Hillary Clinton’s claim during the last Democratic debate that the Islamic State (ISIS) is “showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims to recruit more radical jihadists” was swiftly proven wrong. In reality, the latest Islamic State video features Barack Obama (“liar”) and her husband (“fornicator”), but never mentions Trump.
More disquieting than its inaccuracy, however, is the fact that Hillary’s claim shows that one of the people most likely to be the next president of the United States is a foe of the freedom of speech, the cornerstone of any free society.
In claiming that the Islamic State is using “videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims to recruit more radical jihadists” (as opposed, I guess, to friendly jihadists), Hillary’s implicit point is that if we stop saying and doing things that she or they claim insult Islam and Muslims, then jihad recruitment will lose its impetus.
So if we adopt Sharia blasphemy restrictions and refrain from insulting Islam, everything will be all right.
It is important to recall that groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) routinely classify any honest analysis of how jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism as insulting Islam and Muslims.
And that Clinton has been on board with this initiative for years.
In March 2011, OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu gave a speech to the UN Council on Human Rights, calling upon it to set up “an Observatory at the Office of the High Commissioner to monitor acts of defamation of all religions … as a first step toward concerted action at the international level.” On April 12, 2011, the UN Council on Human Rights passed Resolution 16/18 with full support from the Obama administration, calling upon member states to impose laws against “discriminatory” speech or speech involving “defamation of religion.” In June 2011 Ihsanoglu said that such laws were “a matter of extreme priority” for the OIC.
Hillary affirmed the administration’s support for this campaign on July 15, 2011, when she gave an address on the freedom of speech at an OIC conference on Combating Religious Intolerance. Said Hillary:
Together, we have begun to overcome the false divide that pits religious sensitivities against freedom of expression and we are pursuing a new approach. These are fundamental freedoms that belong to all people in all places and they are certainly essential to democracy.
But how could both possibly be protected? Ihsanoglu offered his answer: by criminalizing what he considered to be a separate category, hatred and incitement to violence:
We cannot and must not ignore the implications of hate speech and incitement of discrimination and violence.
At the same time, he claimed that the OIC did not want to criminalize free speech:
Our cause, which stems from out genuine concerns, should not be interpreted as calls for restriction on freedom.
To understand how Ihsanoglu could call for restrictions on the freedom of speech while simultaneously claiming he was not, one had to enter his Orwellian world in which “hate speech” — so designated by Ihsanoglu himself and his fellow Islamic supremacists — is not and should not be considered to be protected free speech.
But Clinton had a First Amendment to deal with. So in place of legal restrictions on criminalization of Islam, she suggested:
… old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.
She held a lengthy closed-door meeting with Ihsanoglu in December 2011 to facilitate the adoption of measures that would advance the OIC’s anti-free speech push. What agreements she and Ihsanoglu made, if any, have never been disclosed.
Right after the Benghazi massacre, the father of one of those slain recounted that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to him at a memorial service about the Muhammad filmmaker, saying:
We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted.
And they did. The filmmaker went by several different names, had a record full of run-ins with the law, and at the time of the Benghazi attacks was out on parole. A condition of his parole, however, was that he not go on the Internet — which he apparently did in order to upload the notorious video to YouTube.
For that, he was arrested and imprisoned for several months, thereby becoming the first political prisoner in the U.S. for Obama’s war on free speech and enforcement of Sharia blasphemy laws. There can be no doubt that he was imprisoned not for the technicality of the probation violation (thousands of more serious probation violators walk the streets), but for insulting Muhammad.
His arrest was a symbol of America’s capitulation to Sharia. He became the first offender against the new de facto federal crime of blasphemy against Islam.
Over three years later, nothing has changed for Hillary Clinton. She is still proffering restrictions on the freedom of speech as the remedy for jihad terror: if we just “stop insulting Islam and Muslims,” everything will be all right. Yet if she becomes president and goes farther than “old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to silence criticism of Islam and Muslims, including the counter-terror analyses of jihadi motives and goals that so many Muslim leaders in the U.S. claim insult Islam and Muslims, she will find that the jihadis will keep advancing anyway. They are energized by motivations wholly different from rage over being insulted.
To understand that, however, Hillary would have to study the Islamic texts and teachings that she assumes to be benign and that she wants to shield from all critical analysis. By the time she gets around to doing that, it will be far too late.
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