Category Archives: Islamist Censorship

Feminist Protest Exposes Tunisian Islamist Justice

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web-femen-1-gettyby IPT News:  

Under Tunisia’s “moderate” Islamist government, you can attack and vandalize the American embassy and still walk free. But if a woman bares her breasts in a form of protest, a four-month prison sentence is considered too lax.

A Tunisian judge sentenced three European feminists Wednesday to four months in prison for a topless protest outside the courthouse. Their supporters expected to be fined or deported, London’s Independent reports. European Union officials blasted the sentence as excessive.

“To ensure … freedom of expression, the EU underlines the need to revise [Tunisian] laws inherited from the previous regimes, which can be used to restrict it,” spokesman Michael Mann said.

Two weeks earlier, a Tunisian court issued suspended sentences for 20 people accused of causing property damage at the U.S. Embassy and setting cars there on fire during violence last September.

The women – two from France and one German – are part of group called Femen. “Breast Feed Revolution,” the women wrote across their chests. They came to Tunisia late last month to protest the arrest of a colleague, Amina Tyler, a Tunisian who was arrested after posting a topless picture of herself on Facebook with the message “My body belongs to me and not the honor of others” written on her chest in Arabic.

That’s not the way Tunisian Islamists see it.

“In Islam we respect our mothers, our sisters, our wives. Islam respects women and their physical dignity. Public nudity is forbidden. We reject the actions of Femen,” prosecutor Slah Barkati told the court.

Attorneys for Islamist groups who wanted to be parties to the case wanted to define freedom for the women. “It is Islam that honours women and offers them freedom, not the act of undressing,” attorney Slah Khlifi said in a Middle East Online report. Another attorney said the topless protest constituted an attack on state security under Tunisian law and is punishable by up to a year in prison.

On the other hand, a veteran Tunisian feminist said Femen’s actions were counter-productive for her cause and asked that the group stay out of Tunisia in the future. Provocative actions like topless protests come off as signs of western debauchery. “We Tunisian feminists are trying to steer the discussion away from identity. Women’s rights are a social and political issue,” Maya Jribi said in an interview with Germany’sDer Spiegel.

Tunisia was the first country to see governmental change in the 2011 “Arab Spring.” But the rise of the Islamist Ennahda Party has not eased tension there, as radical Salafis gain stature and a secular opposition leader was gunned down in February. While news outlets continue to call Ennahda “moderate” – the Reuters report on the Femen protest did just that – the group’s leader envisions Islamists soon dominating the Arab world. Rachid Ghannouchi also predicted the Arab Spring would “threaten the extinction of Israel.”

The Muslims with No Name: Islamists Cover Up Their Existence in the Media

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20130407_AP_SHSSSBy ANDREW E. HARROD, SAM NUNBERG:

As reported by U.S. News & World Report on April 4, 2013, the Associated Press (AP) has revised its definition of “Islamist” in the latest edition of the AP stylebook after the AP announced that it would likewise no longer approve of “illegal immigrant.”  This move, advocated precisely by a troubling Muslim group justifiably called Islamist in the past, shows once again how difficult it is for modern free societies even to identify their Islamist foes in the face of politically correct pressures.

Added to the AP stylebook in 2012, Islamist initially had the following entry: “Supporter of government in accord with the laws of Islam.  Those who view the Quran as a political model encompass a wide range of Muslims, from mainstream politicians to militants known as jihadi.”  The updated entry reads:

An advocate or supporter of a political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam.  Do not use as a synonym for Islamic fighters, militants, extremists or radicals, who may or may not be Islamists.

Where possible, be specific and use the name of militant affiliations:  al-Qaida-linked, Hezbollah, Taliban, etc.  Those who view the Quran as a political model encompass a wide range of Muslims, from mainstream politicians to militants known as jihadi.

Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), praised “this revision” as a “step in the right direction” that “will result in fewer negative generalizations in coverage of issues related to Islam and Muslims.”  Hooper considered the “key issue with the term ‘Islamist’” to be “not its continued use,” but rather “its use almost exclusively as an ill-defined pejorative.”

