“Everyone is in favor of free speech… but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.” ― Winston Churchill
All jihad is local, but all “Islamophobia” is global. So, if a Muslim of Afghan origin shoots up a gay nightclub in Florida and kills 49 people, that’s just one crazed loner and no broader lessons can be discerned from his act. On the other hand, if a white guy shoots up two mosques in New Zealand and kills 50 people, that indicts us all, and we need to impose worldwide restraints on free speech to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I’m ecumenical enough to mourn the dead in both gay clubs and mosques, but I wonder why we are so conditioned to accept Islamic terror as (in the famous words of London mayor Sadiq Khan) “part and parcel of living in a big city” that it is only the exceptions to the rule that prompt industrial-scale moral preening from politicians and media.
Western cultural guilt: That’s a point I didn’t make yesterday in comparing the reaction to Islamist church massacres with the attacks of deranged individual Westerners on houses of worship. Islamists don’t feel guilty.
