Thursday, January 12, 2012

Clifford May: Free Speech Ends Where Islam Begins

The Dickinson Press--It’s funny in an Orwellian way that in Europe there are now militant groups with such cutesy names as Sharia4Belgium and Sharia4Holland. Less funny, but perhaps more Orwellian: Last month, the European Foundation for Democracy held an event in Amsterdam featuring two speakers who favor liberalizing Islam. More than 20 members of the pro-Sharia groups pushed their way in shouting “Allahu Akhbar!” They demanded the event be stopped, called the speakers apostates, spat on them, threw eggs at them and threatened to kill them.

Now here’s the least funny and most Orwellian part: Few Europeans — few journalists, politicians, members of the self-proclaimed Human Rights community, Muslim organizations claiming to be moderate — have expressed outrage over this boot-stomping suppression of free speech in a city, country and continent that claim to value freedom and tolerance.

Roberta Bonazzi, EFD’s executive director, vowed not to be silenced. “We are united and will continue to support inspirational Muslim reformers across Europe,” she said. Her speakers also kept a stiff upper lip. Canadian author Irshad Manji said that she and Dutch Parliamentarian Tofik Dibi had “refused to leave, even when police asked. We wouldn’t play on jihadi terms.” Dibi, of the Green-Left party, said “the disruption shows that even in the Netherlands it is necessary to continue the debate on reforming Islam.”

Necessary, yes; safe, no. In Europe, increasingly, free speech ends where Islam, Islamism and even Islamic terrorism begin. Two months ago, the Paris offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo were firebombed and its staff targeted with death threats after publication of an issue “edited” by the Prophet Mohammad.

In 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten published a dozen cartoons satirizing terrorism in the name of Islam. That led to protests, riots, death threats, an assassination plot and the bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan.

All this continues a trend begun in 1989, when Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered any Muslim willing and able to murder British author Salman Rushdie whose novel, “The Satanic Verses,” Khomeini deemed blasphemous. Rushdie has required bodyguards ever since.

In any of the more than 50 states that hold membership in the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC — formerly the Organization of the Islamic Conference) that probably would not have saved him. Last year, Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, defended a Christian woman sentenced to death for having said something some Muslims found offensive. One of Taseer’s bodyguards shot him 27 times.

There is not a single OIC member state that seriously guarantees freedom of speech. Nevertheless, in association with the OIC, the U.S. State Department last month hosted, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended, a three-day, closed-door international conference in Washington on combating religious “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization.” The conference reinforced the OIC tenet that all religions are equal — though one is more equal than others. OIC members are concerned only about the “defamation” of Islam and, evidently, they do not view militant Muslims attacking reformist Muslims as defaming their faith.

Nina Shea, who serves on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, attended part of the conference and reported that it “immediately reignited OIC demands for the West to punish anti-Islamic speech.” The audience was reassured that “the Obama administration is working diligently to prosecute American Islamophobes and is transforming the U.S. Justice Department into the conscience of the nation, though it could no doubt learn a thing or two from the assembled delegates ...”

From which delegates exactly? The Saudis whose school textbooks describe Jews as apes and Christians as swine? Or those of the European Union which, in response to the violence incited over the Danish cartoons, has mandated religious hate-speech codes that shield Islamic militants but, as the attack against EFD’s speakers illustrates, do little to protect the rights of liberal Muslims, much less of non-Muslims?

Will the day come when Europeans and Americans again stand up on their hind legs and defend their freedoms, values and traditions? Or have we effectively given up the fight in an attempt to appease such groups as the OIC and Sharia4Belgium? If only Orwell were still with us: I bet he’d have some pungent answers to these questions. (Source)

8 comments:

Search 4 Truth said...

Those guys werent Muslim. They were the CIA and Mossad trying to make Islam and Muslims look bad. They are trying to put a false face on Islam and Muslims. Those crafty CIA And Mossad are behind all of the hatred committed by fake Muslims in the name of Islam!

Robert said...

you do some great stuff David. When is the next abnsat atheism exposed show?

thanks

proof for god said...

Perhaps Muslims who disagree with other Muslims could debate the issue in a civilized manner and then the CIA might stop setting them up. Moreover, numerous Muslims need to put off the irrationality of Islam and the anger of their self-stultifying holy book. Muslims must repent and trust Christ to receive complete pardon for their sins and follow the God of love as they reject a god of hate.

