against Free Speech Posted By Mark Tapson On September 1, 2010 @ 8:00 am In Email,Feature,First Amendment/Free Speech,Political Correctness,Radical Islam,Terrorism (Islamic),The Concession Stand | 3 <http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/09/01/top-10-islamist-victories-against-fr ee-speech-1/print/#comments_controls> Comments
Racking up victories against our Islamist enemy on the military and counterterrorism fronts will ultimately count for naught if we lose the Clash of Civilizations on the cultural front. The stealth jihadists know how to strike where we are culturally weak, patiently eroding our freedoms and pressing for special concessions for Islam and sharia. Their number one goal? Pressing for limits on our free speech in order to prevent criticism of Islam, thus hamstringing us in our efforts to even identify, much less combat our enemy's ideology. What follows is a list, in more or less chronological order, of ten significant victories we have handed the Islamists that are diminishing our most precious and unique freedom. How much more ground are we going to cede to our enemy in the name of political correctness and multicultural self-hatred? 10) Ayatollah Khomeini's Death Fatwa Against Salman Rushdie Nothing tends to squelch freedom of expression quite like being targeted for assassination. In early 1989, shortly after the publication of award-winning British novelist Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, the famously grim spiritual leader of Iran marked the author for death, for passages in the book supposedly blaspheming Islam. Rushdie was forced to go into hiding for many years; meanwhile the charge of blasphemy sparked riots and book-burnings in Muslim communities, and some people involved in publishing, selling, and even translating the novel were attacked and killed. The death sentence has never been rescinded. It marked the beginning of a long string of such public fatwas or threats issued - and sometimes carried out - against artists who dared offend the delicate sensibilities of fundamentalist barbarians, from filmmaker <http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2009/11/five-years-after-van-goghs-murde r-free-speech-is> Theo Van Gogh to Seattle <http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/muhammad-cartoon-activist-lands-on-al- qaida-hit-list/19550262> cartoonist Molly Norris. 9) The Invention of "Islamophobia" The most potent weapon the stealth jihadists have is our own cultural vulnerability to charges of racism, bigotry - and the utterly mythical "Islamophobia." I <http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mtapson/2009/02/16/the-worst-form-of-terr orism/> have written elsewhere that there is no such thing as "the irrational fear of Islam"; the term is, as Jihad Watch <http://www.jihadwatch.org/> 's Robert Spencer frequently points out, a trumped-up charge designed to bully us into silence while the Islamists proceed to shoehorn sharia into our culture. And yet ever since England issued the The <http://www.runnymedetrust.org/projects-and-publications/projects/past-proje cts/commissionOnBritishMuslims.html> Runnymede Report in 1997, addressing this "serious" new phenomenon, the concept has gained greater and greater acceptance. In January, 2001 at the "Stockholm International Forum on Combating Intolerance," Islamophobia <http://books.google.com/books?id=T1Eod-NzzRgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Roald+ +%22New+Muslims+in+the+European+Context%22&source=bl&ots=7HmQZB5sHt&sig=y8T3 UTIDIgcgrvvybsViGp_daUg&hl=en&ei=iZB5TMWyB4aisQP5zvDsCg&sa=X&oi=book_result& ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ> was officially recognized as a form of intolerance alongside xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Shrewdly exploiting our self-flagellating cultural guilt, the Islamists continue to succeed in cowing us with this magically potent accusation. Bush Avoids Language Offensive to Our Enemy After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush referred to the ill-named "war on terror" as an even iller-named "crusade," and then quickly backpedaled when it became clear that this terminology was - you guessed it - offensive to Muslims. The Bush administration officially retracted the word. As Diana West said <http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3986> before the International Free Press Society in 2009, This may seem like a small thing, no more than a diplomatic nicety, but the significance of excising this rousing and storied word from the vocabulary of Americans at the onset of war can hardly be overstated, and must be understood as an early and decisive psychological victory for Islam over the West. Bush also went on to rename Operation Infinite Justice, the attack on the Taliban, as Operation Enduring Freedom so as not to insult Muslims blah blah blah, who believe only Allah can dispense infinite justice. "Presumably," Ms. West noted, "Muslims do not believe Allah dispenses freedom, enduring or otherwise, so that was all right." Know what else is missing? Muslim bad guys 7) Hollywood Complicity For years, Muslim Brotherhood front groups like CAIR had been pressuring Hollywood to whitewash any hint of a connection to terrorism in its depictions of Islam and Muslims, but they weren't especially successful until, oddly, after 9/11, with the film The Sum of All Fears. The filmmakers were convinced to change the bad guys from Islamic terrorists (in the original novel) to Hollywood's go-to politically correct bad guys, neo-Nazis. This empowered the Islamists to put more effort into manipulating <http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mtapson/2010/08/10/cairs-hollywood-crusad e/> Hollywood's messages about Islam. Another Brotherhood front group, MPAC, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, even has a Hollywood Bureau, which "educates" filmmakers about Islam, offers script consultation, and hands out awards to people (like Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin) whose work depicts Muslims and Islam favorably. Hollywood eagerly complies. 