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There are many places where individual human beings are subject to barbarism. There are as many places where personal liberties taken for granted in Western civilization are routinely crushed. Not all of these places are Muslim countries. Some are socialist dictatorships.
But, say what you will about North Korea, Communist China, or Cuba – your average Danish newspaper could portray Lenin with a set of horns and munching on a Ukrainian baby while screwing a pig – and it wouldn’t trigger the burning of the local French embassy.
Some might say that this comparison with radical Islam’s reaction to editorial cartoons is irrelevant, because communism isn’t a religion and Lenin is not a holy figure. Well, that’s another debate, but Islam as a religion is identical with Islam as a political-economic system in the minds of those looking to establish the Global Caliphate under Sharia law. I.e., those Islamofascists currently stage managing the riots.
In the war of ideas, they think their side of the debate is all you’re allowed to hear, because any other commentary is treason. Dissent challenges the one true way everyone has to think. That’s why we should not be bemused by the embassy burnings, shootings and death threats. This isn’t the slightly dotty old Aunt in the attic we’re dealing with, it’s the psychotic Uncle in the cellar with a shotgun.
Not only do we not have to respect religio-fascist motivation, we cannot apologize. Our political canon ceases to exist absent the right to speak, and perhaps offend, without fearing for our lives. That’s a way in which the Islamofascists are like totalitarian communists.
Not that we don’t have our full measure of apologists, anyway.
Jimmy Carter isn’t good for much aside from keeping his skin from collapsing into a heap, but he does provide an example proving this rule. Carter called upon Americans, at the time of the Iranian fatwa authorizing Salman Rushdie’s murder because of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, to be “sensitive to the concern and anger” of Muslims. Did I say it was a novel? Did Carter say “be sensitive” to an international call for assassination? Yes to both.
Carter’s record in dealing with Islamofascists is well known. We would do well not to repeat the slightest part of it. Especially since, in the time following Carter’s plea, we’ve had the first WTC bombing, 9-11, 3-11 and 7-7, and the murders of Theo Van Gogh and Pym Fortyn. These atrocities all occurred in Western democracies on behalf of Islamofascism. I didn’t include any, like murdering Daniel Pearl or the Beirut, Bali or USS Cole bombings, that they committed in their own countries.
Be not bemused. It’s clear they hate us, reflexively, for who we are. They were serious on 9-11 and they’re serious now.
Some related items worth reading:
Danish lawyer shot as fury of Muslims sweeps world
By GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN
The boycott apparently does not extend to Danish flags.
Abu Hamza jailed for seven years for inciting murder
By Simon Freeman
This is not such good news as it would appear since the convictions are based on restricting free speech and possession of books. Conspiracy to commit murder would have been much, much better. Or sedition. Or conspiracy to commit a terrorist act (Zacarias Moussaoui, a September 11 plotter, and Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber” attended Hamza’s mosque).