Voluntarily Giving Up Free Speech in the West

The following is an article from the Washington Post entitled Shut Up And Play Nice: How the Western World is Limiting Free Speech by Jonathan Turley:

Free speech is dying in the Western world. While most people still enjoy considerable freedom of expression, this right, once a near-absolute, has become less defined and less dependable for those espousing controversial social, political or religious views. The decline of free speech has come not from any single blow but rather from thousands of paper cuts of well-intentioned exceptions designed to maintain social harmony.

In the face of the violence that frequently results from anti-religious expression, some world leaders seem to be losing their patience with free speech. After a video called “Innocence of Muslims” appeared on YouTube and sparked violent protests in several Muslim nations last month, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that “when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others’ values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.”

It appears that the one thing modern society can no longer tolerate is intolerance. As Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard put it in her recent speech before the United Nations, “Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.”

A willingness to confine free speech in the name of social pluralism can be seen at various levels of authority and government. In February, for instance, Pennsylvania Judge Mark Martin heard a case in which a Muslim man was charged with attacking an atheist marching in a Halloween parade as a “zombie Muhammed.” Martin castigated not the defendant but the victim, Ernie Perce, lecturing him that “our forefathers intended to use the First Amendment so we can speak with our mind, not to piss off other people and cultures — which is what you did.”

Of course, free speech is often precisely about pissing off other people — challenging social taboos or political values.

This was evident in recent days when courts in Washington and New York ruled that transit authorities could not prevent or delay the posting of a controversial ad that says: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.”

When U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer said the government could not bar the ad simply because it could upset some Metro riders, the ruling prompted calls for new limits on such speech. And in New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority responded by unanimously passing a new regulation banning any message that it considers likely to “incite” others or cause some “other immediate breach of the peace.”

Such efforts focus not on the right to speak but on the possible reaction to speech — a fundamental change in the treatment of free speech in the West. The much-misconstrued statement of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes that free speech does not give you the right to shout fire in a crowded theater is now being used to curtail speech that might provoke a violence-prone minority. Our entire society is being treated as a crowded theater, and talking about whole subjects is now akin to shouting “fire!”

The new restrictions are forcing people to meet the demands of the lowest common denominator of accepted speech, usually using one of four rationales.

Speech is blasphemous

This is the oldest threat to free speech, but it has experienced something of a comeback in the 21st century. After protests erupted throughout the Muslim world in 2005 over Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, Western countries publicly professed fealty to free speech, yet quietly cracked down on anti-religious expression. Religious critics in France, Britain, Italy and other countries have found themselves under criminal investigation as threats to public safety. In France, actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot has been fined several times for comments about how Muslims are undermining French culture. And just last month, a Greek atheist was arrested for insulting a famous monk by making his name sound like that of a pasta dish.

Some Western countries have classic blasphemy laws — such as Ireland, which in 2009 criminalized the “publication or utterance of blasphemous matter” deemed “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion.” The Russian Duma recently proposed a law against “insulting religious beliefs.” Other countries allow the arrest of people who threaten strife by criticizing religions or religious leaders. In Britain, for instance, a 15-year-old girl was arrested two years ago for burning a Koran.

Western governments seem to be sending the message that free speech rights will not protect you — as shown clearly last month by the images of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the YouTube filmmaker, being carted away in California on suspicion of probation violations. Dutch politician Geert Wilders went through years of litigation before he was acquitted last year on charges of insulting Islam by voicing anti-Islamic views. In the Netherlands and Italy, cartoonists and comedians have been charged with insulting religion through caricatures or jokes.

Even the Obama administration supported the passage of a resolution in the U.N. Human Rights Council to create an international standard restricting some anti-religious speech (its full name: “Combating Intolerance, Negative Stereotyping and Stigmatization of, and Discrimination, Incitement to Violence and Violence Against, Persons Based on Religion or Belief”). Egypt’s U.N. ambassador heralded the resolution as exposing the “true nature” of free speech and recognizing that “freedom of expression has been sometimes misused” to insult religion.

At a Washington conference last year to implement the resolution, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared that it would protect both “the right to practice one’s religion freely and the right to express one’s opinion without fear.” But it isn’t clear how speech can be protected if the yardstick is how people react to speech — particularly in countries where people riot over a single cartoon. Clinton suggested that free speech resulting in “sectarian clashes” or “the destruction or the defacement or the vandalization of religious sites” was not, as she put it, “fair game.”

