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The nonpareil Diana West surveys 2006 as the Year of Speaking Dangerously:
Now that Baby New Year is taking over again from Father Time, the observant celebrant might notice something new. In addition to the traditional top hat and diaper, and besides the 2006 banner across his chest, Baby New Year has something else in his kit: a gag. That's because 2006 is shaping up to be the Year of Speaking Dangerously. This isn't to suggest that 2005 was a banner year for freedom of speech. But the reaction, tepid at best, to significantly outrageous cases of speech repression during this past year, from Bangladesh to Paris, indicates only one thing: The year 2006 will be worse.Take our old friend (making his third appearance in this column) Ali Mohaqeq Nasab, the Afghan editor sentenced in October to two years hard labor. His crime, you may recall, was "blasphemy" — i.e., publishing articles that criticized Islamic law. The magazine he edited questioned the death penalty for converting from Islam; amputation and whippings for certain crimes; and relegating women to legal inferiority. Given that such viewpoints promised to make Islamic reform a topic of debate in post-Taliban Afghanistan, Mr. Nasab's incarceration should have created one of those international incidents you read about, or at least a journalistic cause celebre.
But no. In virtual global silence — not a healthy atmosphere for free speech — Mr. Nasab was left to the non-tender mercies of a Kabul prosecutor seeking the death penalty for those "un-Islamic" articles. And now? Here's an update from The Washington Post: "After refusing for three months to retract his statements, Nasab told an appeals court this week that he was sorry for printing stories that asserted that women should be given equal status to men in court, questioned the use of physical punishments for crimes and suggested converts from Islam should not face execution."
Read it all.
Posted by Robert at January 3, 2006 6:05 AM
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For those who believed introducing democracy into Islamic nations would lead to liberty and pave the way via open discussion to a reform of Islam, please take note of what is happening in Afghanistan and soon to happen in Iraq. Back in October, when this hit the news … if being published in Radio Free Europe is “hitting the news” … the threat was obvious. Without the protections of the individual’s freedom of speech and freedom of conscience, democracy is worse than worthless. I wrote at the time, it “is little more than a murdering mob trampling others in their path. Without these freedoms, the spirit of democracy turns into the nightmare of totalitarianism.”
Our founding fathers knew about the dangers of unlimited democracy, many conservatives and liberals used to know this. Now people look away because it is agreed by both sides of the aisle that Afghanistan is the “legitimate war.” Neither wants to face the limitations of Islam but instead focus on the details of individual battles and the threat of specific terrorist organizations. Few see the forest.
What is far more serious is that we are seeing our freedoms disappear. In France, Italy and Australia, there are laws against “vilification of a religion” and Tony Blair, if he had his way, would introduce similar laws into the UK. Diana West asks “who … will speak up for free speech?” Indeed, who? Houellebecq, who was narrowly acquitted of “vilification” in France, believes what he said in France will never be said again. He may have won the legal battle but lost the war. Whether by laws, social pressure, or physical intimidation, free speech will come to an end unless good people do something. Even if by means of provocative speech, as was common in the past, the limits of free speech need to be tested. And it has to be done here at home.
If nations-building there means liberty-destroying here, we will see liberty nowhere.
Posted by: JasonP![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 3, 2006 10:19 AM
The misnomer, the "War on Terror," refers to a world war that is the forest and Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the rest are the trees. Because Congress has not declared war in the traditional sense, we are fighting a war against a "tree" when we should be casting our troops over the entire "forest."
The enemy understands this. They also understand that their weapons don't necessarily have to be guns, bombs, or even wmds. They have chosen much more effective stealth weapons: demographics, public opinion, fifth column spies and collaborators, i.e., whistleblowers that "leak" or reveal state secrets, putting the government and the country into a tizzy. The weapons of energy, endowment and then control of universities, and planting of the "right person" in the "right spot," and so on: the "soft" jihad.
Stupidly we worry about gun and bombs. We should be focusing on the "soft" jihad.
Posted by: epg at January 3, 2006 3:03 PM
To ALL the Leftists and Democrats...
