Recently in free speech Category

Obama is in the White House and endorses their efforts. The OIC has tried for years to compel Western states to restrict free speech and outlaw truth-telling about Islam, and now it is pressing on toward final victory. Apparently OIC top dogs are not satisfied with the current rate of compliance of the dhimmi mainstream media, even though it is almost total: the media constantly ignores, downplays, and obfuscates the ways in which Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism, the Islamic character of honor killings, and more. Yet the OIC thinks that there is a "smear campaign against Islam in newspapers and media institutions in the West" -- in other words, the truth is still getting out, because Muslims keep committing acts of violence in the name of Islam and it is hard even for the media to cover it up totally. So...time for another media workshop.

"OIC To Hold Media Workshop To Address Smear Campaign Against Islam," from Bernama, February 13:

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 13 (Bernama) -- The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is to hold a media workshop in Brussels on Feb 15 to 16 pertaining to the smear campaigns against Islam in newspapers and media institutions in the West.

The objective of this first-of-its-kind workshop is to develop media-related mechanisms to address the smear campaigns, the OIC said in a statement.

It said the workshop will discuss at length the reasons behind and the results of the Western media's offensive campaigns against the symbols and sanctities of Islam and Muslims, which it added still occur from time to time.

"The workshop will represent a quantum leap in media action, as it discusses, beyond rhetoric, the practical steps to address the phenomenon of Islamophobia," the OIC said....

His crime, again, was reported earlier as comparing his poetry to the Qur'an. The Qur'an is adamant that no one can "produce a sura like thereof," and that it has no rival (2:23). The author of the offending tweet has been hunted down like an armed and dangerous fugitive terrorist and captured in Malaysia after Saudi King Abdullah ordered his arrest.

An update on this story. "Sacrilegious Saudi writer arrested in Malaysia," from Emirates 24-7, February 9 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Malaysian authorities arrested a Saudi newspaper writer wanted by the Gulf kingdom for offending Islam and Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) and local reports said he could face death.

Hamza Kashgari was seized as he arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday following his escape from Saudi Arabia on news that King Abdullah has ordered him arrested and prosecuted for religious insults in his articles on Twitter.

“The Malaysian authorities are coordinating with Saudi Arabia to hand Kashgari over,” the Saudi Arabic language daily 'Al Youm' said. In a separate report, newspapers quoted a statement by the kingdom’s Islamic Fatwa Committee calling for punishing Kashgari in line with Islamic law, which means he could be executed.

King Abdullah’s order to arrest the writer, a columnist in the Saudi Arabic language daily 'Al Bilad', followed public furor inside the kingdom over some of his articles, considered as abusive of Islam and the Prophet. “The order came after many scholars, dignitaries and citizens in the kingdom sent messages to the Monarch expressing indignation at Kashgari offences,” 'Ajel' Arabic language daily said on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Saudi Information minister Abdul Aziz Khowja was reported as telling all local newspapers and magazine not to carry any article by Kashgari for what he described as persistent offences against Islam.“I have instructed all newspapers and magazines in the kingdom not to allow him to write any thing and we will take legal measures against him,” he said.

“When I read his articles, I wept and got very angry to have someone in the country of the two holy shrines address our Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) in this offending way,” he added without giving further details.

Newspapers said Khowja’s move came after thousands of readers and schools sent letters to the local media and online demanding Kashgari’s prosecution. After the order, many Saudi newspapers carried a letter written by Kashgari on his Twitter page apologizing for any offence, which he said was inadvertent.

Younus Abdullah Mohammad's lawyer, James Hundley, said that his case presented free speech issues. It did, but not the ones Hundley had in mind. Younus Abdullah Mohammad has no Constitutional right to threaten people with death. But his doing so is the other side of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's ongoing campaign to compel Western governments to criminalize "religious hatred," by which they mean all accurate speech about how jihadists point to Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence. Either Western countries will render themselves mute (and hence defenseless) against the advancing jihad, or thugs like Younus Abdullah Mohammad will force them into silence by means of threats and murder.

"Second South Park threats suspect to plead guilty," by Josh Gerstein in Politico, February 8:

A second man alleged to have made illegal threats against "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone has agreed to plead guilty, according to a defense lawyer.

Jesse Morton, also known as Younus Abdullah Mohammad, was detained in Morocco last May in connection with alleged threats posted on the Revolution Muslim website after "South Park" depicted Mohammad as a man in a bear suit. Prosecutors allege that Morton helped write a "clarification statement" that amounted to a further threat against the "South Park" creators by praying for their deaths and suggesting that they were likely to face the violent demise of other critics of Islam....

