RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/in-the-west-incorrect-speech-is-increasingly-treated-as-blasphemy/

Europe’s ‘hate-speech laws’ have taken the core principles of ‘blasphemy laws’ and dressed them up in a watered-down Western packaging.

Freedom of speech is one of the most fundamental American values. This value was brought all the more sharply into focus recently when my fellow expat, Prince Harry, quite royally offended his host nation by calling the First Amendment “bonkers” on the California-based Armchair Experts podcast. Even as a Brit, I could still detect the irony of the blood descendent of King George III complaining about constitutional rights in the land of the free.

But Prince Harry’s ability to speak freely about his beliefs might not have fared so well in other countries that were formerly under the Crown. Take Pakistan. Last week, advocates supported by human-rights group ADF International celebrated a victory for free speech at the High Court in Lahore, Pakistan. A couple was accused of sending an offensive message about the Prophet Mohammed and the Qur’an in English in 2014. Never mind that they don’t speak English. Never mind that the wife’s phone had been missing for a full month before the inflammatory text was sent. Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar are Catholic, illiterate, and entirely innocent. The couple, parents of four, were sentenced to death in 2014. In a landmark ruling, the High Court has now thrown out the case. The SIM card from the phone in question had not been sent for a forensic test, and therefore was deemed inadmissible as evidence, undermining the case of the prosecution.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/when-a-free-society-becomes-a-police?token=

By my lights, the most important news event of this past week was not the New York mayoral primary (my condolences to Andrew Yang). It wasn’t Bitcoin dropping below $30,000. And it certainly wasn’t the new bipartisan infrastructure deal announced by President Biden.

It was the forced closure of Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong.

You may not have heard of Apple Daily. I knew of it, but only vaguely. It is — or rather, it was — Hong Kong’s version of the New York Post combined with William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator. A tabloid, yes. But also: a voice for freedom. 

Ever since it began publishing in 1995, Apple Daily has been a thorn in the side of the Chinese Communist Party. Its commitment to democracy and freedom had everything to do with its founder, Jimmy Lai.

It’s not possible to do Lai’s whole story justice in a column — someone should make a blockbuster — but here is the cliffsnotes version: Lai fled mainland China at 12 years old as a stowaway on a fishing boat. He found a job in a Hong Kong sweatshop and eventually worked his way up in the garment trade (or, as we in the Jewish community call it, the shmata business.)

Along the way, he encountered fellow garment workers in New York who introduced him to free-market theorists like Frederick Hayek, Karl Popper and Milton Friedman, with whom he later developed a close relationship. “This is a guy who didn’t have any formal schooling past the age of maybe eight,” Mark Simon, who has been Lai’s right hand for the past two decades, told me in an interview this week. “Those books started his real political awakening.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17504/persecution-of-christians-may

The boy eventually met up with his mother, and they went searching for Pastor Thomas. According to the wife, “As we continued doing the search, we found my husband in a pool of blood, beheaded and his tongue removed.” His tongue was likely cut out as punishment for “speaking against Islam.”

Although Azerbaijan claims to be repairing the damage it caused the cathedral, subsequent pictures and video footage suggest that they are defacing it more…. In the same area of Shushi where the cathedral is being profaned, Azerbaijan is preparing to build a “victory” mosque…. Finally, Azerbaijan is using gravestones from Armenian Christian cemeteries as building material.

Muslim men raped a Christian child and molested another. On May 2, Muhammad Awais, “beat, raped, and left for dead” Anum Bibi, an 8-year-old Christian girl, after he caught her trying to retrieve water with her 9-year-old brother. — Pakistan.

A group of Muslims attacked a Christian family and destroyed their home in an effort to seize their farmstead. “Muslims destroyed our mud house,” the mother explained. “They stole our tin roof, took the rice, food, everything of value. They also beat me and my husband with a stick, even my children.”… As a result, police failed to respond or make any arrests and instead asked for money from the victims. — Bangladesh.

The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of May 2021:

The Slaughter of Christians

Uganda: On May 3, hours after Pastor Thomas Chikooma engaged in a public debate about Islam and Christianity, Muslims severed his tongue and beheaded him. The well-known pastor, father of 11, had planted 50 churches in eastern Uganda. During the open-air event, to which Muslims had invited him, he used the Bible and Koran to make his points. He won over several people — including six Muslims, who went on to convert to Christianity — prompting angry Muslims in the crowd to cry “Allahu Akbar,” prompted the pastor and his young son to rush away from the event.

“Two motorcycles carrying two Muslims each and dressed in Islamic attire speedily bypassed us,” his son, a minor, later explained. “When we were 200 meters to reach our house, the two motorcycles stopped at the junction opposite Nalufenya primary school and the road near our house.” The pastor told his son to wait while he went to confront the four men. “Immediately some commotion began as the men started talking about the open-air debate, and soon one of them slapped my father,” said his son. “I got scared and fled … and arrived at home.” The boy eventually met up with his mother, and they went searching for Pastor Thomas.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17503/iran-ebrahim-raisi-black-turban

[T]o see Raisi as a cleric heading a clerical regime would be a mistake. He is as much of a cleric as Saddam Hussein was a Field Marshal. It would also be a mistake to see him, as some American “liberals” have done, as more “open to the world” because he claims a PhD.
However, to see Raisi as a mere puppet playing Judge Blood could also be misleading. Raisi has been created by a network of Mafia-like interests linked to the military-security apparatus that has embraced the Iranian-nation, sucking its vial energies, as a poison ivy that could kill a towering oak with a tight embrace.
Raisi’s victory is the victory of a coterie that cares neither for Iran nor for revolution as long as it can advance its position of power and protect its ill-gained assets. Khamenei is the apprentice wizard that helped create this monster….
Paradoxically, the concentration of power in the hands of the faction of which Khamenei is the face could mean that Tehran may be more likely to bend now than it ever was. If things go wrong domestically, as they are bound to if current policies remain in place, the clique won’t be able to blame it on the “New York Boys”.

Now what? This is the question Iranians ask these days as they try to absorb the shock of the latest elections which has propelled another turban into the presidency of the Islamic Republic.

Leaving aside the first two whose ephemeral career was too short to merit attention, the Islamic Republic has had five presidents.

Of these, only one, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, did not pretend to be a man of the cloth. Of the remaining four two, Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hassan Rouhani, wore white turbans that designated them as “common folk” (aam in Arabic) while two others, Ali Khamenei and Muhammad Khatami, donned black turbans and the title of “sayyed” which in Persian designates the descendants of the Prophet through his daughter Fatimah az-Zahra, thus regarded as “special”.