The email came in Monday from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the Pakistani government’s agency for regulating online communications. In thick legalese, it charged that my website Jihad Watch (the “Platform”) “is involved in dissemination of content against religion of Islam/Muslims, caricatures of Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH),” as well as in “circulating false rumors/reports against Muslims.” We don’t actually distribute any false reports or rumors, but we have stood up for the freedom of speech by publishing caricatures of Muhammad; the government of Pakistan professes to find that “outrageous” and claims that it is “severely hurting the religious sentiments of Muslims.” The post that is severely hurting Muslim sentiments turns out to be one from May 2015. Now that’s a slow burn.
The post that has the Pakistani government enraged and Muslims allegedly sobbing is an announcement that the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest that Pamela Geller and I organized in Garland, Texas, in May 2015 was sold out, and an excerpt from a Breitbart article about the event. It’s unclear why Pakistan has been so slow on the uptake here, and is only now getting around to warning me about my blasphemous conduct. One reason, of course, could be because issues of “blasphemy” and the freedom of speech are once again in the news because of the Qur’an-burning in Sweden, and so this old post somehow made its way to the desk of a bureaucrat in Islamabad.
Anyway, this notice from the Pakistani government, and our Muhammad cartoon event back in 2015, demonstrate the fact that there really is a clash of civilizations, for there are two irreconcilable perspectives at play here. One is the idea that the freedom of expression is an important right, even if one’s expression offends someone else, for to outlaw offending some particular group would be to set up that group as above criticism, and that would pave the way for tyranny. The other is the idea that because Muslims are offended by drawings of Muhammad, and some even become violent as a result of these drawings, non-Muslims must curtail their freedom of expression in order to avoid offending them, although no one is granting any other group the privilege not to be offended. The West continues to ignore the irreconcilability of those two perspectives and pretend that it can somehow come to some accommodation between the two. But it will only do so ultimately by sacrificing the freedom of speech, which is the way it’s heading now, or by standing up for that freedom even in the face of violent intimidation.
It’s also worth noting that the Garland event was the first Islamic State (ISIS) attack on American soil. Two jihadis drove from Phoenix, Ariz., to Garland to kill us all, but were themselves killed when they drew their guns in the parking lot of our event and shot a member of our security team. To my knowledge, the government of Pakistan has never said a word about that attack. But it is very upset about images of Muhammad, and announcing that it’s blocking Jihad Watch as a result. If the assassins had succeeded and a large number of us at the event had been killed, the government of Pakistan would still have been unlikely to utter a murmur of condemnation. Its priorities are that Muhammad must be honored by everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim. For them, the value of human life is secondary to that. And consequently, as far as its demand that we take down the post goes, the government of Pakistan can go pound sand.
Related: A UN Body Has Condemned the Burning of a Qur’an in Sweden. Here’s Why It Shouldn’t Have.
Pakistan is here saying they’ll block the site unless we explain and defend our actions, which of course we have no intention of doing for them, as that would be a tacit admission that the government of Pakistan actually has some authority over what we do. Ironically, we already block Jihad Watch in Pakistan ourselves due to the abuse we see coming from there, and have done so for nearly ten years, so the government of Pakistan must have made particular efforts to see this “blasphemy.” But I do thank the authorities for sending us this warning. At least the government of Pakistan is more honest than the hopelessly corrupt and compromised government of Britain, where we are mostly blocked with no such warning ever being issued.
Anyway, our tech expert has now unblocked Pakistan, so that anyone learning about this “blasphemy” there can check the site for themselves. So can any Westerner who is concerned about the survival of the freedom of speech. It’s going to be a close one.
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