Given this initiative, President Obama’s U.N. address last month declaring America’s support for free speech, while laudable, seemed confused — even at odds with his administration’s efforts.

Speech is hateful

In the United States, hate speech is presumably protected under the First Amendment. However, hate-crime laws often redefine hateful expression as a criminal act. Thus, in 2003, the Supreme Court addressed the conviction of a Virginia Ku Klux Klan member who burned a cross on private land. The court allowed for criminal penalties so long as the government could show that the act was “intended to intimidate” others. It was a distinction without meaning, since the state can simply cite the intimidating history of that symbol.

Other Western nations routinely bar forms of speech considered hateful. Britain prohibits any “abusive or insulting words” meant “to stir up racial hatred.” Canada outlaws “any writing, sign or visible representation” that “incites hatred against any identifiable group.” These laws ban speech based not only on its content but on the reaction of others. Speakers are often called to answer for their divisive or insulting speech before bodies like the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

This month, a Canadian court ruled that Marc Lemire, the webmaster of a far-right political site, could be punished for allowing third parties to leave insulting comments about homosexuals and blacks on the site. Echoing the logic behind blasphemy laws, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that “the minimal harm caused . . . to freedom of expression is far outweighed by the benefit it provides to vulnerable groups and to the promotion of equality.”

Speech is discriminatory

Perhaps the most rapidly expanding limitation on speech is found in anti-discrimination laws. Many Western countries have extended such laws to public statements deemed insulting or derogatory to any group, race or gender.

For example, in a closely watched case last year, a French court found fashion designer John Galliano guilty of making discriminatory comments in a Paris bar, where he got into a cursing match with a couple using sexist and anti-Semitic terms. Judge Anne-Marie Sauteraud read a list of the bad words Galliano had used, adding that she found (rather implausibly) he had said “dirty whore” at least 1,000 times. Though he faced up to six months in jail, he was fined.

In Canada, comedian Guy Earle was charged with violating the human rights of a lesbian couple after he got into a trash-talking session with a group of women during an open-mike night at a nightclub. Lorna Pardy said she suffered post-traumatic stress because of Earle’s profane language and derogatory terms for lesbians. The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal ruled last year that since this was a matter of discrimination, free speech was not a defense, and awarded about $23,000 to the couple.

Ironically, while some religious organizations are pushing blasphemy laws, religious individuals are increasingly targeted under anti-discrimination laws for their criticism of homosexuals and other groups. In 2008, a minister in Canada was not only forced to pay fines for uttering anti-gay sentiments but was also enjoined from expressing such views in the future.

Speech is deceitful

In the United States, where speech is given the most protection among Western countries, there has been a recent effort to carve out a potentially large category to which the First Amendment would not apply. While we have always prosecuted people who lie to achieve financial or other benefits, some argue that the government can outlaw any lie, regardless of whether the liar secured any economic gain.

One such law was the Stolen Valor Act, signed by President George W. Bush in 2006, which made it a crime for people to lie about receiving military honors. The Supreme Court struck it down this year, but at least two liberal justices, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, proposed that such laws should have less of a burden to be upheld as constitutional. The House responded with new legislation that would criminalize lies told with the intent to obtain any undefined “tangible benefit.”

The dangers are obvious. Government officials have long labeled whistle blowers, reporters and critics as “liars” who distort their actions or words. If the government can define what is a lie, it can define what is the truth.

For example, in February the French Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a law that made it a crime to deny the 1915 Armenian genocide by Turkey — a characterization that Turkey steadfastly rejects. Despite the ruling, various French leaders pledged to pass new measures punishing those who deny the Armenians’ historical claims.

The impact of government limits on speech has been magnified by even greater forms of private censorship. For example, most news organizations have stopped showing images of Muhammad, though they seem to have no misgivings about caricatures of other religious figures. The most extreme such example was supplied by Yale University Press, which in 2009 published a book about the Danish cartoons titled “The Cartoons That Shook the World” — but cut all of the cartoons so as not to insult anyone.

The very right that laid the foundation for Western civilization is increasingly viewed as a nuisance, if not a threat. Whether speech is deemed inflammatory or hateful or discriminatory or simply false, society is denying speech rights in the name of tolerance, enforcing mutual respect through categorical censorship.

As in a troubled marriage, the West seems to be falling out of love with free speech. Unable to divorce ourselves from this defining right, we take refuge instead in an awkward and forced silence.

jturley@law.gwu.edu

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

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Welfare For Multiple Wives

In Britain, husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review. Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognized formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal.