A lawyer for Morton, James Hundley, said his client plans to appear in federal court in Alexandria, Va. on Thursday to plead guilty to three felonies: conspiracy, communicating threats, and internet stalking. Each carries a sentence of up to five years in prison....

Hundley said the case against Morton presented free speech issues, but his client ultimately decided to take the plea the government offered rather than risk trial on more serious charges that could carry an even longer sentence.

"Certainly, this case had that question: at what point are you exercising free speech and at what point are you verging into prohibited speech of a threatening or inciting nature?" Hundley told POLITICO Wednesday. "That was something we obviously looked at very closely."...

His crime? Comparing his poetry to something in the Qur'an. The Qur'an is adamant that it cannot be rivaled (2:23). One report even says King Abdullah ordered his arrest.

That's the same King Abdullah of the "King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue," not in Mecca or Medina or even Riyadh, but Vienna. "Saudi Arabia: Writer flees after threats for 'offending Islam'," from AdnKronos, February 8 (thanks to Twostellas):

Riyadh, 8 Feb. (AKI) - Saudi Arabian writer Hamza Kashghri went into hiding in an undisclosed Southeast Asian country after recieving threats for allegedly offending Islam in a message posted on online social network site Twitter, according to the Al-Arabiya news channel. In his message, Kashghri reportedly compared his poetry to some versus in the Koran and made offensive statements about the Prophet Muhammad, the report said.

Whose prophet?

The Twitter message unleashed a campaign against him, resulting in threats that prompted him to flee. After leaving Saudi Arabia, Kashghri went to Jordan and the United Arab Emirates before reaching Southeast Asia.

This is the way it always is with the Left and the Islamic supremacists. They are enemies of freedom, enemies of the freedom of speech, and brutish thugs who can do nothing else to silence us but resort to violence. This is all of a piece with the fact that few Islamic spokesmen will debate me, although many feel free to defame and lie about me -- they can't really refute or answer what I say, so they have to resort to thuggish tactics to try to fool people of good will into discounting the truths I tell.

This reveals who the true fascists really are, and who the real threats to freedom really are, underneath the relentless mainstream media propaganda.

The Occupy DC site specifically names our AFDI/SIOA conference on Islamic law in America as one of their targets.

"Exclusive: Occupy DC Plans Mayhem for Major Conservative Conference," by Lachlan Markay for The Foundry, February 7 (thanks to Mackie):

The “Occupy DC” protest group is planning to disrupt the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference using a range of potentially illegal tactics that could even include violence against participants, Scribe has learned.

The planned disruptions at CPAC come only days after U.S. Park Police raided Occupiers’ tent cities at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., confiscating a number of tents, and prohibiting Occupiers from camping out there any longer.

During a Thursday meeting at McPherson Square, until Saturday the epicenter of the protests, Occupiers brainstormed tactics for shutting down or disrupting the conference, according to a source who was present at the meeting.

The protesters suggested pulling fire alarms in the hotel where the conference will take place, screaming “fire” during conference activities, “glitter-bombing” participants, cutting electrical power, and barricading entrances to the hotel, according to the source, who requested anonymity.

“Speakers will be physically assaulted, not just verbally confronted,” the source told Scribe in an email. Two Occupiers, who the source also identified as members of the New Black Panther Party, “said they would be disappointed if they didn’t get arrested and planned to ‘make it count.’”

The source quoted another protester as saying, “Mitt [Romney] has Secret Service now, but [Newt] Gingrich and [Andrew] Breitbart don’t,” seemingly suggesting that the latter two would not be as heavily guarded....

The Swedish Free Press Society, Tryckfrihetssällskapet, was launched on January 31, 2012. The Swedish press is known for notoriously hiding facts and consequences concerning Islam, immigration and Muslim criminals (example: Swedish specialty: Pink pixellation of dark-skinned criminals and pixellated anonymization of wanted criminals).

People who want to meet to talk about such topics need severe police protection (Sweden: Launching the Swedish Free Press Society under police protection).

I have interviewed Lars Hedegaard, initiator and chairman of both the Free Press Society in Denmark and the International Free Press Society, and Ingrid Carlqvist, initiator of the new Swedish branch.

From left to right: Hans Rustad (chief editor, document.no), Gunnar Sandelin (Sweden, fired as a journalist for writing critically about immigration policies), Ingrid Carlqvist (Sweden), Lars Hedegaard (Denmark), Mikael Jalving (Denmark, Conservative author)

Lars Hedegaard, please introduce The Free Press Society to our readers. How do you start a thing like that, what impact did it have in society and did it spread to other countries as well?