Kufar Dawg said...

I'm waiting for the day anyone who criticises Islam is arrested in the USA for committing a "hate" crime. I'm betting Hitlary Clintonista will be spearheading the effort and the dhimmidiot lieberals will be applauding such a law as a victory for tolerance.

SGM said...

@ Osama Abdallah,

Do you believe that it is CIA or the Zionists behind the 20 members of the pro-Sharia group shouting Allahu Akhbar to stop the event in Amsterdam?
Do believe that it was CIA or the Zionists behind the Danish embassy bombing in Pakistan to make Moslems look bad?
Do you believe that it was CIA or the Zionists behind Pakistan’s Punjab province governor’s murder?
Do you believe that it is CIA or the Zionists behind the publication of Jews as apes and Christians as swine in Saudi school textbooks?

I assume that you do believe this. This makes me to wonder about Allah. He is supposed to be the best deceiver in the whole universe. But lately it seems like he is not able to do his job properly.
It appears that CIA and Zionists are able to deceive innocent Moslems to commit crimes to make Islam look bad. Don’t you think they are beating Allah in this game of deception? For crying out loud, if Allah is the best of deceivers, he should be able to deceive CIA and Zionists not to be able to use innocent Moslems and to make his religion look like the worst of all. For that matter, CIA and Zionists are so strong that for sixteen hundered years they have succeeded in using a handful of dictators to not implement Shariah in any of the Moslem country let alone the West. They even used disgruntled Moslems to kill the rightly guided caliphs.

Some thing to think about.

gspencer said...

@cornholio

This issue will have to be confronted directly.

IS TELLING THE TRUTH GOING TO BE CRIMINALIZED?

Multis/PC types, muslims, and leftists will all be in the YES corner.

But what will be the verdict of the vast majority of people.

Those societies which answer NO will continue to have a shred or two of hope though a great deal of shoring up democratic institutions remains to be done. For those who answer YES, those societies will be on a fast track down the road to tyranny. As it is now much of Europe is on the Tyranny Turnpike having saddled themselves with the unelected and therefore unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels. As Brussels cedes more and more to muslims, most likely via the OIC, much of the rulings from Brussels will be shariah-based.

On a positive note. Truth is finding its way, thanks in large measure to the counterjihad (eg, David Wood) and the evidence of the eyes. Many Europeans are developing a solid skepticism of islam, muslims, Brussels, and their own respective "governments" recognizing that the latter are merely kowtowing to Brussels.

Here too in the USA muslims are being seen with greater and greater suspicion.

None of these positive developments have come about willy-nilly. They are based on our growing awareness of islamic texts and how/why muslims are using those texts to carry out their war against the non-muslim. In other words, we are understanding the why of islamic theology, and it scares the daylights out of us.

muslims tell us that we should read their holy texts, koran, hadiths, sira.

I endorse this suggestion. So too does David Wood as he takes the very words of allah and shows them to be what they are, a mishmash of nonsense written to benefit mohammed and his suprematist/conquer-all mentality.

minoria said...

Guys,

I have just read the world-famous book by David "Spengler" Goldman.

His book "How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying Too)"(2010).

The info is startling.As we all know,irrational behaviour appears in all civiliations but I think one major reason among Muslims is INBREEDING.

Goldman shows the statistics for marriage to 1st and 2nd cousins among Muslims,it is from consang.net,in his book,pages 81-82.

THE GRIM SITUATION

1.Afghanistan: 55%

2.Algeria: 22%

3.Egyt: 30%

4.India,among Muslim Indians: 33%

5.Iran: 38%

6.Irak: 33%

7.Israel,among Arabs in Israel:34%

8.Jordan: 40%

9.Kuwait: 38%

10.Lebanon: 35%

11.Morocco: 20%

12.Oman: 36%

13.Pakistan:61%

14.Palestinian Territories:29%

15.Qatar:45%

16.Saudi Arabia: 45%

17.Sudan: 52%


Also 55% of Pakistani Muslims in the UK marry 1st or 2nd cousins.

For hundreds of Years

It has been going on for hundreds of years,the result would be a a degradation of the mental and Physical stock of the stock.

According to famous French scholar Emmanuel Todd,and who thinks Islam poses no danger for the world,on average 35% of all Muslims marry 1st and 2nd cousins.

curly said...

@Minora,
WOW... Thank you for statistic... No wonder, some of they are acting like animals.