The Muslim World Vs. Free Speech

08 Apr, 2008 by John Hawkins

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Muslims are still threatening violence, some of it overtly and some of it in a more subtle fashion, over Geert Wilders’ short film “Fitna,” which shows Muslim violence in the name of Islam and the aftermath,

An online documentary film critical of Islam continued to shake the Muslim world over the weekend, sparking street protests, attempted censorship, and calls for retaliatory boycotts.

As tens of thousands of chanting Pakistanis gathered in Karachi Sunday to protest Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders’ film linking the Koran with terrorism and extremism, the speaker of Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament urged Muslims to sever economic ties with countries that blaspheme Islam, saying Western nations would quickly repent once they saw their economies endangered.

…And in Saudi Arabia, the head of a bloc of 56 Islamic states stepped up calls for governments to enact and enforce laws criminalizing the abuse of free speech to attack religions.

Speaking in Jeddah, Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said it was high time that the international community agreed that actions like Wilders’ film and the publication of newspaper cartoons lampooning Islam’s prophet posed a grave threat to global peace and security.

Unless the perpetrators of such acts of “intolerance and racism” were made to face justice under national or international laws, they would be free to defy the will of the international community and undo progress in improving relations between religions, he said in a statement.

You’ve got to love the Mafia style declaration from the OIC. After all, who do you suppose will be creating that “grave threat to global peace and security” if Muslims are offended? Could it be Hindus? Maybe the Buddhists? Oh, oh — I’ve got it, it must be the Catholics. Riiiighhht.

That being said, I’ve got to give these guys credit for one thing: they understand how to play left-wingers, particularly Western European left-wingers, like fiddles. There’s the threat of violence, which terrifies the lefties, mixed in with a call for international action, dialogue, and a claim that the people making the threats are really the victims. Meanwhile, Muslims, many of whom will ultimately act as parts of a 5th column against the nations that take them in, are being allowed to pour into these countries because the lefties are futilely trying to prop up an unsustainable social welfare system on the backs of immigrants.

It’s hard to know exactly how this is going to turn out in another decade or two, but the situation certainly has the potential to be much bleaker than it is today unless the West remembers where it left its spine.