Hedegaard: In 2003-2004 it became evident that free speech was seriously threatened in Denmark and that we had no organised force to resist this encroachment on our liberties. Islam and its acolytes were riding high. The official press, the political class, academia, the experts, our courts and the clerics of our Lutheran Church kept hammering the people with the message that islam is an enrichment of our society and that anyone that thought otherwise was a fascist and racist and ought to be prevented from expressing his opinions. Anyone who dared to stand up for the freedom of expression guaranteed in our constitution was vilified. Their careers were ruined. Many were convicted in our courts, fired from their jobs or driven to despair.

Public opinion – which is not what the public think but what one may express in public without fear of dire consequences – went underground. We were approaching a dual discourse: A surface discourse extolling the virtues of multiculturalism and cultural relativism and a real discourse taking place among women and men when the thought police wasn't listening.

Much to my surprise I was approached by two supposedly far-right members of parliament. They were well aware that I had a past on the extreme left but asked if I would be the front man of a new organisation to defend free speech. I thought hard about it and eventually agreed to step up to the plate. It turned out that many others shared our worries and were willing to join.

That's how we got started in Denmark back in 2004.

Ingrid Carlqvist and Hedegaard, how is suppression of free speech possible in democratic countries with a free press? Please also give some specific examples from Sweden.

Carlqvist: Sadly, the answer is that the Swedish journalists have totally misunderstood their own role. Let me quote my namesake Knut Carlqvist, an author and journalist that died 2010. He once said: ”Swedish journalists have never realized that their duty is to keep an eye on the state and the power. They believe their duty is to monitor the people.”

I have worked at many different newspapers and I know that there is consensus regarding how to report about all things concerning the huge immigration to Sweden, where we the last 30 years or so, have seen hundreds of thousands coming from countries that are essentially different from Sweden. The journalists all agree to write nice articles about ramadan, muslim festivities and mosques but to never write anything negative about immigration or immigrants. That has lead to the remarkable situation that people can see that there are huge problems with analfabetic immigrants from countries like Somalia and Afghanistan, but the newspapers pretend everything is fine.

A flagrant example is the enormous number of rapes. Last year 6 509 rapes were reported to the police in Sweden – the corresponding figure in Denmark was 392. The population in Denmark is a bit more than half of Sweden's, so if everything was normal in Sweden we would have 650 rapes, not 6 500.

But the media is quiet. Nobody digs into these figures to try to find out what’s causing it. Is it the fact that Sweden changed the law so that rape is now a lot of things, not only penetration? Or is it a huge number of false allegations? Or is it something to do with the mass immigration to Sweden, especially from the MENA-countries? Nobody knows, because nobody investigates.

I had just signed a contract on writing columns for the local newspaper Barometern and they were really pleased with my first column (about a father fighting the authorities for taking his daughters from him). After someone phoned the paper saying I was a racist and an islamophobe, they fired me. The paper told me they couldn't publish someone who is openly critical of Swedish immigration policies.

Hedegaard: Our political classes and academic and media elites are scared. They know in their hearts that they have been promulgating a lie in the shape of a crazy vision of a multicultural utopia intended to keep them in power but which is now failing spectacularly. They can no longer solve the problems they themselves have created – mass immigration, parallel societies, sharia zones, exploding crime and a general erosion of everything the West used to stand for.

But they can at least try to prevent people from openly discussing this state of affairs. They do that with a vengeance and with the tender aid of the public prosecutor and the courts and their fellow travellers in academia and the surface media.

It won't help them in the long run. For a while they have managed to install terror in civil society to the extent that people have been scared to tell even their neighbours and spouses what they really think. They have been successful in hounding people out of their jobs and much more. Yet they have failed in eradicating people's conscience and that is what will matter over the long haul.

Ingrid Carlqvist, in January 2012 Sweden got its own Free Press Society, Tryckfrihetssällskapet. How has it been received in Sweden? How did your first public meeting go? What did the Swedish press write about you?

Carlqvist: First of all, the Swedish press didn’t want to write about us at all. But when they saw on the internet that more than 100 people were coming to the first meeting, they decided to come. So far we had one news article and two culture articles. All are negative. They try to portray us as racists and islamophobes. But the success is huge. Many people have e-mailed saying they want to become members of the Free Press Society and donate to the cause.

It seems that The FPS is mainly concerned about Islam and Muslim immigration. What does that have to do with free speech, and are you actually Islam critics in sheep's clothing?

