The most recent death threat I received came on X (you know, that’s what we old folks call Twitter) on Sunday, and it was refreshingly direct: over a video of a group of men repeatedly screaming “Allahu akbar” as they burned multiple photos of Dutch politician Geert Wilders and me, the person behind the X account “Bhaie Asad” had written: “2 dogs. I kill you in shaa ALLAH,” that is, Allah willing. That account has now been suspended; I no longer bother reporting them, but others do, and they get banned, only to return a few days later. I’m sure Bhaie Asad and his friends will be back in a day or two with new videos and new threats.
This has been going on for a long time. A group of Muslims in Pakistan has apparently decided that one safe and easy way to fulfill their obligation to jihad and to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (Qur’an 8:60) is to make videos and gifs depicting me being tortured or killed or otherwise punished for my transgressions. One recent video had a man holding a gun shooting point-blank from about two feet away at what looked like an election-cycle yard sign depicting Wilders and me (now there’s an interesting electoral ticket), and still not managing to knock it down.
After I laughed at this on Twitter, they posted a new video in which the failed shooter, exasperated, kicked the sign down and stomped on the pictures of our faces. A gif from a year or so ago used my then-current publicity photo, in which I was faintly smiling, to depict me incongruously hanging upside down in hellfire, smiling benignly all the while.
Long before these Pakistanis latched on me as the particular focus of their keyboard jihad, I’ve been in the sights of various jihadis. Shortly after 9/11, I ventured incognito into a now-defunct pro-jihad site, RevivingIslam.com, where I found one fellow saying that I was already on al-Qaeda’s hit list, so there was no need for a new fatwa.
Another was kind enough to pray for me, although the content of his prayer was a trifle disconcerting: “May Allah rip out his spine from his back and split his brains in two, and then put them both back, and then do it over and over again. Amen.” My publisher at the time, Regnery, thought that was so funny that they put it on not one, but two of my book covers, and so far, I still have my spine and my brains, though many would say I never did have much of the latter.
Sometimes the jihadis have had help. In May 2015, jihadis from the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix attempted to murder Pamela Geller and me at our Muhammad art exhibit and cartoon contest in defense of the freedom of speech in Garland, Texas; an agent from Obama’s FBI, in a preview of what the bureau was to become, was egging them on all the while. Then in 2017, an Icelandic leftist posing as a well-wisher poisoned me after a triumphant event in Reykjavik. But I’m still here, for now, and the threats just keep coming. I know now that it would be pointless to go to the Biden regime’s FBI and ask them for help; they’d more likely give Bhaie Asad and his fellow jihadis my home address than bar them from entering the U.S.
My major sin, in the eyes of those issuing the threats, is slandering Islam, which in Islamic law doesn’t mean speaking falsehoods about the religion. A manual of Islamic law, “Reliance of the Traveller,” defines “slander” as “to mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike.” Nothing is said about whether or not what is said is true — only that the person would dislike it.
And as the Qur’an warns, “Woe to every slandering backbiter” (104:1). Bhaie Asad and his friends are especially enraged over my book “The Critical Qur’an,” which offers a new, clear translation of the Islamic holy book plus commentary from mainstream Islamic sources, showing why the book gives rise to so much hatred, fanaticism, and violence.
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I have no illusions. As I’ve said to many people who ask me how I live with these constant threats, it isn’t as if I’d be immortal if I were doing something else. As the left continues to push its insane and authoritarian agenda upon Americans, increasing numbers of people will see that they have to take risks in order to defend the freedoms that previous generations took for granted.
More and more Americans will soon come to realize that as they take these risks, they do not have the government and law enforcement apparatus on their side. The FBI, after all, is looking for terrorists in Catholic churches instead of among jihadis who issue death threats. The Founding Fathers knew that standing for freedom would not be easy, and would never be easy. Before too long, however, the choice will be stark and inescapable: submit to slavery, or stand for freedom even though it’s risky. May we all make the decision to stand.
If any times were times that try men’s souls, it is our own times. And it is all-important, amid all the disinformation and misinformation that is presented as the sober truth and even as fact-checking, to inform yourself as you make your own stand for freedom.
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