Speech is not violence

Claiming speech is violence will result in violence.

Last week, Salman Rushdie was to address the Chautauqua Institution on the topic of freedom of speech. He has some experience with those who would stifle it. Thirty three years ago he wrote a book titled The Satanic Verses. He was in hiding for the next decade. And it turns out that wasn’t long enough.

For his title, he looked at a few words in the Quran, as interpreted by some Islamic historians. Islamic fundamentalists are triggered by the concept raised by those co-religionists as long ago as ~900AD. In any case, Rushdie was writing a novel. Fiction.

It’s no surprise, though, that Rushdie’s daring to discuss it was not well received in certain quarters. He upset the same Islamist fanatics who encouraged the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo, the murder of Theo Van Gogh, the threats to the Jyllands-Posten for publishing cartoons, the mass shooting at Bataclan and Pulse, and other murders, arsons and riots too common to detail.

Fundamentalist Islam insists religion and the State are one. Naturally, then, Rushdie’s temerity provoked a Muslim cleric and Head-of-State (Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini) to issue a bounty for Rushdie’s death in 1989.

AKA a ‘fatwa.’ In polities where church and state are separated, we don’t yet have a special term for state religion-sanctioned murder. We are working toward it via the Church of George Floyd, the Cathedral of Transexual Pronounism, the Pieties of the Green New Deal, and the rite of Skin Color Original Sin, but we aren’t there yet.

That does not mean progress is not being made here. This week a militant follower of Islam with ties to Iran stabbed Rushdie a dozen times. As yet, the police can’t find a motive. You have to wonder how the find their own butts.

Rushdie’s stabbing is merely a reminder that “don’t say anything we don’t like to hear” fanatics can be dangerous. We have some of our own.

Every day needs to be ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed day.’ Here’s a comprehensive “compendium of images that depict Mohammed (the 7th-century founder of Islam), spanning all historical periods, cultures, genres, styles, formats and themes.”

Here’s my own paltry contribution.

Every day needs to be ‘Everybody write The Satanic Verses day.’

Rushdie’s stabbing is ethically no different from the persecution of Kyle Rittenhouse, the firing of James Damore, the threats against J. D. Rowling, or the demonization of Nicholas Sandmann.

Guilt

Mark Steyn:
Calling Out Around the World

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.

RTWT.

Religious wars

On Thursday, I listened to a few minutes of NPR because I couldn’t find any other radio stations that weren’t worse. The subject was the insane Aussie fascist who perpetrated mass murder at mosques in New Zealand. The segment was an interview with a woman who continually referred to “mosque attacks.” At first I heard her saying “mass attacks.”

But she was implying “mosque attacks” happen in Western democracies quite frequently. “They mean this. They mean that. They demonstrate societal Islamophobia.”

So when I stumbled across an article from the Associated Press:
A look at attacks on houses of worship over last decade

… it seemed like “mosque attacks” are a thing, but in majority Muslim countries. So, I started comparing the number of Islamist attacks on mosques to the attacks on houses of worship overall. Sixteen of the incidents AP listed were attacks on mosques by organized Islamist groups. ISIS, Al-shabaab, etc.. Four were attacks on other religions by organized Islamists. Two were attacks on mosques by white supremacist individuals. One was an attack on a Synagogue by a white supremacist individual. One was an attack on a Synagogue by Islamists. One was an attack on a black church by a white supremacist. One was an attack on a Baptist church by a deranged atheist. One was an attack on a Sikh temple by a white supremacist.

Where the AP incident descriptions below are not completely clear about who committed the crimes, I have linked to complete stories that support my classification.

Green are attacks on any religion that took place in a Western democracy.

77% of all these attacks were committed by Islamists.  70% of those were attacks on other Muslims.  They all were committed in the name of Islamic terrorist organizations.