The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife, as is permitted under Islamic law (Shari'a). Ministers estimate that up to a thousand polygamous partnerships exist in Britain, although they admit there is no exact record.

Britain's concession is helping Jihadis fulfill one of their most important goals: To gain a numerical advantage. (Read more about their goals.)

Read more on that: Multiple Wives Mean Multiple Benefits.

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Blasphemy and Free Speech

PAUL MARSHALL, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, delivered a lecture at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., on February 3, 2012. Below are some excerpts:

A growing threat to our freedom of speech is the attempt to stifle religious discussion in the name of preventing “defamation of” or “insults to” religion, especially Islam. Resulting restrictions represent, in effect, a revival of blasphemy laws.

Few in the West were concerned with such laws 20 years ago. Even if still on some statute books, they were only of historical interest. That began to change in 1989, when the late Ayatollah Khomeini, then Iran’s Supreme Leader, declared it the duty of every Muslim to kill British-based writer Salman Rushdie on the grounds that his novel, The Satanic Verses, was blasphemous. Rushdie has survived by living his life in hiding. Others connected with the book were not so fortunate: its Japanese translator was assassinated, its Italian translator was stabbed, its Norwegian publisher was shot, and 35 guests at a hotel hosting its Turkish publisher were burned to death in an arson attack...

Western governments have begun to give in to demands from the Saudi-based OIC and others for controls on speech. In Austria, for instance, Elisabeth Sabbaditsch-Wolf has been convicted of “denigrating religious beliefs” for her comments about Mohammed during a seminar on radical Islam. Canada’s grossly misnamed “human rights commissions” have hauled writers—including Mark Steyn, who teaches as a distinguished fellow in journalism at Hillsdale College—before tribunals to interrogate them about their writings on Islam. And in Holland and Finland, respectively, politicians Geert Wilders and Jussi Halla-aho have been prosecuted for their comments on Islam in political speeches.

In America, the First Amendment still protects against the criminalization of criticizing Islam. But we face at least two threats still. The first is extra-legal intimidation of a kind already endemic in the Muslim world and increasing in Europe. In 2009, Yale University Press, in consultation with Yale University, removed all illustrations of Mohammed from its book by Jytte Klausen on the Danish cartoon crisis. It also removed Gustave DorĂ©’s 19th-century illustration of Mohammed in hell from Dante’s Inferno. Yale’s formal press statement stressed the earlier refusal by American media outlets to show the cartoons, and noted that their “republication…has repeatedly resulted in violence around the world.”

Another publisher, Random House, rejected at the last minute a historical romance novel about Mohammed’s wife, Jewel of Medina, by American writer Sherry Jones. They did so to protect “the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel.”

The comedy show South Park refused to show an image of Mohammed in a bear suit, although it mocked figures from other religions. In response, Molly Norris, a cartoonist for the Seattle Weekly, suggested an “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” She quickly withdrew the suggestion and implied that she had been joking. But after several death threats, including from Al-Qaeda, the FBI advised her that she should go into hiding—which she has now done under a new name.

In 2010, Zachary Chesser, a young convert to Islam, pleaded guilty to threatening the creators of South Park. And on October 3, 2011, approximately 800 newspapers refused to run a “Non Sequitur” cartoon drawn by Wiley Miller that merely contained a bucolic scene with the caption “Where’s Muhammad?”

Many in our media claim to be self-censoring out of sensitivity to religious feelings, but that claim is repeatedly undercut by their willingness to mock and criticize religions other than Islam. As British comedian Ben Elton observed: “The BBC will let vicar gags pass, but they would not let imam gags pass. They might pretend that it’s, you know, something to do with their moral sensibilities, but it isn’t. It’s because they’re scared.”

Read the whole lecture here.

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Speak Your Mind About Islam Day: Thursday, June 6, 2013

The declaration below was written by a British citizen who wishes to remain anonymous. Let's show our solidarity with the British.

Just this past week we were shocked to witness, in broad daylight, on London streets, the ambush and barbaric murder of Lee Rigby, a British soldier, husband, and father of a young child. Lee was ambushed by two men, one of whom spoke directly to the camera afterwards. This man made it clear that his motivations were based upon Islam and the numerous verses in the Quran that call for violence against non-Muslims.