6) The Danish Cartoon Riots In the wake of worldwide Muslim riots protesting the publication of a handful of cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims (some of which were later added by agitators to ramp up the outrage), the West's response was not so much a rousing defense of freedom of speech, but a renewed commitment to being more "responsible" and "sensitive" to the feelings of violent bullies, some of whom continue to try to murder aged cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. It now became clear that the West would reconsider its own values and freedoms in order to placate screaming mobs of totalitarians. 5) Geert Wilders Goes on Trial for Speaking the Truth Political correctness and an ever-increasing deference to charges of hate speech and Islamophobia have resulted in the Dutch Churchill, Geert Wilders, being <http://archive.frontpagemag.com/Printable.aspx?ArtId=33837> prosecuted for "inciting hatred" against Muslims. The accusation stems largely from his disturbing short film Fitna, which does nothing more than show the link between violence carried out in the name of Islam, and incitements to that violence from radical imams and from the Koran itself. So Wilders has been vilified, threatened with death, and charged with a crime not for committing any acts of hatred or violence himself, but for pointing out that others are committing such acts, and why. The Dutch court's response to assertions that he merely speaks the truth? "It doesn't matter that it's true; it's illegal." 4) Publishing Houses Censor Themselves Thanks to incidents ranging from the Rushdie affair to the Danish cartoon riots and beyond, publishers have begun to have second thoughts about incurring the wrath of over-sensitive Islamic murderers. Random House, one of the largest publishing houses in the world, rescinded an <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121797979078815073.html> offer to publish The Jewel of Medina, an erotic novel about Islam's prophet Muhammed and his child bride Aisha, after being warned by a scholarly consultant that many Muslims would almost certainly react violently. Eventually, a small British press daringly picked up the novel, only to result in the publisher's house being firebombed. Yale University Press, meanwhile, published The Cartoons that Shook the World, about the Danish cartoons and the resulting insanity, but in an astonishing and ironic act of self-censoring cowardice, declined <http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CB0QtwIwAw&url=http%3A% 2F%2Fwww.slate.com%2Fid%2F2225504&ei=n_Z5TInuH4P0swPIwL3sCg&usg=AFQjCNF-7gSm z1_fg04zZ1OZCExNaHljpg> to include the offending cartoons themselves. Another opportunity missed to stand up for Western civilization and freedom. 3) Comedy Central Ridicules Every Religious Figure Except Muhammed Comedy Central's South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were targeted by a not-so-subtle threat <http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/202048.php> from the leader of a New York-based group of fanatics at RevolutionMuslim.com. The fearless and equal-opportunity satirists at South Park were deemed guilty of an insulting depiction of Muhammad, and subsequently, to its shame, Comedy Central censored the episode. In clarifying his threat, the Revolution Muslim leader openly acknowledged that Free speech is not a value that Muslims share with America as a whole. Apparently Comedy Central doesn't value it too highly either. 2) The Obama Administration Abolishes Any Discussion of Islam and Terrorism Obama has taken Bush's verbal sensitivity toward Muslims to its extreme, removing <http://www.japantoday.com/category/world/view/obama-bans-terms-such-as-isla m-jihad-from-us-security-strategy> any linguistic connection between Islam and terrorism. This led to an almost comical confrontation with Attorney General Eric Holder in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, squirming in his seat <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOQt_mP6Pgg> and doing verbal gymnastics to avoid any combination of words that hint at "Islamic extremism." In another example, A Department of <http://www.defense.gov/news/d20100820FortHoodFollowon.pdf> Defense report offering recommendations in the wake of the Ft. Hood shooting not only doesn't mention the words Islam, Muslim, or jihad, but fails even to mention the murdering jihadist Nidal Hassan by name. In England, this form of political correctness has reached such an absurd degree that Islamic terrorism is actually referred to officially as "anti-Islamic terrorism." 1) Obama Sends <http://www.investigativeproject.org/1803/questions-for-americas-new-oic-env oy> an Envoy to the OIC As part of his effort to "reach out to the Muslim world" and convey to them just how sorry America is for existing, and how willing we are to commit cultural suicide, President Obama has followed in Bush's footsteps and sent an envoy to the OIC, the Organization <http://discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7453> of the Islamic Conference, the world's largest official Islamic body, legitimizing their attempts to criminalize defamation of religion (and by religion, the OIC means Islam). Rashad Hussein, who has his own questionable <http://www.investigativeproject.org/1803/questions-for-americas-new-oic-env oy> positions about America and Islamic terrorism, is hardly the representative we need to combat the Islamist OIC, which actually labeled Islamophobia as "the <http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mtapson/2009/02/16/the-worst-form-of-terr orism/> worst form of terrorism." If the OIC succeeds - and Obama has given every indication that he is sympathetic to their aim - then freedom of speech will have suffered a mortal blow. _____ Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com URL to article: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/09/01/top-10-islamist-victories-against-fre e-speech-1/ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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