In America both the Left and the Right cherish Free Speech
enshrined in the First Amendment. Or at least the First Amendment is cherished
in the political spectrum’s right to criticize each other, but the Left
questions the Free Speech ability of the Right to expose the truth of
totalitarian issues supported by the Left. Why? Our Republic was established in
rebelling against a totalitarian King between 1776 {actually battles fought in 1775 but Independence
declared in 1776) and 1783 (Treaty of Paris). The Left
pretends to be the Party of the People but supports Big Government control of
society from top to bottom, aka totalitarianism.
With this all in mind, I think you will find Andrew Bostom’s
book review of Robert Spencer’s “The Complete Infidel's Guide to Free Speech
(and Its Enemies)” interesting. It points out that Islam is no friend
of Free Speech and the irony of the Left trying to protect Islam from
criticism.
JRH 8/2/17
**************
Robert Spencer Defends the West: 'The Complete Infidel’s
Guide to Free Speech'
JULY 31, 2017
FILE - DECEMBER 25, 2013: The Egyptian interim
goverment has declared the Mohammed Morsi led 'Muslim Brotherhood' a terrorist
organisation. The action was taken in response to the bombing of the police
station in Mansoura earlier this week, which the government has stated was the
responsibility of the Brotherhood, despite denials from the group itself.
CAIRO, EGYPT - DECEMBER 14: Supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and
members of the Muslim Brotherhood chant slogans during a rally on December 14,
2012 in Cairo, Egypt. Opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed
Morsi staged final rallies in Cairo ahead of tomorrow's referendum vote on the
country's draft constitution that was rushed through parliament in an overnight
session on November 29. The country's new draft constitution, passed by a
constitutional assembly dominated by Islamists, will go to a referendum vote on
December 15. (Photo by Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)
A review of The Complete Infidel’s
Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies), by Robert Spencer, Regnery
Publishing, 2017, 274 pp.
----------
Twenty-four years ago, the
late Mervyn Hiskett,
renowned British scholar of the history of jihad and Islamization in
sub-Saharan Africa, turned his attention to the looming impact of Islam on his
own Britain and Western societies more broadly, including the United States. In
his 1993 Some to Mecca Turn To
Pray, he articulated presciently the Islamic conundrum now
enveloping us, which requires an immediate response if we still cherish
individual liberty:
As
is so often the case when considering Islam, one has to concede the power of
certain of its ideas. But when it comes to having these ideas advocated within
our own shores, and as alternatives to our own institutions, one must then ask
oneself: Which does one prefer? Western secular, pluralist institutions,
imperfect as these are? Or the Islamic theocratic alternative?
And
if one decides in favor of one’s own institutions, warts and all, one then has
to ask again: How far may the advocacy of Islamic alternatives go,
before this becomes downright subversive? And at that point, what should be
done about it? Finally, do liberal, democratic politicians have the political
and moral guts to do what is needed, or will they simply give way, bit by bit
and point by point, to insistent and sustained pressure from the Muslim
“Parliament” and other Muslim special-interest lobbies like it?
Robert Spencer’s concise,
lucid analysis, The Complete Infidel’s
Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies), validates Hiskett’s
gravest concerns about Islamic subversion: the relentless campaign to abrogate
our most basic, unique Western liberty -- free expression. With characteristic
erudition, attention to detail, and wit (see text box on p. 28, “Did Any Of Them Have Eating Disorders? Those Can Make You Crazy,”
from this video), Spencer chronicles how
free speech in Western societies has been dangerously eroded by what Hiskett
aptly termed “the Muslim ‘Parliament’ and other Muslim special interest
lobbies,” in full collaboration with statist Left cultural relativists.
The grotesque harmonic
convergence between mainstream, totalitarian
Islam -- epitomized by Sharia “blasphemy” law --
and the “democratic” totalitarianism of the Left, derived from Robespierre and
the Jacobins through Communist ideologues and
leaders Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, is an underlying, recurrent
theme of Spencer’s urgent presentation.