Hooper had previously recommended on January 3, 2013, that the media “[d]rop the term ‘Islamist,’” which had “become shorthand for ‘Muslims we don’t like.’”  This term’s “almost exclusively pejorative context” has an “even more negative slant” when “often coupled with the term ‘extremist.’”  By analogy, Hooper rejected any hypothetical media references to the “‘Judaist government of Israel,’ the ‘Christianist leader Rick Santorum’ or ‘Hinduist Indian politician Narendra Modi’” when describing “those who would similarly seek governments ‘in accord with the laws’ of their respective faiths.”

“Many Muslims,” Hooper stated, who wish to serve the public good are influenced by the principles of their faith.  Islam teaches Muslims to work for the welfare of humanity and to be honest and just.  If this inspiration came from the Bible, such a person might well be called a Good Samaritan.  But when the source is the Quran, the person is an “Islamist.”

The “frequent linkage of the term ‘Islamist’” to various human rights violations was “strongly promoted by Islamophobic groups.”  This appeared to Hooper as attempts “to launch rhetorical attacks on Islam and Muslims, without the public censure that would normally accompany such bigoted attacks on any other faith.”  “Islam-bashers,” Hooper elaborated, “routinely use the term to disingenuously claim they only hate ‘political’ Islam, not the faith itself,” yet “fail to explain how a practicing Muslim can be active in the political arena without attracting the label ‘Islamist.’”

If retained at all by “media professionals,” Hooper recommended that “Islamist” appear only when a “group applies the term to itself,” analogous to the AP’s treatment of “fundamentalist.”  Absent such elimination or modification, “Islamist” entailed a “political and religious value judgment” that “is hardly fair or balanced.”

Hooper might well reject the “Islamist” label, for this term has in the past denounced CAIR in, for example, the Investigative Report on Terrorism (IPT)’s exhaustive 118-page report on CAIR.  IPT documents how CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the successful 2008 prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development for financing Hamas terrorists, has its origins in American entities of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate Hamas.  Accordingly, CAIR has an extensive history of apologizing for militant jihad and repressive sharia practices as well as CAIR functionary convictions for supporting Islamic terrorism.  Hooper himself has in the past stated that he would like to see the United States government become “Islamic” and implement sharia.
Read more: Family Security Matters

Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington University Law School.  He is admitted to the Virginia State Bar.  He has published various pieces concerning an Islamic supremacist agenda at the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project, American Thinker, and Faith Freedom International.

 

Obama Administration Paves the Way for Sharia Law

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Sharia-Law-in-Americaby William Bigelow, 6 Aug 2012 at Breitbart:

The most terrifying danger Americans face from a second Barack Obama term isn’t the economy, which is scary enough.

The most harrowing prospect is the Obama Administration’s passivity in the face of attempts to introduce aspects of sharia law into our legal system.  Now there is strong and open evidence of the Obama administration collaborating with Islamist activists to ensure the path toward sharia law is accelerated.

Just last week, Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division, was asked this question by Trent Franks (R-AZ), a member of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution: “Will you tell us here today that this Administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?”

Perez refused to answer. Four times.

And why would Franks target Perez?

Here’s why:

Last October, at George Washington University, there was a meeting between DOJ officials, including Perez, and Islamist advocates against free speech. Representatives from the Islamist side included Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding trial in 2008, as well as functioning as a Muslim Brotherhood Front. The leader of the Islamist attack was Sahar Aziz, an Egyptian-born American lawyer and Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a Muslim advocacy group based in Michigan. At the meeting, the Islamists lobbied for:

  1. Cutbacks in U.S. anti-terror training
  2. Limits on the power of terrorism investigators
  3. Changes in agent training manuals
  4. A legal declaration that criticism of Islam in the United States should be considered racial discrimination

Aziz said that the word “Muslim” has become “racialized” and, once American criticism of Islam was silenced, the effect would be to “take [federal] money away from local police departments and fusion centers who are spying on all of us.”

And what was the response from Perez and the DOJ officials? 

Nothing.