Afterward, individual citizens from the UK and around the world flooded social media with their sentiments about Islam, the false narrative that it is a “Religion of Peace” and the blatant falsehood put forth by Prime Minister Cameron that the teachings of Islam had nothing to do with this brutal assassination. Several citizens have since been arrested by the government of Great Britain for comments they made under the influence of grief and anger. These actions by the government are an attempt to suppress free speech and must not be tolerated. We ask that you stand with these persecuted individuals as a unified people.

In response to the British government’s attempts to suppress free speech, we wish to declare Thursday, June 6th, 2013 “Speak Your Mind About Islam Day”.  June 6th is a day of great significance for the free peoples of the world.

In the 1940’s, American, Australian, Brit, Canadian, Frenchman, Indian, Russian, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Sikh and countless others were bound together by the common goal of eradicating forever the vile ideology of Nazism. On June 6th, 1944, segments of these diverse allied forces bound together and stormed Fortress Europe marking the beginning of the end of the ideology of Nazism as a force among men.

Let June 6th 2013 once again be that day for us.

On Thursday, June 6th, 2013 we ask that you flood social media with your thoughts on and knowledge of Islam as a clear and unmistakable message to our governments around the world that we will NOT be silenced by blasphemy laws, statutes on “community cohesion”, or threats and acts of intimidation carried out by our governments in an attempt to silence us on the issue of Islam and its undeniable ties to religiously motivated acts of terror around the world. Our overwhelming numbers and unified voice must make it clear that we will become increasingly UNGOVERNABLE, without becoming violent, on the issue of Islamic terror. An assault on one will be treated as an assault upon us all; we will stand together as one voice. Political careers will pay a price at the polls for the condescending act of telling us that Islam is what we all know it is not.

Rules of Conduct:

  1. Keep it civilized — nothing positive comes from mob-like behavior.  
  2. Focus on the ideology of Islam, not individuals.
  3. No profanity or ad hominem attacks — they cause people to tune out the message because of the messenger.
  4. The goal is to unite us, garner group support for the cause, and put our governments on notice that we will not be silenced.

Please share this now with every blogger and social media group you know about.

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France Allows Itself to Become a Muslim Country

A video shows Friday in Paris. A hidden camera shows streets blocked by huge crowds of Muslim worshippers and enforced by a private security force.

This is all illegal in France: the public worship, the blocked streets, and the private security. But the police have been ordered not to intervene.

It shows that even though some in the French government want to get tough with Muslims and ban the burqa, other parts of the French government continue to give Islam a privileged status.

An ordinary French citizen who has been watching the Islamization of Paris decided that the world needed to see what was happening to his city. He used a hidden camera to start posting videos on YouTube.

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Creeping Sharia in the UK

We received the following message from a doctor in the UK. He was having trouble posting a comment on Citizen Warrior, and we asked him to email the comment to us so we could post it. Here is his reply (printed with his permission), which is a personal perspective on the experience of living in a country in the process of Islamization:

I'm sorry, but my PC deletes immediately messages I send, in case anyone catches me maligning Islam (it is actually against the law here to malign Islam, and folks get fined or jailed for it).

The Organisation of Islamic Conference demanded that Western countries make it illegal to offend "religions", but by that they meant Islam so Holland and France and the UK set up laws to protect Islam. We are forced to eat halal food, for there is only ONE supermarket chain (Morrison's) that sells non-halal and if you don't live near one, it's tough luck.

All our schools, hospitals, supermarkets, takeaways, sandwich shops are halal (acceptable to Muslims) food. I will die before I eat food offered to a false God, and when an animal has suffered to give me meat.

Our police dogs have to wear special "booties" before going in a Muslim's house, and the police have to give the imam notice so he can meet them and escort them around the Muslim's home, but by then all the evidence is gone because the Imam has warned the Muslim.

They are walking over us all here in England. We even have to clear the pool because Muslim days are given priority, and one council in London "Tower Hamlets" is run by Muslim councillors who fiddled the postal voting system and piled in countless false votes from dead Muslims and those who live in Pakistan to cheat us. Our government was too afraid to cancel the election, and the Muslims "won".

They are the most dishonest, vile people you can imagine when they are in their masses...don't let them do this to USA.

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Sharia in America

THE FOLLOWING is an excerpt from an email by Guy Rogers, the executive director of Act! for America:

In a September 21st column, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson belittled Newt Gingrich for painting “Islam as the new Red Menace.” He dismissed any concern about a “stealthy insinuation of sharia into America’s legal system because no such thing is happening.”

