Lars Hedegaard: "I am determined not to be silenced, come what may. I refuse to live in a world ruled by the gun."

Danish freedom fighter Lars Hedegaard recounts the jihadist attempt on his life in the oft-dhimmi but sometimes surprising Wall Street Journal: "The Assassin at the Door," by Lars Hedegaard in the Wall Street Journal, February 20 (thanks to Roger):

...However, everybody who has commented on the incident has assumed that the motive is political. Some people don't like what I have been saying or writing in recent years, and they want to silence me. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what may have spurred the gunman or those who may have sent him.

For years I have been a campaigner for free speech—since 2004 as president of Denmark's Free Press Society. I have been an outspoken critic of Islamic supremacism and of attempts to impose Islamic Shariah law in Denmark and the West. Together with my Swedish colleague Ingrid Carlqvist, I have recently launched a Swedish-language weekly newspaper called Dispatch International—to the great dissatisfaction of the Swedish mainstream media, which are probably the most politically correct in the Western world and are in absolute agreement on every issue of any consequence.

Dispatch International is critical of mass immigration to Sweden and Denmark from third-world countries and takes a dim view of Islam. As a consequence, we have been reviled as "racist." We are not. We simply insist on our right to defend freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and individual and sexual equality. We also insist on our right to criticize religious fanatics of every stripe who try to impose theocratic laws and customs on free societies.

When I was a young Marxist during the 1960s and '70s, these opinions used to be described as characteristic of the political left. Nowadays the defenders of such positions are routinely labeled as right-wing or as belonging to the "extreme right." Meanwhile, what used to be the left is cozying up to holy men who want adulterous women to be stoned, homosexuals to be hanged, apostates from Islam to be killed, and 1,200-year-old laws emanating from somewhere in the Arabian desert to replace our free constitutions.

In my home country of Denmark, the reaction to the failed murder has mainly been one of horror. Nearly all leading politicians and media have condemned it. To be sure, some newspapers have availed themselves of this opportunity to emphasize what a despicable racist I am, but at least they express their satisfaction that I'm not dead.

Not so in Sweden, where I work most of the time. The Swedish media have either hinted that I have invented the incident in order to set myself up as a martyr—which would have required a major conspiracy involving the Danish police and Security Service—or they seem disappointed that my delivery man was not a better marksman.

What's next?

Unfortunately, the attempt on my life is one in a wave of political assassinations or attempted assassinations that has swept Europe since Ayatollah Khomeini issued his so-called fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. Some have been killed—among them the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn and Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Others, like writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have been forced to flee Europe or go into hiding.

I am determined not to be silenced, come what may. I refuse to live in a world ruled by the gun.

Bravo. Read it all.