That’s right: no objection, no defense of our first amendment right to free speech.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation and its Role in Enforcing Islamic Law:

Newly Revealed Document Vindicates Army Lt. Colonel Matthew Dooley In Anti-Islam Controversy

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pentagon_2_
In December 2011, the National Defense University’s Deputy VP for Academic Affairs, Dr. Brenda Roth, officially confirmed in writing to the Pentagon that all course materials at the National Defense University were vetted and approved by the University and its military command.  This official confirmation covered the content and outside guest speakers used in its course entitled Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism.Nevertheless, four months later General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, disregarding Dr. Roth’s official report, publicly excoriated and fired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Matthew Dooley, an instructor involved with the course, on grounds that the course was offensive to Islam and unprofessional; he also ordered LTC Dooley’s career–ending negative Officer Evaluation Report.

In the newly revealed official communication written on December 2, 2011, Dr. Roth informed the Pentagon that “The curriculum is vetted through College-level curriculum committees or academic review committees which ensure students receive a senior-level professional education (vice training) in national security strategy.”

According to Dr. Roth,“The College Dean of Faculty and Academic Programs reviews and vets proposed speakers for their subject matter expertise and academic and teaching credibility. The Commandants [Generals] have the final review of recommended speakers and issues invitations to those he approves.”

Dr. Roth’s official report was written in response to a Pentagon inquiry about the vetting process and use of outside lecturers to avoid Muslim criticism of federal agencies that present an offensive view of Islam.

Click here to read Dr. Roth’s entire Report.

The course on Islamic Radicalism was first established in 2004.  The external guest speakers used in the elective were all approved under the watch of Brigadier General Marvin Smoot, USAF, in 2009-2010, well before Dooley’s arrival.  LTC Dooley began as an instructor of the Radical Islam course in 2011.  He received the highest officer evaluations for his effectiveness as an instructor that included a recommendation that he be promoted and given a command as soon as possible.

Brigadier General Marvin Smoot, USAF, was the commandant of the Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC) when the various guest speakers “critical of Islam” were vetted.  Moreover, in 2011 General Smoot gave LTC Dooley an outstanding Officer Evaluation Report for his performance as an instructor. General Smoot’s replacement as JFSC commandant, Major General Joseph Ward, also thought highly of LTC Dooley, but nonetheless followed orders and wrote a negative evaluation.

Two Republican Congressmen, Representatives Duncan Hunter of California and Thomas Rooney of Florida questioned the severity of Dooley’s punishment.   Army Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, responding on behalf of General Dempsey, still blamed LTC Dooley for poor judgment but admitted “that there were institutional failures in oversight and judgment.”  Those institutional failures, therefore, must rest on the doorstep of the generals in charge of the institution, not on an instructor who received multiple accolades from his superiors for the great job he was doing.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, the public interest law firm representing LTC Dooley, commented, “Any fair-minded person would conclude that Matt Dooley was thrown under the bus to protect the generals who had institutional responsibilities over the course. I believe the Pentagon wanted to curry favor with the White House and the Muslim community, which demanded that all training materials offensive to Islam be purged and the trainers who use them punished. The fact remains that the course and guest lecturers for which LTC Dooley was publicly ridiculed and punished were all approved by senior leaders long before he ever became an instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC).”

 

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Profs. on Mideast Turmoil: Blame America, Israel, and Free Speech

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John Esposito

By Cinnamon Stillwell:

In the wake of the al-Qaeda attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, the seizure of the American embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and the ensuing anti-American protests and riots throughout the Middle East—the latter ostensibly over an anti-Islam YouTube film trailer that originated in the U.S. months earlier—what do Middle East scholars have to say about the turmoil in the region?

As self-styled supporters of “academic freedom,” are they rushing to defend First Amendment rights instead of kowtowing to Muslim religious sensibilities? Are they denouncing the prospect of self-censorship rather than pushing YouTube to pull the “offending” video by claiming that it constitutes “hate speech?” Are they standing up for religious freedom instead of encouraging Americans to adhere to Sharia law-driven prohibitions on blasphemy? Are they putting aside their anti-Western biases and laying blame where it belongs instead of on America and Israel?

If the following quotes from Middle East studies academics are any indication, the answer to all those questions would be a resounding No!