And the kicker: “The ‘stealth jihadis,’ I suppose, must be like the ‘known communists’ on the list in Sen. Joseph McCarthy's hand.”

Robinson claims there is only one example of sharia here in America, the case of the New Jersey judge who ruled that a Muslim man committed no crime while beating and raping his wife, because he was acting consistent with his Islamic “practices.”

Robinson’s arrogance is exceeded only by his ignorance.

* Sharia has penetrated our financial system, in the form of sharia-compliant financial instruments offered by the likes of Citi Group and AIG. In an example of government accommodating sharia, Minnesota offers sharia-compliant mortgages for Muslims.

* Muslim prison employees, law enforcement officials, and even a Disneyland employee, have sued for the right to wear the hijab as part of their uniforms.

* Muslim parents in New Jersey are demanding private prayer rooms for their children in the PUBLIC elementary schools.

* According to a National Public Radio report in 2007, as many as 100,000 Muslims are living in polygamous marriages here in America.

* Harvard provided women-only gym hours to accommodate the demands of Muslims.

Of course, I could go on and on.

The Ground Zero Mosque imam was touted by politically correct elites as a paragon of interfaith tolerance. Now America knows Imam Rauf believes any government that does not practice sharia law is “unjust.”

Twenty years ago, those in the UK who spoke out against the coming of sharia were also ridiculed. Today there are some 85 sharia courts in the UK.

The playground antics of enablers like Robinson, who insist on calling names, conjuring up the demon of McCarthyism, and engaging in a foolish “see no sharia, hear no sharia, speak no sharia” will not change these facts nor diminish the threat.

But every time they launch into their sanctimonious condemnations of anyone who dares to expose the threat of stealth jihad, Islamists laugh at them behind their backs for being such dupes.

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TIME Magazine Submits to Islam

In an article entitled, Is TIME a Muslim Magazine?, Phyllis Chesler writes about "the pro-Muslim/pro-Islamist and anti-Western propaganda" in a recent popular news magazine article. She writes:

Time magazine has an August 30 cover story titled “Is America Islamophobic?” Within, the article is titled: “Islam in America: It’s part of the fabric of life, but protests reveal a growing hostility to the religion of Muslims.”

One might wonder why any “hostility” to a productive, historically significant Muslim presence in America exists. Time magazine does not tell us.

The article portrays Muslims as innocent victims and American non-Muslims as prejudiced racists who, historically, once banned Catholicism, tried to limit immigration, burned African-American churches, passed anti-Chinese legislation, criminalized certain Native-American rituals (polygamy, rejection of modern medicine), spawned the Ku Klux Klan, failed to elect a Catholic president until 1960, allowed Father Coughlin’s anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi rants to appear over the airwaves, and interned 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War Two. This is all contained in Time’s “Brief History of Intolerance in America.”

This article could easily appear in an Egyptian or Syrian magazine; however it would be Israel that would be blamed for various alleged atrocities, and Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and even al-Qaeda who would be seen as the innocent victims.

Time magazine does not balance out their history of American intolerance with a history of American tolerance, which included separating the state from religion, reforming religions, instituting a tradition of free speech, fighting a bloody Civil War in order to free the slaves, giving women the vote and educational opportunities, freeing Europe from Nazi fascist rule and waging a Cold war against Soviet totalitarianism.

Also missing in the Time magazine article is the fact that Muslim leaders, in the name of Islam, have behaved very badly and for a very long time. Missing is an equal history of Muslim countries which have practiced colonialism, imperialism, forced conversions, slavery (which is still practiced), and a far more barbaric mistreatment of non-Muslims infidels.

Recently, Muslims, in the name of Islam, have hijacked planes, blown themselves and other people up, flown planes into tall buildings, plotted bomb attacks in New York City’s Times Square and over Detroit, shot American soldiers down on a military base in Texas, and plotted to do so on military bases in New York and New Jersey. In addition, mosques everywhere, even in the West, have been preaching death to the Jews, death to Zionists, infidels, and Jihad Now! These mosques and their imams or mullahs have been funded by Arab and Muslim pro-jihad financiers.


What a pathetic display of ignorance on the part of TIME Magazine. Ignorance or dhimmitude or taqiyya. Whatever it is, this is outrageous for such a mainstream magazine with a staff of fact-checkers at their disposal.

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Free Speech: Use It Or Lose It

In 2005, Lars Vilks penned the infamous “Danish” cartoons. In 2006, global, choregraphed Muslim riots ensued, people died, newspapers boycotted the cartoons.