Attacker-Attacked Incident
Islam-Christian Oct. 31, 2010: Al-Qaida in Iraq militants attack Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church in Baghdad during Sunday night mass, killing 58 people in the deadliest assault targeting Christians since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion there. Al-Qaida in Iraq later became the Islamic State group.
Islam-Islam Dec. 15, 2010: Two suicide bombers from the Sunni extremist group Jundallah blow themselves up near a mosque in southeastern Iran, including six Revolutionary Guard commanders.
Islam-Islam July 16, 2010: Jundallah group kills 27 and injures 270 after it carries out a double suicide bombing against another Shiite mosque in southeastern Iran.
Islam-Christian Oct. 31, 2010: Al-Qaida in Iraq militants attack Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church in Baghdad during Sunday night mass, killing 58 people in the deadliest assault targeting Christians since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion there. Al-Qaida in Iraq later became the Islamic State group.
Islam-Islam Dec. 15, 2010: Two suicide bombers from the Sunni extremist group Jundallah blow themselves up near a mosque in southeastern Iran, including six Revolutionary Guard commanders.
White Supremacist-Sikh Aug. 5, 2012: Six members of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, in Oak Creek, are fatally shot by a white supremacist, Wade Michael Page. Page was shot by a responding officer and later killed himself.
Islam-Judaism Nov. 18, 2014: Two Palestinians using axes, knives and a gun kill four Jewish worshippers and an Israeli police officer in an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue.
Islam-Islam Jan. 30, 2015: Suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in the Pakistani town of Shikarpur kills 71. Jundullah claims responsibility.
Islam-Islam March 20, 2015: Islamic State suicide bombers attack a pair of mosques in Yemen’s capital, unleashing monstrous blasts that ripped through worshippers and killed 137 people.
White Supremacist-Black Christians June 17, 2015: Nine black worshippers including a pastor are killed by Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist, after he prayed with them in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof was convicted of federal hate-crime and obstruction-of-religion charges and sentenced to death.
Islam-Islam Sept. 24, 2015: A suicide bomber strikes a mosque in Yemen’s rebel-held capital, killing 25 worshippers during prayers for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
Islam-Islam Nov. 12, 2016: Suicide bomber from Islamic State group kills over 50 at the shrine of Shah Noorani, in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
Islam-Christian Dec. 11, 2016: Suicide bomber strikes inside a Cairo chapel adjacent to St. Mark’s Cathedral, seat of Egypt’s ancient Coptic Orthodox Church. The Islamic State group claimed the attack, which killed at least 25 people.
White Supremacist-Islam Jan. 29, 2017: A gunman killed six men during evening prayers at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City. Alexandre Bissonnette pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and attempted murder charges and was sentenced to serve 40 years in prison before being eligible for parole.
Islam-Islam Feb. 16, 2017: Suicide bomber detonates his explosives vest among the devotees at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Pakistan’s Sindh province, killing 98.
Islam-Islam April 9, 2017: Twin suicide bombings rock churches in the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria and Tanta, killing at least 45 people. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group.
Islam-Islam June 15, 2017: A suicide bomber kills four people at a Shiite mosque in Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul. Among the dead is a leader of Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazaras, who are mostly Shiite Muslims.
Islam-Islam Aug. 1, 2017: A suicide bomber storms into the largest Shiite mosque in Afghanistan’s western Herat province, opening fire on worshippers before blowing himself up, killing at least 90 people. Hundreds more were wounded in the attack, which happened during evening prayers.
Islam-Islam Aug. 25, 2017: Militants storm a packed Shiite mosque in Kabul during Friday prayers. The attack ends with at least 28 worshippers killed and 50 wounded, many of them children. Two of the assailants blow themselves up and another two are shot dead by Afghan security forces.
Islam-Islam Sept. 29, 2017: A suicide bomber blows himself up outside a Shiite mosque in Kabul, killing five. The attack took place as worshippers were leaving the mosque after Friday prayers.
Islam-Islam Oct. 20, 2017: The Islamic State group claims a suicide bomber attack, killing 31 and wounding 29 people, at a Shiite mosque in Kabul.
Deranged atheist-Christian Nov. 5, 2017: Dressed in black tactical-style gear and armed with an assault weapon, 26-year-old Devin Kelley opened fire at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, killing 26 people and wounding about 20 others.
Islam-Islam Nov. 24, 2017: Militants kill 311 worshippers in a mosque attack in north Sinai, the deadliest such terrorist attack in Egypt’s modern history.
Islam-Islam Dec. 17, 2017: Islamic State attack on a church in Pakistani city of Quetta kills 16 people.
Islam-Islam Aug. 3, 2018: Suicide bombers disguised in burqa robes attack a Shiite mosque in eastern Afghanistan, killing 27 people.
White Supremacist-Judaism Oct. 27, 2018: A gunman believed to have spewed anti-Semitic slurs and rhetoric on social media entered Tree of Life Congregation synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire, killing 11 and wounding six, including four police officers.
Islam-Christian Jan. 27, 2019: Two suicide attackers detonate two bombs during a Mass in a Roman Catholic cathedral on the largely Muslim island of Jolo in the southern Philippines, killing 23 and wounding about 100 others. Three days later, an attacker hurls a grenade in a mosque in nearby Zamboanga city, killing two religious teachers.
White Supremacist-Islam March 15, 2019: At least 40 people are killed in an attack at mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch.