Let’s take a look at what these “experts” have to say.

On First Amendment rights:

Bruce Lawrence, professor emeritus of religion and member of the Islamic Studies Center’s advisory board, Duke University:

But what about hate speech? Is hate speech not a category that impinges on, and limits, the practice of free speech?

Omid Safi, professor of Islamic studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

In reality, pieces like the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ [sic] so-called film are best classified as ‘hate speech,’ as they seem to be of the same genre as anti-Semitic films of the 1930’s or Birth of the [sic] Nation KKK movies.

Tariq Ramadan, professor of contemporary Islamic studies, Oxford University:

[B]ehind the celebration of freedom of speech hides the arrogance of ideologists and well-fed racists who feed off the multiform humiliation of Muslims and to demonstrate the clear ‘superiority’ of their civilisation or the validity of their resistance to the ‘cancer’ of retrograde Islam.

John Brown, adjunct professor of liberal studies, Georgetown University:

Every culture or group of cultures has its own red lines. They might be legal red lines, but they are cultural red lines. There are taboos there are things people cannot say in public. In my experience, you just don’t speak badly of the Prophet Muhammad. It just does not happen.

John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University:

Indeed, it’s important to remember that, for Muslims, Mohammed is the ideal Muslim, as it was. He’s the living Quran. You know, he’s the model, you know. And so to go after him, OK, is to be the ultimate form, you know, the ultimate form of disrespect. It would be the ultimate blasphemy. . . . I think there’s a recognition of the freedom of speech, but you know, you still get into freedom of speech and then what are the consequences of it? . . . And so what you really have is a situation where this belongs to the genre of Islam-aphobia, which is just like [sic] anti-Semitic.

As’ad AbuKhalil, professor of political science, California State University, Stanislaus:

U.S. officials have been really insulting my intelligence all week with talk of the ‘freedom of speech’ that we have here in the U.S. that Muslims don’t understand. . . . They understand that the U.S. government has made it illegal for anyone to express support for Hamas and Hizbullah in the U.S.  Muslim[s] do understand that the U.S. has banned TV channels [Hezbollah’s Al-Manar and Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV] from the U.S. because they deemed them offensive to Israel. . . . We remember that the Bush administration asked all U.S. news media after Sept. 11 to refrain from airing any Bin Laden tapes.

Omid Safi, professor of Islamic studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

Freedom of speech falls alongside other freedoms to live and be free from bombs falling on people’s heads and to be free from occupations . . . I will take free speech comments seriously when others take people’s freedom of life and dignity and to be free from occupation just as seriously.

On why YouTube should pull the video, “Innocence of Muslims”:

Hatem Bazian, Near Eastern studies senior lecturer, University of California, Berkeley:

Take the ethical high ground and say, ‘yes, I understand that I have the legal right to do it. But ethically, I need to actually say no to it, because it does not represent the best of our values.’ I would say even to put it in the recycling bin would be an insult to the recycling bin.

John Brown, adjunct professor of liberal studies, Georgetown University:

This movie reached new depths . . . I find it difficult that the most insulting thing ever made about the Prophet Muhammad in the history of Western civilization, as far as I know, doesn’t violate usage [Youtube usage] policy.

On blaming America, and Israel, and the West: Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies and director of the Middle East studies program, University of San Francisco:

It is extremely unlikely that such vitriolic anti-American protests would have taken place were it not for decades of U.S. support, during both Republican and Democratic administrations, of allied dictatorships and the Israeli occupation, not to mention the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the ongoing military strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.

John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University:

The terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three embassy staff, and the Cairo riots seem similar but share in common the incitement and exploitation of popular outrage among many Muslims, as we have witnessed during the Salman Rushdie and Danish cartoons affairs. They exploit deep seated popular anti-American sentiment, based on decades of resentment over US and European foreign policies in the Middle East.

Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan:

The touchiness of Muslims about assaults on the Prophet Muhammad is in part rooted in centuries of Western colonialism and neo-colonialism during which their religion was routinely denounced as barbaric by the people ruling and lording it over them.