Carlqvist: I think we must all realize that islam is one of the greatest threats to free speech in the world today. In Sweden we have the artist Lars Vilks who has to live with bodyguards round the clock because he drew a picture of Mohammed as a dog. We have a long tradition of free speech in Sweden, but now everybody’s scared. Not one fellow artist has drawn his own picture of Mohammed as a dog, to help Vilks. Everyone is silent and there have been several attempts to kill Lars Vilks - from muslims in Sweden.

Hedegaard: Of course we have concentrated most of our energy on opposing an ideology – islam – whose spokesmen have made no bones about their intention to do away with our freedom and install a totalitarian and barbarian theocracy the like of which we haven't seen in this part of the world for as long as we can look back. If we hadn't done that, people would have no reason take us seriously.

We are well aware that there are several other threats to free speech that deserve our attention and we try to address them to the best of our ability.

This year's freedom prize, which we have been awarding every year since we got started, will go to one of the courageous fighters for democracy in Russia. I won't tell you who we have in mind but I can promise you that it will be a spectacular event and one that we hope will give the Kremlin pause for thought.

Talking about free speech and the threat of Islam. Do you think that the Quran should be banned in our countries?

Carlqvist: No, of course not! Free speech means that nothing is forbidden or banned, it is with words and good arguments we will vanquish bad ideas.

Hedegaard: I agree with Ingrid. We will never advocate the banning of books however bad and pernicious. Bad books should be met with good ones and bad thoughts with good thoughts – openly, in the light of day. That's the Western way.

Ingrid Carlqvist, do you see a growing openness in Sweden concerning breaking taboos? What wishes and future plans do you have for the Swedish FPS?

Carlqvist: Well, I hope that FPS will open up the debate in Sweden, but I’m not at all sure. We have a long tradition of silence and a great belief in authorities in our country, so I think we will have to be patient. But I do believe that many people are frustrated with the situation and ready to start questioning what is going on.

How can private persons help to protect and support free speech?

Carlqvist: By becoming members of the Free Press Society, of course!

Hedegaard: Yes, and please try to muster the courage to talk to your friends, neighbours, colleagues and family about what you really think. Defend those whose lives are being ruined by our merciless elites. If you cannot do so openly, you can do it in private. Let the persecuted know that you are a friend. Give them hope. Many a dictatorship has been brought down in this way.

Remember: this is the kind of world the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) wants you to live in. This is the kind of world that all pro-Sharia advocates, and all opponents of anti-Sharia laws, want you to live in: a world in which a text message that a pious believer thinks is offensive against some aspect of Islam can land you in jail. This is the coming tyranny.

"Text messages: Police arrest security guard of factory," from The Express Tribune, February 4 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

KARACHI: The police have arrested a young man for allegedly using offensive language against the companions of the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

The suspect, identified as 20-year-old Mujahid, was associated with a private security company and posted at a biscuit factory in Korangi from where he was arrested.

Korangi Industrial Area SHO Malik Ayub told The Express Tribune that a man named Zubair had approached the police, complaining that Mujahid had sent him the text message.

Malik said that Mujahid and Zubair were friends but belonged to different sects. They were working at the same factory but recently Zubair was transferred to another factory.

The police have registered a case under Section 298-A of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 28 of the Telegraph Act. Police have also seized their cell phones.

The Free Press Society is dedicated to protecting free speech. They mainly work to remove laws that limit free speech and to fight what they see as the greatest threat to freedom of speech: Islam.

I recently posted an article that described the degree of political correctness in the Swedish media and the amount of troubles with Muslims in Sweden - "Swedish specialty: Pink pixellation of dark-skinned criminals and pixellated anonymization of wanted criminals".

(Picture courtesy of Snaphanen.dk)

A Swedish branch of the Free Press Society has long been needed. Translated from The South Swedish, January 31: "There Exists a Mental Stalinism in our Country":

Malmö. Inspired by the Free Press Society of Denmark, the Swedish Free Press Society held its first meeting in Malmo on January 31, 2012.

Immigration and Swedish journalists were on the firing line. Speakers included Lars Hedegaard, who has been convicted by a Danish court for his verbal attacks against Muslims.

"There is a mental Stalinism in our country. A politically correct terrorism destroying our country." This statement by journalist Gunnar Sandelin summed up the feelings of many visitors at the Swedish Free Press Society's first meeting, in the Youth Center in Malmö on Tuesday evening.

"Come and listen to what you may never see, hear or read about in the Swedish media!," it said on the invitation.

