DIANA WEST: HEDEGAARD-STAND UP ABSOLUTELY FOR FREE SPEECH
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2463/Hedegaard-Stand-Up-Absolutely-for-Free-Speech.aspx
My fine friend and colleague Lars Hedegaard, editor of Dispatch International, sat down with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas last month in Washington, DC, for an interview, posted here.
Ginni’s first question came down to why — why have there been so many assassinations and attempted assassinations of Europeans, including against Lars in February, for speaking (and drawing cartoons) about Islam?
Lars replies with the perception and lucidity that are second nature to him.
It all comes from the fatwa in ’89 against Salman Rushdie. If they could pull that off without any serious consequences in Tehran, then, of course, the way was open to others to try the same thing. What it comes down to is, basically, the contention by the powers-that-be in the Muslim world that sharia law has in fact been established as the law of Europe. They seem to think they have the right to implement sharia law in contravention of our laws and our constitutions. It can only be regarded in that manner. Up ’til the fatwa against Rushdie, nobody would have assumed that we couldn’t say anything we wanted in the Western world. It was beyond anyone’s comprehension that some long-bearded mullahs in a faraway country would dare to threaten inhabitants of our countries. But now it’s taken for granted they have that right.
Had we reacted forcefully in ’89, given an ultimatum to Tehran saying: You have about 24 hours to withdraw this fatwa otherwise there will be very serious consequences; we may bomb you until you surrender; we may bomb your holy cities where you’re thinking all this up. Instead they negotiated, they acquiesced, and thereby paved the way for even more of this murder and mayhem.
And what did the West acquiesce to? This a key point to underscore. By acquiescing, by negotiating, by determining that in response to this untenable outrage of a “fatwa” against Rushdie, this “free” British citizen would hereon live as a prisoner inside the “free” West, the great Western powers acquiesced to the sancitity, the relevance, and the dominion of Islamic blasphemy law. This is why, as Lars points out, the Muslim powers-that-be, along with their Muslim gun- or axe-wielding foot soldiers, continue to believe they have the right to implement sharia blasphemy laws against rebels such as he. With each Free-World killing or attempted killing (or protest or boycott or death threats), with our every acquiescence to this new “normal,” the lingering fear factor further chills public discourse, further enforces Islamic blasphemy law, further paralyzes political action to reject Islamic law. To “blaspheme” in Islam is to commit a capital crime according to Islam’s law, as we discovered in the Rushdie affair. But it now treated as a crime or, at least, a grave, beyond-the-pale offense in the West.
Such is the advanced state of our dhimmitude.
But is this only or even mainly a European problem? No. I have long argued (and even in Copenhagen) that American media and politicians, despite the First Amendment, willingly and servilely submit to Islamic speech codes, and more universally so than in Europe. Recently, an Egyptian court convicted to death in absentia Pastor Terry Jones and six other Coptic Christians in America and Canada (and therefore protected as American and Canadian citizens) for blasphemy charges related to “Innocence of Muslims,” the Obama administration’s conjured-up, cover-up Benghazi bogeyman. A generation after Rushdie, this state-ordained fatwa-like ruling was met not with the utlimatum Lars sagely recommends but with deliveries of Abrams tanks and F-16s and who knows how many billions of dollars in aid (jizya). Meanwhile, the film’s Egypt- “convicted” producer, Nakoula Bassely Nakoula, is now serving a one-year jail term for “parole violations.” Who, however, believes he would be incarcerated if he hadn’t broken Islamic “blasphemy” law? Welcome to our world of the “Istanbul Process,” the international effort co-sponsored by former SecState Hillary Clinton with the Islamic bloc (OIC) to introduce criminal sanctions to enforce Islamic blasphemy law worldwide.
Where does such law come from? This is another key point. From Islamic doctrine — not Islamist doctrine.
Here, Andrew Bostom concisely lays out the ten essential points of Islamic blasphemy law to which Muslims and, so our better tells us, we, too, must adhere to — or else.
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