Mark LeVine, professor of history, University of California, Irvine:

Muslims in Egypt, Libya and around the world equally look at American actions, from sanctions against and then an invasion of Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and sent the country back to the Stone Age, to unflinching support for Israel and all the Arab authoritarian regimes (secular and royal alike) and drone strikes that always seem to kill unintended civilians ‘by mistake,’ and wonder with equal bewilderment how ‘we’ can be so barbaric and uncivilized.

Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University:

Sam Bacile [the pseudonym for the alleged filmmaker, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula] is integral to a pattern, an Islamophobic streak of racism that runs deep into American culture.

Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan:

From the 9/11 attacks to the embassy burnings of this past week, the U.S. pays the price for supporting the subjection of the Palestinians in widespread hatred for it from the Muslim world.

Read more at Front Page

 

International pro-freedom organizations champion individual liberty and human rights at key European conference

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Center for Security Policy

By Adam Savit

The Human Dimension Implementation Meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was convened last week in Warsaw and is continuing into this week.  In recent years the agenda of the OSCE, meant to bolster pro-human rights policies in European governments and NGO’s, has been hijacked by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and other Muslim groups committed to imposing blasphemy laws and other aspects of shariah in Europe.

A contingent of pro-liberty citizens, governments and organizations from the United States and across Europe has been in attendance to counteract the OIC, among them:

A small sample of the efforts of these organizations is chronicled in the following videos, provided by the Media Research Council (MRC-TV) [CLICK ON IMAGES FOR VIDEO CONTENT]:

 

Kamal Fahmi, a Christian activist from Sudan representing the Set My People Free NGO, makes a presentation to the plenary session in Warsaw

 

Bashy Quraishy is an Indian-born migrant to Denmark who holds the office of Coordinator for the European Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion (EMISCO), an organization pushing the “Islamophobia” meme.  The plenary speech below includes veiled threats, warning that “provocations” such as the recent American-made film about Mohammed “will threaten the world peace.”

 

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a veteran campaigner for free speech representing the NGO Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa, offered a response to Qurashy’s speech.  Sabaditsch-Wolff has been persecuted in her native Austria for “denigrating religious teachings” over her comments about Mohammed.

 

Alain Wagner is a French anti-shariah activist representing ICLA in Warsaw.  In his statement below he offers a robust critique of the “Cairo Declaration” of 1990, a document created by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to replace the Western concept of universal human rights with a universal submission to shariah law.

Check back tomorrow for a compendium of important documents submitted to the OSCE Warsaw conference by the NGO’s listed above.

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PICKET: FBI Counter-terrorism lexicon skips all references to ‘al qaeda’

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By Kerry Picket:

Could federal law enforcement’s own training protocol on what they have been  defining as “terrorism” be delaying the investigation of what happened in  Benghazi, Libya on September 11th? As I pointed out in a previous post, the FBI training manual after a 2011  purge, does not even include the terms “al Qaeda”, “Muslim Brotherhood”, or  “jihad.”

PJ Media’s Patrick Poole wrote about the FBI’s  denial of the agency’s own departmental counter-terrorism analytical lexicon. However, the  agency went silent when Poole posted the official 14 page unclassified  booklet.

The Obama administration’s response to media inquires over what happened  during the deadly terrorist attack on our U.S. consulate in Libya that took the  lives of four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador, has been that it is  currently under investigation. However, according to CNN, the FBI is only investigating the attack from  afar and “bureaucratic infighting between the FBI and Justice Department, and  the State Department on the other” appears to be delaying the investigation.:  (bolding is mine)

FBI agents have not yet been granted access to investigate in the eastern  Libyan city, and the crime scene has not been secured, sources said.

“They’ve gotten as far as Tripoli now, but they’ve never gotten to Benghazi,”  CNN National Security Analyst Fran Townsend said Wednesday, citing senior law  enforcement officials.

Last Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters that an  FBI team had reached Libya earlier in the week.

“In fairness to the secretary, it may be that she wanted to be coy about  where they were in Libya for security concerns. That’s understandable. But the  fact is, it’s not clear they’ve been in Libya for very long,” Townsend said on  CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360°.”