Tonight's topic: immigration.

One hundred pre-registered visitors were told by the founder of the Swedish branch, Malmö journalist Ingrid Carlqvist, that the Society will take up 'all the subjects that are taboo.'

Four speakers were invited, all journalists: Danish Lars Hedegaard and Mikael Jalving, Norwegian Hans Rustad, and Swedish Gunnar Sandelin. They all had a similar message: Swedish journalists are cowards and the problems with immigration are swept under the carpet.

Since the Free Press Society started in 2004 in Denmark, it has become known for its harsh criticism of Islam and Muslims. The chairman, 69-year-old Lars Hedegaard, was convicted in May last year for breaking the Danish racism paragraph, the equivalent of the Swedish law on incitement to racial hatred.

"When Swedish girls are raped, mass raped [by Muslims], there is nothing wrong with it seen from an Islamic perspective. It is their right," said Hedegaard in an interview that 2009 has been published on the site snaphanen.dk. ...

In Malmö last night Lars Hedegaard just said that Islam is the most dangerous threat to the West, and that many Muslims are "not satisfied until their religion rules over all others."

"We must be able to discuss such things freely. Therefore, the Free Press Society is important," Hedegaard said, and wished his Swedish colleague Ingrid Carlqvist good luck.

Many Swedish Democrats were in the audience, among them the Regional Council Jens Leandersson, Ted Ekeroth and Hans-Olof Andersson, chairman of SD Lund.

A large amount of police officers patrolled the neighbourhood around the Youth Centre. Even more appeared when the artist Lars Vilks (known for his drawing of Muhammed as a dog) turned up with his entourage of agents from Säpo, the Swedish secret police.

This is all the more disturbing following a similar recent incident in which a video conference with Salman Rushdie at a literary fair had to be called off.

Behavior that is rewarded is repeated, and society will be poorer for it as dissent becomes physically dangerous. "After Muslim protests, Kolkata Book Fair cancels Taslima Nasrin book launch," by Molly Driscoll for the Christian Science Monitor, February 2:

After receiving threats, the Kolkata Book Fair canceled the launch of Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin’s new autobiography "Nirbasan," which had been scheduled to debut at the fair this week. Muslim leaders had protested her appearance there because of one of Nasrin’s previous books, titled “Lajja” (translated to “Shame”), which has been viewed by some of the Muslim faith as offensive.

Nasrin has enraged them before by demanding women's rights. Two people died in riots over her article "Let's Think About the Burqa" in 2010. In that article, she called for women to burn their burqas, and noted:

"Some 1,500 years ago, it was decided for an individual's personal reasons that women should have purdah and since then millions of Muslim women all over the world have had to suffer it," and: "Why are women covered? Because they are sex objects. Because when men see them, they are roused. Why should women have to be penalised for men's sexual problems? Even women have sexual urges. But men are not covered for that."

The CSM report continues:

Tridib Chatterjee, the secretary for the Publishers and Booksellers Guild, which is in charge of the Kolkata Book Fair, told The New York Times that the launch was canceled not only because of threats received, but because the AC Hall, the space where the launch was to take place, was not prepared.

“We took the decision to cancel the book launch in the larger interests of the people,” Chatterjee told The New York Times. “We cannot jeopardize the safety and security of thousands of visitors to the book fair.”

The launch then took place at the stall of the People’s Book Society, the publishing company that was releasing Nasrin’s new book, though not in connection with the fair's organizers. Other authors at the book fair, including writer Nabarun Bhattacharya, launched the book at the stall unofficially. A rally occurred later at the fair, protesting the threats against Nasrin.

Nasrin was forced to flee her home country of Bangladesh in 1994 after the release of "Lajja" provoked attacks and death threats. She lived in Europe and North America for some time before moving to Kolkata, but after being attacked again and becoming the subject of riots due to a fatwa against her in the city, she moved to New Delhi, and then left India for Sweden after she said some members of the police force told her to leave the country.

Nasreen said she was taken aback that the cancellation had not prompted more outrage from the city’s residents.

“Are Kolkatans becoming cowards?” she asked the Times of India.

More glories of the Arab Spring -- and remember, this is the kind of anti-free speech law that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), with the willing cooperation of the Obama Administration, is trying to bring West.

This man has had a 40-year career making fun of all sorts of people and things, but only now has he run afoul of the law.

"Egyptian film star sentenced for insulting Islam," from Reuters, February 2:

CAIRO - The Arab world's most famous comic actor, Adel Imam, has received a three-month jail sentence for insulting Islam in films and plays, a court document showed on Thursday.

