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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Muslims Demand it and Europe Concedes to Limits on Free Speech

IN EUROPE, the proportion of the population following Islam is fairly large. And as usual, demands for accomodating Muslims are increasingly urgent. Here are some examples of freedoms given away (from an article in Reason magazine):

In January, the World Culture Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden, took down a painting, Scène d'amour, described by its artist, Louzla Darabi, as a "response to Muslim hypocrisy about sexuality, above all women's sexuality"; in October, London's Tate Gallery removed John Latham's God Is Great, a work that incorporated copies of the Bible and the Koran. (Latham accused the gallery of cowardice.)

In May, ruling on a petition by the Muslim Union of Italy, a magistrate in the northern Italian city of Bergamo ordered writer Oriana Fallaci to stand trial for vilifying Islam in her book The Force of Reason. (She had previously been acquitted on a similar offense in France.) In September, the European Court of Human Rights affirmed a Turkish court's conviction of a publisher for issuing a novel, Abdullah Riza Ergüven's Yasak Tümceler, that purportedly "insulted the Prophet and religion."

In April, after virtually no public discussion, Norway's Parliament passed a law that punishes offensive remarks about any religion with up to three years' imprisonment — and places the burden of proof on the accused. Three months later, Britain's House of Commons approved a bill that would criminalize "words or behavior" that might "stir up racial or religious hatred."

For some Europeans in the expression business, government limits haven't been necessary: they've opted for self-censorship. After being "warned by Muslim friends" shortly after van Gogh's murder, Dutch movie director Albert Ter Heerdt decided to "postpone" a sequel to his "multicultural comedy" Shouf Shouf Habibi! And in January producer Gijs van de Westelaken canceled a screening of Submission at the Rotterdam Film Festival, whose theme was "censored films." (Instead, the audience saw two pictures sympathetic to suicide bombers.)

Read the whole article: Tolerance or Death!

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Muslim Violence Censors Western Media

In an excellent recent article by Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, he wrote about what happened during and shortly after the "cartoon riots." The riots were caused by some cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. The drawing to your right is one of them.

Because Islam forbids the artistic representation of people, and because the cartoon implied that Muslims might be violent, Muslims across Europe rioted violently to protest. When it was all over, 187 people were dead. Over cartoons.

But that's not all that happened. As Bawer writes:

Not a single newspaper in Britain reprinted the cartoons. And both the Swedish and Norwegian governments provided textbook cases of cowering dhimmitude. But none of that was really a surprise. What did surprise, and disappoint, me was the American political and media establishment. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush condemned the Jyllands-Posten cartoons out of hand. The State Department denounced them too, and only reversed itself after getting an earful from the Danish government, one of its few allies in Iraq. In the entire United States of America, exactly one major newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, reprinted the cartoons. And while the major broadcast networks, as well as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, reported extensively on the cartoon riots, none of them ever showed the cartoons at all.

That is outrageous. And pathetic! With that kind of cowering political correctness at work, who needs enemies? This is still America, isn't it? Land of the free? Home of the brave?

Read the whole article: Who's Sleeping More Deeply — Europe or America?

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