“They had difficulty, and we understand there was some bureaucratic  infighting between the FBI and Justice Department on the one hand, and the State  Department on the other, and so it took them longer than they would have liked  to get into country. They’ve now gotten there. But they still are unable to get  permission to go to Benghazi.”

FBI agents have made a request through the U.S. State Department for  the crime scene to be secured, Townsend said, but that has not  happened.

“The senior law enforcement official I spoke to said, ‘If we get  there now, it’s not clear that it will be of any use to us,’” Townsend  said.

The FBI team has conducted interviews of State Department and U.S. government  personnel who were in Libya at the time of the attack, Townsend said, but the  FBI’s request to directly question individuals who Libyan authorities have in  custody was denied.

It took the administration over one week to declare the attack on the  consulate in Benghazi was indeed a “terrorist” attack and many wondered why the  declaration took so long. Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly reported that sources  told Fox News that U.S. intelligence knew that the strike against the consulate  was the work of terrorists within 24 hours of the attack.  So why the delay  in the actual declaration from the administration?

Read more at Washington Times

Google Exec Arrested in Brazil Over Mohammed Video

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By Daniel Greenfield:

Sharia law… it’s everywhere you want to be. Even in Brazil.

Brazilian authorities detained the country’s Google chief after the company failed to remove YouTube videos that the court ruled violate Brazilian electoral law despite a judges order.

The detention came as another court ordered YouTube to remove clips of an anti-Islam film that has been blamed for deadly protests by Muslims around the globe, both joining a spate of court-ordered content-removal cases against Google’s video-sharing website in Brazil.

The arrest of Google executive Fabio Jose Silva Coelho was announced in Säo Paulo. A press release issued by the federal police said he was not expected to remain in jail and should be released later in the day after signing a document promising to appear in court.

How did this come about? Thank your local neighborhood Muslim Censorship franchise.

Sao Paulo-based judge Gilson Delgado Miranda gave the site 10 days to remove video clips from “Innocence of Muslims,” which has angered many Muslims around the world by its depiction of the Prophet Mohammed and his followers as thugs. After the 10-day window, Google will face fines of $5,000 a day for every day the clips remain accessible in Brazil, according to the statement on the court’s website.

The “Innocence of Muslims” ruling resulted from a lawsuit by a group representing Brazil’s Muslim community, the National Union of Islamic Entities, which claimed the film violates the country’s constitutional guarantee of religious freedom for all faiths.

In a statement on the group’s website, Mohamad al Bukai, the head of religious matters for the Sao Paulo-based organization, hailed the ruling.

“Freedom of expression must not be confused with giving disproportionate and irresponsible offense, which can provoke serious consequences for society,” al Bukai said.

But don’t worry, according to the judge this isn’t censorship.

“This type of jurisprudence cannot be confused with censorship,” Miranda is quoted as writing. In the excerpts, the judge defines censorship as “the undue restriction of the civic consciousness.”

Mohamad al Bukai is a Syrian export to Brazil. Here’s an actual quote from him on the success of Islam in Brazil. “The 9/11 attacks were key in arousing people’s curiosity towards Islam, now some 15 per cent of our community are non-Arabs.”

A Muhammad Cartoon a Day

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By Daniel Pipes:

When Salman Rushdie mocked Islamic sanctities in 1989 in his magical realist novel The Satanic Verses, Ayatollah Khomeini did something shockingly original: He pronounced a death edict on Rushdie and all those connected to the production of his book. By doing this, Khomeini sought to impose Islamic mores and laws on the West; we don’t insult the prophet, he effectively said, and neither can you.

That started a trend of condemning those in the West deemed anti-Islamic that persists to this day. again and again, when Westerners are perceived as denigrating Muhammad, the Koran, or Islam, Islamists demonstrate, riot and kill.

Khomeini’s edict also had the unexpected side effect of empowering individuals – Western and Islamist alike – to drive their countries’ policies.