Imam, who has frequently poked fun at authorities and politicians of all colors during a 40-year career, has one month to appeal the sentence and will remain out of jail until the appeal process is concluded.

The sentence Wednesday evening came weeks after Islamists swept most seats in a parliamentary election. The case was brought by Asran Mansour, a lawyer with ties to Islamist groups, and had languished in court for months, judicial sources said.

Mansour accused the actor of offending Islam and its symbols, including beards and the Jilbab, a loose-fitting garment worn by some Muslims, the Egyptian news portal Ahramonline reported.

Among films and plays targeted by the lawyer were the movie "Morgan Ahmed Morgan" and the play "Al-Zaeem" ("The Leader"), the report said.

Imam was also handed a fine of 1,000 Egyptian pounds ($170) in absentia, the court document showed. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

Another defeat for the freedom of speech and another victory for Hamas-linked Islamic supremacist thugs -- courtesy the U.S. Military. "CAIR pressures retired general, critic of Islam, to back out of West Point event," by Caroline May for the Daily Caller, January 31 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

The Council on American-Islamic Relations announced Monday night that it had successfully prevented retired Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin from speaking at an upcoming prayer breakfast at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

“We welcome Mr. Boykin’s withdrawal from this event and hope that the speaker who replaces him will offer cadets a spiritual message that promotes tolerance and mutual understanding,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad in a statement.

West Point initially balked at the calls to remove Boykin — a former military intelligence officer — from the event.

Lt. Col. Sherri Reed of West Point told The Associated Press that cadets are “purposefully exposed to different perspectives and cultures.”

“The National Prayer Breakfast Service will be pluralistic with Christians, Jewish, and Muslim cadets participating,” Reed said. “We are comfortable and confident that what retired Lt. Gen. Boykin will share about prayer, soldier care and selfless service, will be in keeping with the broad range of ideas normally considered by our cadets.”

Boykin backed out of the event on his own volition, according to a report from Fox News.

The retired lieutenant general has been on CAIR’s radar for casting Islam in a poor light, specifically in speeches in which he analogizing the War on Terror to a war against Satan....

Pamela Geller has background on this important free speech case in a piece that ran at the American Thinker yesterday: "The Civilized Man vs. the MTA Savages." As she says there, "The very idea that the MTA would censor free speech in defense of the blasphemy laws under the sharia speaks volumes as to the success of the stealth jihad in America. I hope the MTA is prepared to go to the Supreme Court, because we are."

From the American Freedom Law Center:

American Freedom Law Center (AFLC), on behalf of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), Pamela Geller, and Robert Spencer, filed a request today for a preliminary injunction in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), seeking to halt MTA’s censorship of AFDI’s pro-Israel / anti-Jihad bus advertisement.

AFLC Senior Counsel Robert Muise commented, “Here, the MTA would rather violate a law-abiding, private citizen’s right to freedom of speech than offend those who support violent jihad against Israel and others. The American Freedom Law Center is committed to fighting this pernicious form of civilization jihad that undermines our fundamental rights.”

At issue in the lawsuit is AFDI’s pro-Israel / anti-Jihad advertisement, which states, “In Any War Between the Civilized Man and the Savage, Support the Civilized Man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” This advertisement was offered as a direct response to an anti-Israel advertisement that was run previously by a pro-Palestine group. The MTA approved the anti-Israel advertisement. However, it rejected AFDI’s advertisement, claiming that it violated its policy against displaying “images or information that demean an individual or group of individuals on account of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation.”

AFLC Senior Counsel David Yerushalmi commented, “The MTA’s ‘demeaning speech’ policy is operating here as a viewpoint-based restriction on our clients’ speech. Viewpoint discrimination is the most egregious form of content discrimination under the First Amendment.”

According to the papers filed this morning in federal court, the MTA, by policy and practice, has intentionally dedicated its advertising space on its vehicles, including its public buses, to expressive conduct. Pursuant to this longstanding policy, MTA has permitted a wide variety of commercial, noncommercial, public-service, public-issue, political, and religious advertisements on the outside of its vehicles.

For example, MTA permitted a religious group, Muslims for Peace, to run an advertisement on 90 public buses. The advertisement stated, “Muslims for Peace, Love for All, Hatred for None . . . WHY ISLAM.” The MTA permitted an atheist group, the Big Apple Coalition of Reason, to display an advertisement stating, “A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?” Recently, and as noted previously, the MTA permitted the display of a pro-Palestine / anti-Israel advertisement which stated, “Be on our side. We are the side of peace and justice. End U.S. military aid to Israel.” This advertisement was displayed at MTA subway stations throughout the City.

