Losing free speech via the toxic synergy of mainstream, supremacist Islam, and Western self-loathing
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By Andrew Bostom:
Al Qaeda’s English language magazine “Inspire,” in its latest edition, has expressed the jihad terror organization’s outrage over the “Innocents of Muslims” video trailer, an amateurish production, which merely depicted some of the less salutary aspects of the Muslim prophet Muhammad’s biography, based upon the sacralized Islamic sources.
These threatening statements appear on p. 4:
O Muslims, the film produced in America which insults our Messenger Muhammad comes in the chain of the crusade attacks on Islam. In response to these consecutive assaults, the Muslim ummah revolted in honor of their noble Messenger. The plot of the enemies backfired and became a disgrace and shame on them, a penalty for their insults on the status of the Prophets, violation of the sacred lands and trespassing the boundaries of war ethics. Meanwhile, the status of our Messenger remains high and honorable. No insult could ever tarnish him. Whoever hates him is cut off from success and prosperity in this world and the Hereafter… We affirm that defending the honor of the Prophet is an inevitable obligation in Islam upon the Muslim ummah, every individual as per his capability… We call upon our brothers in the West to fulfill their Islamic obligation. They are obliged to defend the Prophet, for they are more capable of crushing the enemy at his heart.
The violent nature of those threats is made explicit in imagery featured on pp. 14-15, entitled, “Wanted Dead or Alive for Crimes Against Islam.” The images (also published here via MEMRI) are accompanied by statements, “Yes We Can,” “A Bullet A Day Keeps the Infidel Away,” and “Defend Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him,” and include photographs of the nine men(complete with misspellings of some of their names, underneath) threatened with death, ostensibly for “blaspheming” Islam’s prophet, and the Muslim creed itself.
Photographs of the two women targeted do not appear on the pp. 14-15 magazine layout; only their names are printed, beneath the photos of the men. The full list of eleven who were made licit for killing, is below:
Geert Wilders: Founder of the Dutch Party for Freedom;
Morris Sadek: Egyptian-American Coptic Christian who disseminated the video “Innocence of Muslims”
Carsten Juste and Flemming Rose: Editor-in-chief and cultural editors at Jyllands-Posten when the Danish cartoons of Muhammad were published
Kurt Westergaard: Cartoonist whose drawing of the turban-bomb Muhammad became the most renowned of the cartoons.
Lars Vilks: Dutch cartoonist who published his own Muhammad drawings subsequent to the Jyllands-Posten cartoons
Stephane Charbonnier: Editor of Charlie Hedbo, a French satirical magazine
Terry Jones: Florida preacher who has burned Korans in protest of Islam.
Salman Rushdie: Author of The Satanic Verses, whose experiences reflect “The Rushdie Rules,” more than two decades later.
Molly Norris: American cartoonist who proposed “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” as a protest against both censorship and the proscription of published images of Muhammad
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Somali-born Dutch activist and politician;
Predictably, the mainstream media outlets reporting this latest example of Al Qaeda’s so-called “anti-Islamic radicalism” (across the political spectrum, from the rather odious blame the victim Atlantic account, to the factual, if short shriftassessment of The Weekly Standard), failed to connect these threats to an earlier, more egregious action by a prominent Muslim nation: the Egyptian state security court’s November 28, 2012 verdict, which sentenced to death seven expatriate Coptic Egyptians, including Morris Sadek, as well as American pastor Terry Jones, for “blaspheming” Islam—i.e., the same Sadek and Jones targeted subsequently by the Al-Qaeda “Inspire” layout. Egyptian Judge Saif al Nasr Soliman stated plainly when the ruling was issued,
The accused persons were convicted of insulting the Islamic religion through participating in producing and offering a movie that insults Islam and its prophet.
The late November, 2012 Egyptian court verdict re-affirms mainstream, institutional Islam’s Sharia (Islamic law)-based lethal punishment for speech critical of the Muslim creed. More disturbing, however, is the abject failure of contemporary Western media, academic, and political elites to accurately convey that reality—a living, liberty-crushing doctrinal and historical legacy I will elaborate herein.
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