This is AP’s list, and they acknowledge elsewhere that it is incomplete:

A U.N. report released in November documented 51 attacks on places of worship in Afghanistan since January 2016 that killed more than 270 civilians and wounded hundreds more.

(Update Mar 18: And here’s another one they missed: The 2014 firebombing of Bergisch Synagogue in Wuppertal, Germany, by three Palestinian immigrants. German courts declared this to be anti-Israel, and not to be antisemitic. Sounds like Ilhan Omar.)

It’s highly likely that U.N. list skews to Islam-Islam atrocities, but calculating the increased Islam-Islam attack percentage isn’t the point of this post.

We can condemn the New Zealand attack without blaming it on Western democracies, or Tweets by Chelsea Clinton castigating Ilhan Omar for anti-semitism. One might note there are no listed attacks on mosques in Israel.

For one thing, like most of the group-organized attacks listed above, those 51 did originate from the culture. The white supremacist attacks all appear to have been single individuals, outside the culture. For another thing, all those individuals have been caught and have/will face(d) punishment under Western rules of law. This is not true of the Islamist attacks on Muslims.  Finally, there is no question that the Islamist attacks were all motivated by religion.

If, as the SJWs contend, all cultures are equal, then all cultures should be equally condemned when such atrocities take place. That they are not tells us something about these Western critics of Western values. We find mass murder abhorrent, and an affront to our values, no matter who the victims. Islamists do not.

Burdensome

Nancy Pelosi defending Ilhan Omar:

“I think she has a different experience in the use of words, and doesn’t understand that some of them are fraught with meaning that [she] didn’t realize, but nonetheless that we had to address,” Pelosi said.

Omar most recently came under fire after she accused Jewish Americans of having “allegiance to a foreign power.”

Pelosi made a similar statement on Thursday, when she told reporters at a press conference that she believes Omar didn’t understand “the full weight” of how other people understood her words.

“When you cross that threshold into Congress, your words weigh much more than when you’re shouting at somebody outside, and I feel confident that her words were not based on any anti-Semitic attitude, but that she didn’t have a full appreciation of how they landed on other people, where these words have a history and cultural impact that may have been unknown to her,” Pelosi said.

Nancy’s excuse for Omar is certainly absurd. It’s also condescending, imperialist, and culturally supremacist. Poor little Muslim girl doesn’t have the background to understand her own words. She’s only been in the United States for 24 years.

I guess that’s the white woman’s burden, Pelosi style. I can’t understand why all the woke Twitter users haven’t declared a fatwa on the Speaker.

Obliviot

The WSJ reports on the attempted murder of a police officer in Philadelphia:

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross Jr. commented on the attempted murder of Officer Jesse Hartnett by Edward Archer. Archer told police he had shot Officer Hartnett in the name of Islam, because he (Archer) believes that “the police defend laws that are contrary to Islam.”