On the Western side, Fleming Rose, a newspaper editor, created the greatest crisis for Denmark since World War II by publishing twelve Muhammad cartoons. Florida pastor Terry Jones caused panic for American commanders in Afghanistan by threatening to burn a Koran. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and friends prompted a crisis in U.S. relations with Egypt with an amateurish video, Innocence of Muslims. By publishing vulgar pictures of Muhammad, French weekly Charlie Hebdo is causing the French government temporarily to shut down diplomatic missions in twenty countries. Plans by the German satirical magazine Titanic to publish attacks on Muhammad have likewise caused German missions to be closed.

On the Islamist side, an individual or group took one of these perceived offenses and turned it into a reason to riot. Khomeini did this with The Satanic Verses and Ahmad Abu Laban did likewise with the Danish cartoons. Hamid Karzai goaded Afghans to riot over burned Korans by American soldiers and Egyptian preacher Khaled Abdullah turned Innocence of Muslims into an international event.

In brief, any Westerner can buy a Koran for a dollar and burn it, while any Muslim with a platform can transform that act into a fighting offense. As passions rise on both sides of the democratized Western / Muslim divide, Western provocateurs and Islamist hotheads have found each other and confrontations occur with increasing frequency..

Which prompts this question: What would happen if publishers and managers of major media reached a consensus, “Enough of this intimidation, we will publish the most famous Danish Muhammad cartoonevery day until the Islamists tire out and no longer riot”? What would happen if instances of Koran burning happened recurrently?

Would repetition inspire institutionalization, generate ever-more outraged responses, and offer a vehicle for Islamists to ride to greater power? Or would it lead to routinization, to a wearing out of Islamists, and a realization that violence is counter-productive to their cause?

I predict the latter, that a Muhammad cartoon published each day, or Koranic desecrations on a quasi-regular basis, will make it harder for Islamists to mobilize Muslim mobs. Were that the case, Westerners could once again treat Islam as they do other religions – freely, to criticize without fear. That would demonstrate to Islamists that Westerners will not capitulate, that they reject Islamic law, that they are ready to stand up for their values.

So, this is my plea to all Western editors and producers: display the Muhammad cartoon daily until the Islamists get used to the fact that we turn sacred cows into hamburger.

Kurt Westergaard’s 2005 image of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.

Obama’s dangerous consistency

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By Caroline Glick:

On Tuesday, Egypt’s chief prosecutor issued arrest warrants against eight US citizens.

Their purported crimes relate either to their reported involvement in the production of the Internet movie critical of Islam that has received so much attention over the past 10 days, or to other alleged anti-Islamic activities.

One of the US citizens indicted is a woman who converted from Islam to Christianity.

According to the Associated Press, Egypt’s general prosecution issued a statement announcing that the eight US citizens have been indicted on charges of insulting and publicly attacking Islam, spreading false information, and harming Egyptian national unity.

The statement stipulated that they could face the death penalty if convicted.

The AP write-up of the story quoted Mamdouh Ismail, a Salafi attorney who praised the prosecution’s move. He claimed it would deter others from exercising their right to free expression in regards to Islam. As he put it, the prosecutions will “set a deterrent for them and anyone else who may fall into this.” That is, they will deter others from saying anything critical about Islam.

This desire to intimidate free people into silence on Islam is clearly the goal the heads of the Muslim Brotherhood seek to achieve through their protests of the anti-Islamic movie. This was the message of Muslim Brotherhood chief Yussuf Qaradawi. Three days after the anti-American assaults began on the anniversary of the September 11 jihadist attacks on America, Qaradawi gave a sermon on Qatar television, translated by MEMRI.

Qaradawi struck a moderate tone. He called on his followers to stop rioting against the US. Rather than attack the US, Qaradawi urged his Muslim audience to insist that the US place prohibitions on the free speech rights of American citizens by outlawing criticism of Islam – just as the Europeans have done in recent years in the face of Islamic terror and intimidation.

In his words, “We say to the US: You must take a strong stance and try to confront this extremism like the Europeans do. This [anti-Islamic film] is not art. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. This is nothing but curses and insults. Does the freedom to curse and insult constitute freedom of speech?”

