There is a dangerous collusion taking place between liberal repressive government wedded to an ideology of multiculturalism in concert with our MSM/elites and the most extreme elements of the Islamic community. This is separate from the overt alliance between the far Left and Radical Islam and by virtue of its more "liberal" veneer, more dangerous.
I have written quite a bit about the Moderate Muslim. Commenters often respond that there is no such thing, that extremism is an inherent part of Islam, and that critics from within Islam, like Wafa Sultan and Hirsi Ali, are apostates and therefore of no consequence within Islam. There is some truth to that as far as our MSM go. True Moderates, like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, are rarely acknowledged in the liberal MSM, only appearing with any regularity on Fox News or the pages of the National Review. At the same time, our government and our MSM regularly champion apologists for CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as spokesmen for Islam in this country. The problem is, if anything, worse in Europe and Canada.
The result is that in "the marketplace of ideas" the most extreme versions of Islam receives the majority of attention and prominence. Spokesmen for Radical Islam are well versed in couching their positions in simplistic and vague terms supporting Islam as a "Religion of Peace", and an uncritical and credulous MSM rarely attempt to expose the provenance or past comments of their spokesmen. This endangers those few brave Islamic souls who actually do take moderate and tolerant positions, exposing them to financial and personal attack. Moderate Muslims are regularly threatened with death for transgressing the Ummah.
At the same time, non-Muslims who offer criticisms of Islam, even those who are careful to distinguish between heinous acts committed in the name of Islam and the religion as lived by the majority of non-extreme co-religionists, are attacked as well.
However, the more insidious threat to the Moderate Muslim and to an open discussion and examination of Radical Islam, emerges from the (il)liberal perversion of our basic Rights under the rubric of tolerance and multiculturalism.
Our Right to Free Speech is under fire in novel ways rarely before seen in the West. Free Speech has always been our most precious right and a Right most sensitive to abridgment by those who would like to control the public sphere. By censoring criticisms and offensive speech, our elites, including our elite Solons, seek to protect their privileges and support the status quo. What is new and disturbing is the amount of money and intimidation behind the current assault on Freedom of Speech in the West. The enemies of free speech include liberal governments, a self-censoring MSM, and well funded front groups for radical Jihadis.
Few Americans appreciate that our Constitution is one of the few explicit guarantors of Free Speech in the world; fewer still appreciate that efforts being made to limit speech in other Western countries, especially the EU and Canada, likely foretell similar efforts here. Such efforts are already being made though so far our Courts have protected the First Amendment.
Rachel Ehrenfeld has been unable ti find a publisher for her work, Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed--and How to Stop It, ever since a wealthy Saudi Prince found an English Court in which to file a libel suit. Europeans have much more stringent libel laws making judgments easier to obtain even in the absence of any evidence of actual libelous behavior by the author. It has a chilling effect on the exercise of Free Speech.
Ezra Levant is the former editor of the Western Standard magazine, published in Alberta, Canad. He has been brought up on charges of "hate speech" for having had the temerity to actually publish the Mohamed cartoons two years ago, one of the very few publications to dare such behavior. Rather than being directly threatened with death, the usual response of angry and supersensitive Islamists, Levant has been threatened with a "thought crime" using the liberal mechanisms set up to protect the easily offended. The complainants represent those who wish to introduce Sharia law to the West:
The hearings were actually in response to two complaints. The first was filed by a radical imam in Calgary, Syed Soharwardy, a tin-pot fascist who has publicly called for Canada to be ruled by sharia law. Soharwardy boasts of his studies in Pakistani madrassahs and his religious lectures in Saudi universities, and he's bringing those Saudi and Pakistani values to Canada.
The second, almost identical, complaint was made by the Edmonton Muslim council. The chief difference between the two is that the Edmontonians cleaned up their spelling and grammar, and left out some of the nuttier sharia law arguments that are Soharwardy's specialty.
The "human rights" officer asked me to answer the Edmonton complaint that these cartoons made life dangerous for Muslims, and ought to be banned for that reason.
His response to this inquisition are instructive and courageous.
Our magazine had published eight of the Danish cartoons to illustrate a story (you can read it here after a quick and free registration) about the cartoon riots and the Western media's fear of printing them.
The magazine spoke for itself -- it's an artifact; anyone could see the words and pictures we used. Why would the commission ask me about my "intentions"?
Why would my intentions as publisher be relevant in determining whether or not the publication was illegal? The answer is that these "human rights" commissions are interested in what George Orwell called "thought crimes". If my thoughts were pure, the publication might receive their blessing. If my thoughts were impure, the very same publication would be banned. It's worse than a limit on freedom of expression -- which is when you say or print what's on your mind. It's a test of what's on your mind itself -- a limit on freedom of thought.
Again, I refer to Hannah Arendt's phrase, "the banality of evil". No six-foot brownshirt, no police cell at midnight. Just Shirlene McGovern, an amiable enough bureaucrat, casually asking me about my political thoughts, on behalf of the government of Alberta. And she'll write up a report about it, and recommend that the government do this or that to me. Just going through checklists, you see.
If you don't pay attention, you might not even realize that freedoms are being eroded. I had half-expected a combative, missionary-style interrogator. I found, instead, a limp clerk who was just punching the clock. She had done it dozens of times before, and will do it dozens of times again. In a way, that's more terrifying.
Over the weekend, the existence of a treasure trove of photographs detailing historical alterations to the Koran, thought to be lost during WWII, was revealed. The idea that the Koran may have been edited by men would attack a fundamental assumption of Islam. Christians and Jews have been made extremely uncomfortable by attacks on the fundamentals of their faith, yet their faith has tolerated intellectual attack and historical revisionism; Islam is a much more fragile faith, apparently, and cannot be expected to tolerate such questioning. As Elder put it when describing the find and its importance:
Even the Wall Street Journal remains elliptic when discussing the very real dangers of scholars looking critically at the Koran as they have looked at every other holy work. Rather than mention the very real risk of being murdered, the WSJ only says that they can "provoke" and "anger" Muslims - even making a comparison to how Christians feel when confronted with unorthodox interpretations of the New Testament.
[Spengler takes his own piquant look at the story today in Indiana Jones meets the Da Vinci Code. HT: DI]
MSM and elite liberal cowardice is a matter of indifference when the stakes are minimal, but with growing threats to our freedoms, especially from within, such duplicitous behavior becomes of grave concern.
It would be nice to continue Blogging in relative obscurity, but if the proponents of "hate speech" laws have their way, we may all one day find ourselves in the dock. And yet, that is not even the most dangerous outocme of the attempt to silence criticism of Islam.
As long as Radical Islam and its facilitators can escape the need to defend and explain the contradictions and excesses, the violence and hatred, done in their name, there is little hope that the Moderates will be able to win the ideological battle against those who wish nothing more than a full scale Clash of Civilizations.
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