RUTHFULLY YOURS

The St. Louis-based children’s publisher Really Big Coloring Books is in hot water this week.  The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamic supremacist groups are enraged, and Really Big Coloring Books is even receiving threats from enraged Muslims—all because of We Shall Never Forget, a coloring book that dares to portray the Islamic jihadists who attacked us on 9/11 as … Islamic jihadists.

With no sense of irony whatsoever, CAIR’s Dawud Walid thundered:  “This publisher is doing a disservice to innocent young minds by showing this type of nonsense.  Every single reference to Muslims in [the book] has to do with radical extremists and depictions of people being terrorists.”

Well, Walid, maybe if radical, extremist, terrorist Muslims, acting in the name of Islam and motivated by Islamic teaching, hadn’t murdered 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, a coloring book about that terrible day would depict Muslims in a different way.  But of course, this is the one truth that Hamas-linked CAIR and its allies and useful idiots would most like to obfuscate, so as to more easily advance their narrative that Muslims are victims and the problem is really “Islamophobia.”

But as far as Wayne Bell of Really Big Coloring Books is concerned, We Shall Never Forget is just telling the truth:  “Every time we mention one of the hijackers, we call them what they are.  And that’s what parents wanted.  Radical.  Islamic.  Muslim.  Extremists.  And every time we mention one of the hijackers like the three guys that drove the plane into the Pentagon, there’s nothing else you can call them.  I mean, what do you think, they’re having a bad hair day?”

George Orwell’s nightmare totalitarian state in 1984 featured the Thought Police, who watched individuals carefully for any sign of “thoughtcrime”—that is, of deviation from opinion that the authorities deemed acceptable.  This dystopian vision was all too real in Orwell’s own day, a time when Soviet authorities condemned untold numbers of people to torture and death for the crime of being “anti-Soviet”—that is, of departing from the thoughts and practices that the rulers of the Soviet Union had delineated for the hapless people they ruled.

It was to prevent such totalitarian coercion that the Founding Fathers formulated the First Amendment guarantee that Congress would make no law infringing upon the freedom of speech.  That freedom stands as our fundamental bulwark against tyranny, preventing a ruler from stifling dissenting voices that call his rule to account.  The First Amendment guarantee of the freedom of speech is the basis for all our freedoms, for without it, all the rest could be taken from us, and not a word could be raised in protest.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which consists of 56 Muslim nations, has been working for years to compel the United Nations to criminalize what it terms “Islamophobia”—by which it means any truth-telling about Islam and jihad.  To speak or write about what happened in New York City and Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001, would be thoughtcrime, placing one outside the realm of acceptable (and even legal) public discourse.

And as the OIC continues to pursue this campaign, stateside groups such as CAIR smear and vilify anyone who dares step out of the Orwellian lockstep and depict Islamic jihad teaching and activity accurately.  No one is safe—not even the publisher of a coloring book depicting the reality of 9/11 and the heroic actions of courageous Americans on that day.

It gets even worse.  Asked whether the company had received threats, Bell pointed to a colleague and said:  “That’s our COO.  He’s talked to the Clayton Police Department, a sergeant at the Clayton Police Department and the FBI, regarding your question.  That’s the answer to your question.  And so, it’s really good to be aware of your surroundings.  We’ll put it that way.”

So it has come to this.  In the United States of America, 10 years after 9/11, a children’s book that simply depicts the events of that terrible day accurately brings down upon its publisher spurious charges of bigotry from a terror-linked Islamic pressure group—and death threats from more bloody-minded Muslims.

Yet against this ugly intimidation campaign, Really Big Coloring Books is hanging tough, and standing up for the truth and the freedom of speech.  Show your gratitude for Really Big Coloring Books’ truth-telling:  Order the We Shall Never Forget coloring book here.