In Virginia, You Must Love Islam — Or Else

In one sense, Saddam Azlan Salim is a classic immigrant success story. Born in Bangladesh, he grew up in northern Virginia and quickly demonstrated an aptitude for the political rough-and-tumble of his adoptive land. Now he is 36 years old, a Virginia state senator, and a rising star in that state’s now-dominant Democrat Party establishment. In another sense, however, Saddam Azlan Salim clearly retains at least some of the sensibilities of the land of his birth, and he wants to bring them to his new land: He has just introduced a bill to criminalize “Islamophobia” in Virginia.

In Bangladesh, criticizing Islam can get you a swift death sentence. Saddam Salim’s Virginia version of Islam’s blasphemy law is much milder. Fox News reported Tuesday that the ambitious young solon’s bill “would define ‘Islamophobia’ ‘as it relates to the crime of assault and battery as malicious prejudice or hatred directed toward Islam or Muslims.’” 

This bill is a classic example of the proverbial camel getting his nose under the tent. At first glance, it appears to be crystalline common sense, and something that no one could possibly oppose. After all, no sane person is in favor of assault and battery of any innocent person. To come out against Saddam Azlan Salim’s bill would appear to be tantamount to saying that assault and battery is just fine. Salim is no doubt banking on his colleagues coming to exactly that conclusion and believing that they have no choice but to pass his bill. 

Still, there are problems. All “hate crime” laws are problematic because they venture, however gingerly, into the realm of criminalizing speech, and they aren’t actually necessary: Assault is assault, and should be punished accordingly, and the penalty should not be heavier or lighter depending upon the racial, ethnic or religious identity of the victim, and whether or not the attacker said something about that identity.

Even worse, in the case of “Islamophobia,” is the fact that the word has been used for years to refer not only to assaults on innocent people, which no reasonable person condones, but also to honest discussion of the motivating ideology behind jihad violence. It has been quite clear for years that efforts to criminalize “Islamophobia” are actually efforts to restrict criticism of Islam and honest analysis of the jihad imperative under the guise of criminalizing assaults against innocent Muslims.

Salim’s bill classifies assault and battery as the hate crime of "Islamophobia" when it is an act of “malicious prejudice or hatred directed toward Islam or Muslims,” and this is where the bill gets dangerous. For decades now, leftist and Islamic groups have insisted that accurate reporting regarding Islam’s doctrines of violence and the ongoing imperative to subjugate the world under the hegemony of Sharia by means of jihad is an act of “malicious prejudice or hatred directed toward Islam or Muslims.”

Never mind that the evidence for Islam’s sanctified violence, imperialism, and supremacism is readily available and so voluminous as to be irrefutable. To speak of this has been stigmatized as hate for so long (and still is today, as you can see in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s listings of “hate group leaders”) that Salim’s bill could all too easily become the springboard for the silencing of all criticism of Islam.

Related: NYT: Trump’s Counterterror Chief Has ‘Falsely Argued That Violence Is a Fundamental Part of Islam’

Salim intends his bill to have teeth. It “directs the Department of State Police, in consultation with the Office of the Attorney General and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, to include the bill’s definition of ‘Islamophobia’ in its hate crime reporting central repository.” 

Saddam Salim’s bill is clear enough, but if it passes and becomes Virginia law, how long will it be before someone is arrested and prosecuted for “Islamophobia” not because he assaulted a Muslim, but because he spoke about jihad violence as being intrinsic to Islam rather than as a hijacking of the religion of peace? I don’t believe it will be very long at all. With efforts to establish Sharia enclaves becoming ever more common in the U.S., and jihad violence continuing, Salim’s bill could all too easily be used to shut down all discussion of what to do about the problem of jihad and Sharia. Such a discussion, you see, would constitute “prejudice” and “hate.”

That’s what the left has claimed for years. Now, in Virginia, it’s on the verge of being codified into law.