Publishers and authors began self-censoring, changing or backing out of contracts in order to avoid expensive lawsuits. Or worse.

In 2006, Palgrave-Macmillan reneged on its promise to publish "Quran: A Reformist Translation."

In 2007, the Cambridge University Press published "Alms for Jihad" but then immediately pulled books off the shelves to avoid a libel action lawsuit filed by the same sheikh who had sued Ehrenfeld.

In 2007, Canadian author Mark Steyn and his magazine, MacLeans, were summoned before the Canadian Human Rights Commission on charges that Steyn had “subjected Canadian-Muslims to hatred and contempt” and for “being flagrantly Islamophobic.”

Eventually, the Commission condemned Steyn but dismissed the charges for jurisdictional reasons. However, legal costs still had to be paid.

In 2008, Random House reneged on its contract to publish "The Jewel of Medina," a novel about Mohammed’s wife Aisha—and all because a single professor suggested via e-mail that the book “might lead to violence.”

Also, in 2008, Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, made a documentary, "Fitna," (translation: Strife), about Islam and anti-Western terrorism. Although Wilders’ just won a great electoral victory, he is currently facing government charges as a “racist” and purveyor of “hate speech.”

In 2009, ironically, Yale University Press published a book about the Danish cartoon controversy—but omitted the cartoons themselves without telling the author.

In 2010, the American author, Bruce Bawer and his Norwegian colleagues were accused of “racism” and “Islamophobia” by Norwegian leftists and Islamists; in June, 2010, the Norwegian government de-funded their excellent online website Human Rights Service which published work about Islam and women’s rights.

Finally, in June, 2010, the Public Prosecutor for Copenhagen charged the International Free Press Society and its president, Lars Hedegaard, with “racism.” Hedegaard dared to critique certain Muslim practices.

It is urgent that the West revamp our understanding of “hate speech” and “racism.” If we fail to do so, we will lose our right to free speech

The above is excerpted from Phyllis Chesler's article: How to Keep the USA From Becoming the United States of Arabia.

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Hollywood Concedes to Islam

IN AN ARTICLE entitled CAIR'S Hollywood Crusade, author Mark Tapson writes:

Since long before 9/11, CAIR has worked hard to steer Hollywood productions toward more and more sanitized depictions of Islam and Muslims, most famously in the 2002 film The Sum of All Fears, in which the filmmakers were convinced to swap out the original novel’s Islamic bad guys for a less politically insensitive choice, neo-Nazis (yawn). And yet CAIR was initially frustrated with Hollywood’s progress; at a White House rally almost exactly a year prior to the 9/11 attacks, Awad asserted that “Hollywood has not been our ally. Hollywood has distorted the facts. Hollywood has shown freedom fighters as terrorists. Hollywood has done the work that Zionists could not done [sic]...”

CAIR and pro-Islamist academics aren’t the only ones keeping up the pressure on Hollywood. Another Muslim Brotherhood front group, MPAC, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, even has a busy Hollywood Bureau, which educates (indoctrinates) filmmakers about Muslim customs and issues, offers script consultation (approval), and hands out awards to Hollywood people and projects whose work depicts Muslims and Islam in a favorable light (past winners have included Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin). The Bureau also seeks to “connect aspiring Muslim filmmakers, writers and actors to Hollywood professionals...”

Why is any of this important? Because while violent jihad is a serious issue, the cultural front is where this Clash of Civilization and Barbarism will be won or lost. Islamists who are patiently but assiduously working to tear down Western civilization are shrewdly crafting Hollywood’s subversive messages to the world. Is Hollywood as diligent in propagating a pro-American, pro-Western, anti-sharia narrative to export to the world?

Read the whole article: CAIR'S Hollywood Crusade.

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When you come across stories about concessions to Islam, please send them to:
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I urge all of us to use this link whenever we mention concessions to Islam: http://concess.blogspot.com

Setting Precedents

As Robert Spencer put it: "...it's a small accommodation in itself, but it reinforces the precedent that American practices must give way to Muslim ones whenever they clash. Once that precedent is set, it does indeed lead to the Islamization of American society, unless at a certain point non-Muslims are willing to draw the line and say 'Thus far, but no farther. No more accommodation of Muslim demands.' That line will never be drawn, however, as long as Americans continue to fail to see the larger implications and inevitable outcome of these individual incidents."

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