He’s right. In the United States, they do. So far.

Capt. James Clark, homicide unit commander, reported that Archer repeatedly said, “[T]he reason I did what I did,” is that he (Archer) had pledged fealty to the Islamic State and is a follower of Allah.

In the same press conference Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney (D) took guidance (though he didn’t go so far as to blame Officer Harnett) from the Mayor of Cologne, and the Stockholm police. Mayor Kenney said, “In no way, shape or form does anybody in this room believe that Islam or the teaching of Islam” had anything to do with the attack. Apparently, Commissioner Ross, homicide unit commander Clark – and everyone else – had moved to a different room, and Edward Archer wasn’t there either.

Maybe the Mayor was telling a Clinton-truth: The attack hadn’t anything to do with the teaching of Islam, it had to do with the learning of Islam. Or maybe the study of Facebook.

Mayor Kenny claims to better know the perp’s mind than the perp himself: Archer may have said over and over that he did it because of Islam, but he’s wrong.

Now, if the perp had claimed he was upset because of Planned Parenthood, that would be different.

The White House safe space

Ya ya ya ya I CAN’T HEAR YOU!
In Rise of ISIS, No Single Missed Key but Many Strands of Blame

And there were, in fact, more than hints of the group’s [ISIS’] plans and potential. A 2012 report by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency was direct: The growing chaos in Syria’s civil war was giving Islamic militants there and in Iraq the space to spread and flourish. The group, it said, could “declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.”

“This particular report, this was one of those nobody wanted to see,” said Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who ran the defense agency at the time.

“It was disregarded by the White House,” he said. “It was disregarded by other elements in the intelligence community as a one-off report. Frankly, at the White House, it didn’t meet the narrative.”

ATTKISSON: OBAMA WON’T READ INTELLIGENCE ON GROUPS HE DOESN’T CONSIDER TERRORISTS

Speech offensive to the President is banned. Reality is merely delayed.

Safe-space creation gap?

Supporters of the #BlackLivesMatter Speech Supression Squad have been shocked by a humiliating loss in the international safe-space creation competition.

We spoke with the coaching staff in the faculty lounge. While none would speak for attribution, the prevailing sentiment is they were caught flat-footed, failing to appreciate Team ISIS’ determination to create a world wide Islamist safe-space.

Team members were more forthcoming.

“We thought we had speech suppression and the intimidation of Western Cultural lackies locked up,” said a Graduate Assistant in Transgender Restroom Implementation Studies at Yale. “The administrators were resigning like flies. All eyes were on our message… Then this [the Paris massacres]. Now I’m worried my grant to study the Post-modern Psychological Implications of LGBT Restroom Stall Design could be reallocated to the Defense Department.”

A professor from the University of Missouri School of Relativist Morality commented, “Our scouting reports completely missed this. Our scouts didn’t even tell us about Charlie Hebdo, because they said it might upset us… Well, yeah.”

He went on to say, “We’re hopelessly outclassed in the attention whoring twitter sweepstakes, our precious little fascists are sounding like John Kasich at the last GOP debate.” As examples he displayed screen shots of tweets (since deleted) from Team #BlackLivesMatter:

For more examples, see this link.

“Look, we’re way behind,” an Administrative Assistant to the Office of Diversity Determination at the University of Michigan told us, “we understand these ISIS guys have every right to make people shut up about Mohammed, peace be upon him. We get that. They just need to leave us a little space for tweeting about what we don’t want discussed. Like police and guns and terrorism. And words.”

“We know we’ve got work to do to become competitive,” said a spokespersyn at Amherst College, “the first step in our rebuilding process is to implement the re-education camp protocols. We’re really serious about it, and we’ve started setting up safe-spaces where we can work without any distractions from reality.”

Whether Team #BlackLivesMatter can achieve a resurgence remains to be seen.

Update 4:32PM More #Mizzou whining here.