Indeed the latter, “Dr. Crankley’s Children”
(per Whittaker Chambers’ acid 1948 discussion of the Communist legacy on the
100th anniversary of the publication of Marx’s manifesto), and their “softer”
statist minions of our era, bear at least as much responsibility for the
erosion of Western free speech as institutional Islam and
its pious Muslim votaries. Spencer elucidates how,
despite superficial appearances of being oddly conjoined:
… endeavoring to weaken
and destroy the freedom of speech, leftists in the United States have found
ready allies in the Muslim community. Many observers have remarked that the
Left and Islamic supremacists make strange bedfellows: the former advocate a
moral libertinism; the latter are attempting to impose a repressive moral
code. What binds these unlikely allies is a shared taste for
authoritarianism. Both parties want to stifle dissent, and in doing so both
find themselves fighting the same foes. Why not join forces?
All 13 of Spencer’s carefully
arranged, remarkably compendious chapters have germane (even pathognomonic!)
titles, including 10 epigrams:
Chapter
1, “Just Stay Quiet and You’ll Be Okay”
Chapter
2, “Tailored in an Appropriate Way”: Can Free Speech Really Be Restricted in
the United States?
Chapter
3, “Now Obviously This is a Country That is Based on Free Speech, but…,”: The U.S. Government
vs. Free Speech
Chapter
4, The “Hate Speech” Scam
Chapter
5, “Peer Pressure and Shaming” to Rein in Free Speech
Chapter
6, “Is That Being Racist?”: Americans Learn Self-Censorship
Chapter
7, “Irresponsibly Provocative”: The Erosion of Free Speech From Rushdie to
Geller
Chapter
8, “Can’t We Talk about This?”: The Death of Free Speech in Europe
Chapter
9, Catholics Against Free Speech
Chapter
10, “Not Conducive to the Public Good”: Free Speech Dies in Britain and Canada
Chapter
11, The New Brownshirts
Chapter
12, “The University Prides Itself on Diversity”: Administrators vs. Free Speech
Chapter 13, “Facing the New Totalitarianism”: Fighting Back for the Freedom of
Speech
Spencer traces the living Islamic law
imperative to brook no criticism of the Muslim faith, or its
prophet founder, to both canonical traditions of Muhammad and the Koran
(9:14-15) itself, which exhorts Muslims to wage jihad to punish the “offending”
infidels. Muhammad in effect created his own “Dead Poets Society”
comprised of victims (men and women, elderly and young) slain at his behest by
his most ardent early Muslim followers, for perceived “insults” to Islam’s
prophet. Citing the contemporary example of the Islamic State of Pakistan (and
the plight of Pakistani Christian, Asia Bibi), Spencer asks: to assure a
“future free of offense to Islam,” what exactions will “our leftist
politicians, media elites, and much of the Western intelligentsia” be willing
to impose upon
their own citizens?
For saying, “I believe in
Jesus Christ who died on the cross for the sins of mankind. What did your
prophet Muhammad ever do to save mankind?”, a Christian woman named Asia Bibi
is on death row in Pakistan, where “wounding [Muslims'] religious feelings” is
a crime and blaspheming Muhammad is punishable by death. Pakistan doesn’t have
the First Amendment. Americans in the United States are in no danger of
execution for testifying to their religious beliefs. But the Asia Bibi case
illustrates the utter futility of attempting to keep Muslims from ever being
offended -- unless we are willing to give up our right to freedom of speech
entirely.
Americans should not be complacent
about First Amendment protections. Reminding readers that the divide separating
“treasonous and seditious speech and speech that is simply unwelcome to the
government” has proven controversial throughout U.S. history, Spencer avers:
The
Sedition Act [of 1791] and the Espionage Act [of 1917] demonstrate the U.S.
government has placed severe restrictions on the First Amendment’s protection
of the freedom of speech in the past, and indicate that it could do so again in
the future. This history also shows that the First Amendment protections of
free speech are most likely to be curtailed in a time of serious and imminent
threats to the nation. That time may be upon us now.
Spencer emphasizes one
particularly alarming Obama administration reaction to the 9/11/2012 jihad massacre at Benghazi --
“scapegoating a video [and subsequently the videographer] criticizing Muhammad”
-- which illustrates such curtailment, “placing the onus on freedom of speech.”