To ALL the Elitists who think they know better..
You think you can tame the Islamic Hydra..
You think you can control and pacify the blood thirsty islamic monster...
Well lets see the results of this pacifism effort..
Where else then in thailand...
http://www.manager.co.th/IHT/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=9490000000086
The government bent over to the will of the Pacifists... Even telling their own soldiers not to shoot back...
The Government dropped paper peace cranes hoping to reach out to the muslim whordes...
they reached out all right...
With ... well just read it for yourselves..
Narathiwat – In the space of just two years, a bloody insurgency gripping Thailand’s Muslim South has escalated, with militants combining shock tactics and more sophisticated methods of attack to take their violent campaign to a higher plane.
In a far cry from the arson attacks and shootouts of a year ago, today’s insurgents are carrying out assassinations, car bombings and beheadings in a bid to destabilize the Muslim-majority region – and local people in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat have never been more frightened.
For some, even a short motorcycle ride to the village tea shop at sundown is too big a risk to take.
“I’m scared of being attacked, more now than ever before,” said an assistant village chief in Narathiwat’s Rangae district, one of the South’s “red zones,” where drive-by shootings and bombings occurred almost on a daily basis last year.
“There were never this many murders. Now, I won’t go out at night. I’m always looking over my shoulder.”
In nearby Tanyong Limoh village, where two Thai marines were stabbed and beaten to death last year by Muslim vigilantes, the sentiment is the same.
“The attacks used to be less regular, but people in our village are being killed now, and everyone is scared they will be next,”
Dozens of soldiers were killed in ambushes last year, mostly by insurgents who hid in the dense forests waiting to attack troops riding in pairs on motorcycles or packed into pickup trucks.
Sergeant Somjit Lorsaeng became the first such victim of 2006 when he was shot and decapitated while on patrol in Yala yesterday – one of at least 20 people to be beheaded since May 2004 in attacks bearing all the hallmarks of Iraq’s deadly insurgency.
“They wait in the bushes to attack us, hoping we will shoot back,” Col Apichai Swarngpob told ThaiDay yesterday while on his daily visit to Tanyong Limoh to meet with villagers, part of renewed efforts by the army to win back the trust of wary locals. “If we return fire, the people will no longer trust us.”
Analysts say insurgents fighting for an independent state for the region’s 1.8 million Muslims have grown more coordinated, sophisticated and barbaric in their battle with the Thai government.
Hmm seems pacifism does work ...
If your the Islamic Terrorists...
Posted by: jingoist at January 3, 2006 3:30 PM
Dawa in Poland! Sorry if off topic, but I need to share this! I was watching Polish news - a piece regarding the health of Siamese twins, whose operation was conducted in Riyadh and sponsored by ....guess who (a question for a fiver!)? - the king of Saudis Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. The girls are well, but how long for? The generous king has now also donated 300 thousand dollars towards the creation of a "Centre for the Dialogue" in the twins' village called Janikowo, which will promote a good image of....well another question for a fiver - of Islam!
http://www.radiozet.pl/wiadomosci.htm,5234
I just volunteer the first 10 quid for a Catholic Centre in Riyadh! Any followers?
Harvard, Georgetown and now ...Janikowo! Janikowo can be proud in such company! Ha ha!
at January 3, 2006 4:25 PM
Never accept sweets or money from a "good" rich uncle, especially if you are am underage girl!
My parents have taught me that - I hope the rest of Poles have the same training!
at January 3, 2006 5:19 PM
Speaking of speaking clearly:
RE: the JW/DW shop/link (top left of main page) that is promoting T-shirts with the slogan "STOP JIHAD".
While I agree with the sentiment, this seems a pretty weak motto in such a serious cause.
Why not say it straight and hard and strong with something more like: " DESTROY JIHAD! "?
"STOP" is such a vague, indefinite and non-judgmental word to use against a murderous global theocratic nihilistic fascist tyranny.
The pussyfooting must end.
Our response must match the threat.
DESTROY JIHAD!
at January 4, 2006 1:06 AM
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