This past September, AFDI submitted its proposed advertisement to CBS Outdoor, which acts as the advertising agent for MTA. AFDI’s pro-Israel advertisement is political speech that directly responds to the pro-Palestine / anti-Israel advertisement. The anti-Israeli advertisement suggests that Israel’s military is the impediment to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians and that U.S. military aid to Israel also acts as an impediment to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. In other words, the anti-Israel advertisement blames Israel, its military, and U.S. military aid to Israel as the cause of Palestinian terror directed against innocent civilians in Israel and abroad.

AFDI’s advertisement presents the message that there is no comparison or equivalence between savage civilian-targeting violence and Israel’s civilized struggle for survival in a part of the world where civilized behavior is overshadowed by terrorism, despotism, and brutality.

On September 21, 2011, CBS Outdoor, acting on behalf of MTA, informed AFDI by email that MTA had rejected the advertisement on the grounds that it violated its demeaning speech policy. The MTA’s rejection concluded with an invitation to AFDI to modify its message in some way so as to be acceptable to MTA.

By email on September 22, 2011, AFDI, through legal counsel, rejected MTA’s invitation to censor its speech and requested a “formal and final determination.” AFDI’s response made clear that the pro-Israel advertisement did not violate MTA’s demeaning speech policy and that MTA’s use of the policy to prohibit AFDI’s message violated the First Amendment.

On September 23, 2011, CBS Outdoor, acting on behalf of MTA, informed AFDI that MTA had formally and finally rejected AFDI’s advertisement on the grounds that it violated MTA’s demeaning speech policy. AFDI promptly filed this civil rights lawsuit.

Through the lawsuit and the recently filed preliminary injunction motion, AFDI is challenging the constitutionality of MTA’s censorship, which is suppressing the viewpoint AFDI is attempting to express in its message. That viewpoint is that U.S. foreign policy supporting Israel in the face of savage violence is the correct moral, political, and strategic choice for the leader of the Free World.

Muise concluded, “The Constitution does not permit the government, in this case the MTA, to take sides on political issues by silencing one-side of the debate. Here, the MTA is siding with the savage and silencing the civilized man, in violation of the First Amendment.”

The American Freedom Law Center is a Judeo-Christian law firm that fights for faith and freedom. It accomplishes its mission through litigation, public policy initiatives, and related activities. It does not charge for its services. The Law Center is supported by contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations, and is recognized by the IRS as a section 501(c)(3) organization. Visit us at www.americanfreedomlawcenter.org.

What anti-Islam press? The mainstream media in both the U.K. and the U.S. has been for years and remains completely unwilling to discuss jihad and Islamic supremacism. When mainstream reporters are forced to report on jihad activity, they regularly ascribe it to other factors or obscure its motives. Thus we hear about "militants," "insurgents," and "youths" in connection with violent jihad activity, while being endlessly regaled with articles designed to intimidate people into thinking that concern about the stealth jihad and creeping Sharia is "Islamophobia."

This initiative is designed to shut down the last vestiges of truth-telling about jihad and Islamic supremacist in the British mainstream media. Note also that among the signers is not only once-fashionable Leftist Bianca Jagger, but Moazzam Begg, an apologist for Anwar al-Awlaki. That's right: the fox is demanding that the farmer stop his anti-fox activity of guarding the henhouse.

"We need an inquiry into anti-Islam press," from The Guardian, January 23 (thanks to Steven):

Over the past decade, a number of academic studies have indicated a worrying and disproportionate trend towards negative, distorted and even fabricated reports in media coverage of the Muslim community. Recent research at Cambridge University concludes that "a wider set of representations of Islam would signify a welcome change to reporting practices. Muslims deserve a better press than they have been given in the past decade." And according to a recent ComRes poll, one in three people in Britain today believe that the media is responsible for "whipping up a climate of fear of Islam in the UK".

The Leveson inquiry has so far failed to adequately address unfair media coverage as it relates to less prominent cases, including those relating to Muslims and Islam, focusing as it does on the impact of phone hacking on celebrities and other high-profile individuals.

An alternative inquiry is necessary to investigate what many regard as widespread and systematic discriminatory practices in reporting on Muslims and Islam in the British media. Victims – whether prominent or not – of alleged discriminatory media coverage have a right to have their testimonies catalogued and examined thoroughly by credible, independent assessors. Recommendations can then be made to improve ethical standards in the reporting of not solely the Muslim community but of all sections of society.

