Friends: I am near the sea now which I visit daily at dusk. It is my first vacation in more than a year. I plan to be posting some previously published material which still remains timely–perhaps timeless. But, breaking news may also interrupt my reverie at the beach from time to time.
I published this piece thirteen months before I began blogging for Pajamas Media. Again, it remain heartlessly up to date. Some developments have taken place: the heroic and almost unstoppable Rachel Ehrenfeld has persuaded the New York State legislature to pass legislation which protects writers who live and publish in New York State from being sued by Islamist “libel tourists” when they write the truth about Islam, jihad, or the funding of terrorism.
Front Page Magazine | August 14, 2007
When will the West awaken? Of course, I am not talking about your ordinary citizen or soldier but about our Talking Heads and other gate-keeping chatterers who simply refuse to “get it.”
Cambridge University Press not only recalls but has promised to pulp the book that authoritatively documents one Saudi billionaire’s funding of terror; many anti-jihadic writers and all our leading mainstream media have privately apologized to this same billionaire. Only Rachel Ehrenfeld has refused to “apologize” for telling the truth and has counter-sued him in an American court of law based on her First Amendment right to tell the truth. (She was initially sued in London where she lost by default; she chose not to appear in court). (Since I wrote this, Ehrenfeld lost in the New York State Court of Appeals on a technicality but she almost immediately and successfully turned to the New York State Legislature for a new law, now known as “Rachel’s Law.”).
At a recent conference in Los Angeles, sponsored by the American Freedom Alliance, Daniel Pipes announced his intention to start a legal defense bail fund for those who are sued by Islamists and their Western apologists for telling the truth. Not a moment too soon–although, regrettably, perhaps too late for Ehrenfeld. (It is not too late for Ehrenfeld since she is now trying to obtain federal legislation for all American writers in every American state). And, The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has begun a process of legal intimidation against my esteemed colleague, Robert Spencer. Accordingly, David Horowitz has launched a legal defense fund for Spencer. I have pledged money to this and advise us all to do the same.
Before this war is over, we will each need legal defense funds. And that’s if we’re lucky. Those in the Islamic East need bodyguards and air-lifts to safety in the West. But there is a pattern emerging in the West which we ignore at our own peril.
For example, a leading American publisher of law enforcement and counter-terrorism titles cancelled Dr. Nancy Kobrin’s book about Islamic suicide terrorism. I wrote the Introduction for it and together Dr. Kobrin and I “went public.” A number of other publishers emerged–but they quickly disappeared too. (The book now has a potential publisher. Stay tuned for more news).
I have been trying to find a publisher for a book titled The Islamification of America and guess what? No takers so far. I am ready to self-publish the work.
This is a very special kind of Gulag. The internet provides us with the most sophisticated and universal of platforms for such 21st-century “samizdats.”
We who write in the America are so far lucky. We are legally intimidated. We are silenced on campuses due to the “politically correct” ideologies that rule there. True, the American Jewish Committee recently paid for a full page New York Times ad signed by American college presidents who oppose the eternally-intended British boycott of Israeli academics and who bravely suggest that they be boycotted too. Well and good.
But guess who did not sign? Harvard, Yale, Vassar, California State University at Berkeley, Los Angeles, UCLA, San Francisco State, and of course, Norman Finkelstein’s old perch, De Paul in Chicago. (Maybe I’m wrong, maybe they did sign in a Harry Potter kind of way in invisible ink).
But this is nothing compared to what Muslim intellectuals (and women, rape victims, homosexuals, etc.) must endure in the Islamic world today. If they are lucky, they live in exile or in hiding and write under pseudonyms. A handful write openly and travel with bodyguards.
I am just told that Taslima Nasrin was, yet again, attacked by one hundred angry Muslim fanatics as she held a press conference in Hyderabad, India, to launch her new book. Nasrin, a physician and a feminist author who was born in Bangladesh, was once nearly lynched by a mighty mob there. She fled her country and lived in exile in Sweden and in hiding. Now, she lives in India where dozens of Muslim protesters, led by three lawmakers physically attacked her and her co-panelists. They demanded that India extradite her to Bangladesh (I guess for the kind of justice Bangladesh has meted out to that other hero, parliamentarian Chadhury, who was imprisoned and tortured because he wanted to visit Israel. He is currently on trial).
Her works have been banned in Bangladesh. She is being accused of being “anti-Islam.”
Islamists are moving against us in the West very carefully and in legal ways. In the overly revered “Third World” they speak in violence, their speech IS violence.
I hope that Taslima Nasrin remains safe and in India. And that the sleeping giant awakens before we have all been sued and censored into silence.
A Note: I retain the copyright to this article and you may also find it archived at my website www.phyllis-chesler.com
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