He adds: “The
unmistakable implication was that if only Americans would not criticize
Muhammad, attacks of this kind wouldn’t happen.” Worse still, two days
following Barack Obama’s surreal Islamic blasphemy law-compliant pronouncement
to the United Nations General Assembly on September 25, 2012, that “the future
must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” America’s first Sharia blasphemy
law victim, Egyptian Coptic Christian Nakoula Basseley Nakoula,
producer of the Innocence of Muslims video, was arrested, declared
a “danger to the community,” and imprisoned without bail. He was incarcerated
for 12 months.
Devoid of First Amendment
equivalent laws, governed by Left statists marinated for decades in cultural
relativist claptrap ideology, and subject to the same forces of Islamization by
Muslim immigrant populations, Western Europe, as Spencer demonstrates,
including Britain as well as Canada, is even further along the
trajectory towards self-inflicted full compliance with Sharia blasphemy law.
Perhaps the most illuminating
and disheartening chapter of The Complete Infidel’s
Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies) chronicles progressive
Western supplication to Islam since Ayatollah Khomeini’s February 14, 1989
fatwa condemning novelist Salman Rushdie to death for his The Satanic
Verses, and its perceived insults to the Muslim creed and Islam’s prophet.
Spencer provides an
especially astute observation regarding a follow-up Khomeini fatwa denying
Rushdie any leniency for repenting, and offering a reward for any non-Muslim
willing to execute the beleaguered author:
The
invitation to non-Muslims to murder Rushdie was significant: Khomeini was
inviting non-Muslims to share Muslim sensibilities regarding Rushdie’s alleged
offense, and trying to induce them to do so by the prospect of financial
reward. It would take years for this invitation and foreigners and non-Muslims
to kill Rushdie to evolve into the “shaming,” as Hillary Clinton would put it,
of those who dared to decline to participate in the de facto implementation of
Islamic blasphemy laws. Clinton’s “peer pressure an shaming” imperative
demonstrated that, in the two decades between the Rushdie fatwa and her
endorsement of UNHRC 16/18 [i.e., the United Nations Human Rights Commission’s
“defamation of religion” resolution which riveted upon Islam and was
aggressively lobbied for by the UN’s Muslims nation members], non-Muslims had
become the principal enforcers of Sharia blasphemy law in the West.
Drawing upon his shared
experience with journalist and activist Pamela Geller in the wake of the May 3,
2015 Garland, Texas, jihadist attack on a staid exhibit of historical and
contemporary depictions of Muhammad, Spencer concludes:
It
is not an offensive act, but ultimately an act in defense of Western
civilization to show Islamic jihadists that their violent threats will not cow
me and that I will not allow violent intimidation to rule the day, and that I
will not offend them in any larger sense by treating them as if they were
demented children who cannot control their actions and must necessarily kill in
the face of being offended. It was the murderous jihadis who made drawing
Muhammad the flash point of the defense of free speech, not Pamela Geller, and
I.
It
is they who, by their determination to murder non-Muslims who violate their
religious law on this point, have made it imperative that free people signal
that they will not submit to them. If we give in to that demand that we conform
to this Sharia principle, there will be further demands that we adhere to
additional Sharia principles. It is ultimately a question of whether we will
submit to Sharia or stand up for freedom. At Garland we were standing. In the
aftermath, it is clear a huge segment of the Western political and media elites
are ready, if not eager to kneel, daring not to “provoked” their new masters.
A quarter century after
Hiskett’s Cassandra-like warning about
the liberty-crushing peril of acquiescing to Islam within Western societies,
Robert Spencer has meticulously documented its most dire consequences: de facto
elimination of free speech criticism of the Muslim creed -- and, ultimately,
free expression, overall. Spencer’s courageous and irrefragable analysis is
simultaneously a tocsin of imminent calamity, and a clarion call to action in
defense of free speech, our most fundamental, keystone liberty. Western
freedom-loving citizens must help bring his message to American political and
religious leaders before our liberties are transmogrified by the global Muslim
“umma,” seeking unabashedly (since 1981)
to impose “The Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights,”
i.e., Sharia totalitarianism.
___________________
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