Both the actions of the Egyptian prosecution and Qaradawi’s sermon prove incontrovertibly that the two policies the US has adopted since September 11, 2001, to contend with Muslim hatred for the US have failed. The neoconservative policy of supporting the democratization of Muslim societies adopted by President Barack Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush has failed. And the appeasement policy adopted by Obama has also failed.

Bush’s democratization policy claimed that the reason the Muslim world had become a hotbed for anti-Americanism and terror was that the Muslim world was not governed by democratic regimes. Once the peoples of the Muslim world were allowed to be free, and to freely elect their governments, the neoconservatives proclaimed, they would abandon their hatred of America.

As a consequence of this belief, when the anti-regime protests against the authoritarian Mubarak regime began in January 2011, the neoconservatives were outspoken supporters of the overthrow of then-president Hosni Mubarak, despite the fact that he had been the US’s key ally in the Arab world for three decades. They supported the political process that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power. They supported the process despite the fact that Qaradawi is the most influential cleric in Egypt. They supported it despite the fact that just days after Mubarak was ousted from power, Qaradawi arrived at Cairo’s Tahrir Square and before an audience of two million followers, he called for the invasion of Israel and the conquest of Jerusalem.

In the event, the Egyptian people voted for Qaradawi’s Muslim Brotherhood and for the Salafi party. The distinction between the two parties is that Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood are willing to resort to both violent and nonviolent ways to dominate the world in the name of Islam. The Salafis abjure nonviolence. So while Qaradawi called for the riots to end in order to convince the Americans to criminalize criticism of Islam, his Salafi counterparts called for the murder of everyone involved in producing the anti-Islamic film.

For instance, Salafi cleric Ahmad Fouad Ashoush issued a fatwa on Islamic websites last weekend calling for American and European Muslims to murder those involved with the movie. His religious ruling was translated by the SITE Intelligence Group on Monday.

Ashoush wrote, “Those bastards who did this film are belligerent disbelievers. I issue a fatwa and call on the Muslim youth in America and Europe to do this duty, which is to kill the director, the producer and the actors and everyone who helped and promoted the film.

“So, hurry, hurry, O Muslim youth in America and Europe, and teach those filthy lowly ones a lesson that all the monkeys and pigs in America and Europe will understand. May Allah guide you and grant you success.”

These are the voices of democratic Egypt. The government, which has indicted American citizens on capital charges for exercising their most fundamental right as Americans, is a loyal representative of the sentiments of the Egyptian people who freely elected it. The Salafi preacher is a loyal representative of the segment of the Egyptian people that made the Salafi party the second largest in the Egyptian parliament. Qaradawi’s call for the abolition of freedom of speech in America – as has happened in Europe – and to ban all criticism of Islam is subscribed to by millions and millions of Muslims worldwide who consider him one of the leading Sunni clerics in the world.

Free elections in Egypt have empowered the Egyptian people to use the organs of governance to advance their hatred of America. Their hatred has been empowered, and legitimized, not diminished as the neoconservatives had hoped.

The behavior of the Egyptian government, Qaradawi and the Salafis also makes clear that Obama’s policy of appeasing the Muslim world has failed completely. Whereas Bush believed the source of Muslim hatred was their political oppression at the hands of their regimes, Obama has blamed their rage and hatred on America’s supposed misdeeds.

By changing the way America treats the Muslim world, Obama believes he can end their hatred of America. To this end, he has reached out to the most anti-American forces and regimes in the region and spurned pro-American regimes and political forces.

When Obama’s policies are recognized as driven by appeasement, the seeming inconsistency of his war against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi on the one hand, and his passivity in the face of the anti-regime uprising in Iran in 2009 and the Syrian uprising against the Assad regime today makes sense. Gaddafi was not a threat to the US, so he was unworthy of protection. The mullahs in Iran and Assad are foes of the US. So they deserve protection. Obama has assiduously courted the Muslim Brotherhood from the outset of his presidency.

The official and unofficial Egyptian exploitation of the Internet film as a means to intimidate and attack the US into disavowing its core principles is proof that Obama’s theory of the source of Muslim rage is wrong. They do not hate America because of what the US government does. They hate America because of what America is. And it is because of this that since September 11, the rationale for Obama’s foreign policy has disintegrated.