Islamic organizations, led by the 57-government Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), have for years been trying to intimidate the West into criminalizing criticism of Islam, so as to render us mute and defenseless in the face of the advancing jihad. Last week, their effort made a few small but significant advances.
5. Bahrain arrests four for insulting Muhammad’s companions on Instagram
Reaffirming the Islamic supremacist distaste for the freedom of speech, in Bahrain last week “four cyberactivists” were arrested for posting to Instagram what the state news agency described as “texts and pictures damaging to companions of the Prophet.” Most likely these “cyberactivists” are Shi’ites who dared to disparage figures of early Islamic history who are revered by Sunnis, such as the early caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman – all of whom were chosen as caliph instead of the Shi’ite’s favorite, Ali ibn Abi Talib.
Bahrain is a majority Shi’ite nation ruled by a Sunni minority, so the authorities who had them arrested no doubt saw these “cyberactivists” as making a political statement. But whatever they may have thought, they shut them down for making statements that have only been characterized in published reports as religious – thereby neatly reinforcing the OIC’s campaign to criminalize internationally what it terms “incitement to religious hatred,” by which it means “anything said about Islam that the OIC doesn’t like.”
4. Czech Muslims call for ban on book by ex-Muslim
The Prague Post reported that “Muslims in the Czech Republic are trying to have the book Islam and Islamism by Lukáš Lhoťan, a former Muslim, now an apostate from Islam, banned.” Of course, filing a criminal complaint demanding that a book be banned and actually having it banned are two different things, but the mere fact that Muslims are making such demands more frequently in the West is a sign that more assaults on free speech are to come.
The Muslims in the Czech Republic are using the well-worn playbook of Muslims in the U.S.: tar anything that tells uncomfortable truths about Islam and jihad as promoting “hatred.” For in his book, according to the Prague Post, Lhoťan charges that,
Muslims abuse the ideology of multiculturalism to infiltrate Czech schools, and they do not only deliver innocent lectures there but recruit converts and perhaps new jihad fighters.
Lhoťan, who was a Muslim for 12 years and then left Islam, also,
describes extremist tendencies inside the Czech Muslim community and tries to highlight their contempt for democracy, women’s rights and justification of suicide bombers.
True to the practice of Islamic supremacists in the U.S. who move to get critics shut down instead of engaging and debating them, Muslims in Prague and Brno are trying to have Lhot’an’s book banned rather than working to demonstrate their “moderation” and thereby showing these charges to be false.
3. UK’s Daily Mail sweeps jihad murderer’s Qur’an quotes under the rug
The UK’s Daily Mail reported Wednesday that Mujaahid Abu Hamza (whom the mainstream media insists on referring to by his rejected infidel name, Michael Adebolajo), one of the jihad murderers of British soldier Lee Rigby on a London street, passed a bloodstained note to a bystander shortly after the murder.
The Mail, a poor excuse for a newspaper in the best of times, published an image of the two-page handwritten note, along with a transcription. Conspicuously absent from the Mail’s transcription, however, was a series of twenty-two passages from the Qur’an that Mujaahid Abu Hamza cited in order to explain and justify his murder. As these included passages exhorting the believers to wage jihad and castigating those who shrank back and stayed behind, they’re highly illuminating of Abu Hamza’s motives and goals:
fight those adjacent to you of the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness (Qur’an 9:123)
But as far as the Daily Mail is concerned, they’re not worth considering. To call attention to them might lead some people to get a negative view of the Qur’an and Islam, and that can’t be tolerated in Brave New Multicultural Britain.
2. Katy Perry quietly removes “Allah” symbol from video to appease enraged Muslims
After a petition gained 50,000 signatures demanding that YouTube remove Katy Perry’s music video for her new song “Dark Horse” because a man wearing a pendant bearing the word “Allah” is burned in it, YouTube quietly edited the video to remove the pendant.
Neither YouTube nor Perry made any public comment, but the swift capitulation was a foregone conclusion. Katy Perry wants to be a star, not a martyr for the freedom of expression, and that’s exactly what she would have become had YouTube not removed the offending Allah pendant from her video. Islamic supremacists and their Leftist stooges would have manufactured a “controversy” wherever Perry appeared, accusing her of “bigotry” and “fanning the flames of intolerance.” Katy might have even stopped being invited to the best parties.
Can’t have that. Twenty-five years after the Islamic Republic of Iran first issued its death fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the West has learned its lesson: if Muslims are offended, quickly remove the offending item. Fewer and fewer people grasp the importance of the freedom of speech as a bulwark against tyranny. It is taken for granted that those who traffic in violent intimidation have to be appeased and given what they want. That’s why one thing we can be sure of is that there will be much more violent intimidation.
1. Appeals court orders Google to remove Muhammad video that Obama blamed for Benghazi jihad attacks
On Wednesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Google had to remove from YouTube the notorious trailer for Innocence of Muslims, the clumsy and amateurish film that portrayed Muhammad in a negative light, and that the Obama administration falsely blamed for the Benghazi jihad murders.
The stated reason was that an actress, Cindy Lee Garcia, who appears in the trailer for all of five seconds, had her voice dubbed without her knowledge or consent. While she may have a legitimate complaint, her quarrel is really with the filmmakers, not with Google. And with Obama wanting the video taken down in order to appease Muslims, and the OIC wanting it down as part of its campaign to make the West enforce Sharia blasphemy laws, this is not a positive development: it plays into the hands of the enemies of the freedom of speech, who are many and are growing more powerful all the time.
The panel has adopted a novel interpretation of copyright law that will invite uncertainty and chaos for the entertainment industry, documentary filmmakers, amateur content creators, and for online hosting services like YouTube, allowing bit players in movies, videos, and other media to control how and when creative works are publicly displayed.
What’s more, it is virtually certain that the court never would have adopted this “novel interpretation of copyright law” had the film involved material that adherents of any other religion found objectionable.
And so the Islamic war against the freedom of speech made yet another advance.
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