Imran Khan Human rights solicitor
Bianca Jagger Chair, Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation
Michael Rosen Writer
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Jemima Khan
Navnit Dholakia Deputy leader, Liberal Democrats, House of Lords
Mohamed Ali Harrath Islam Channel
Hajj Ahmad Thomson Barrister
Jenny Jones Assembly member (Green), London Assembly
Andrew Boff Assembly member (Conservative), London Assembly
Rabbi Janet Burden
Walter Wolfgang
Hugh Lanning Chair, Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Sanum Ghafoor, blogger
Jean Lambert, MEP, London
Peter Murray Former president, NUJ
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari Chair, East London Mosque
Dr Omer El-Hamdoon Muslim Association of Britain
Massoud Shadjareh Islamic Human Rights Commission
Sunny Hundal Liberal Conspiracy
Ahmed J Versi The Muslim News
John Rees Counterfire
Vivien Lichtenstein
Anas Altikriti Cordoba Foundation
Miriam Margolyes
Farooq Murad Muslim Council of Britain
Sarah Colborne Director, Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Dr Daud Abdullah Middle East Monitor
Moazzam Begg Cageprisoners
Phil Rees Out of Office Films
Nabil Ahmed Federation of Student Islamic Societies
Abdullah Faliq Islamic Forum of Europe
Rabbi Jeffrey Newman
Cllr Larry Sanders Oxfordshire county council
Diana Neslen
Shemiza Rashid Director, The Creative Muslim Network
Na'ima B Roberts Editor, Sisters Magazine
Asa Winstanley The Electronic Intifada
Richard Peppiatt Writer and former tabloid reporter
Shazia Arshad Human rights campaigner
Myriam Francois Cerrah Activist
Murtaza Shibli Journalist and author
Lindsey German Stop The War Coalition
Murad Qureshi Assembly member, London Assembly
Cat Smith Chair, Next Generation Labour (pc)
Robert Pitt Islamophobia Watch
Dr Alana Lentin University of Sussex
Robin Richardson Insted Consultancy
Cat Boyd Coalition of Resistance Glasgow
Baroness Pola Uddin
Sean Rillo Raczka University of London Union
Chris Nineham Enough Coalition Against Islamophobia
Mark McDonald Barrister
Dan Poulton Journalist
Yasmin Khatun Producer
Frances Legg Producer
Chris Bambery Journalist
Sadiya Chowdhury Journalist
Supporters of the The Alternative Leveson inquiry

I am not in favor of laws restricting the freedom of speech, but this response from the OIC is consistent with its own attempts to restrict truth-telling about Islam and jihad under the guise of criminalizing "religious hatred." Note also that by labeling the French law an example of "Islamophobia," Ihsanoglu is tacitly admitting that the Armenian genocide was an Islamic jihad action; otherwise, what would Islam have to do with this law at all?

"OIC: Adoption of genocide law sign of Islamophobia in France," by A. Taghiyeva for Trend, January 24:

The adoption of the law criminalizing the denial of the so-called "Armenian Genocide" is a sign of Islamophobia in France, Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told Trend on Tuesday.

"This law contradicts three fundamental principles of democracy -- equality, freedom and brotherhood. It is a sign of growing Islamophobia," Ihsanoglu said.

He called the law unacceptable, non-complying with historical facts and demonstrating double standards.

After a nearly eight-hour debate, the French Senate adopted the bill. Some 127 senators voted in favor, while 86 senators voted against on Jan.23.

The lower house of the French parliament adopted a bill criminalising the denial of the so-called "genocide" on Dec.22. Some 45 out of 577 French MPs voted with 38 voting for and seven against the adoption of the bill.

The bill demands a year's imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euro for denying the so-called "genocide." In response to the decision, Turkey announced that it has frozen all diplomatic relations with France.

MPs from the French president's Union for Popular Movement (UMP) party, which has the parliamentary majority, proposed the bill aimed at criminalising the denial of the so-called "genocide" to the legislative committee of the National Assembly in early December.

Armenia and the Armenian lobby claim that the predecessor of the Turkey - Ottoman Empire had committed the 1915 genocide against the Armenians living in Anadolu, and achieved recognition of the "Armenian Genocide" by the parliaments of several countries.

Showing yet again that thuggery and intimidation work. "Salman Rushdie's video conference at Jaipur Literature Festival cancelled," from IBNLive, January 24 (thanks to Sanjay):

Jaipur: Celebrated author Salman Rushdie's live video conference at Jaipur Literature Festival has been cancelled following protests by Jaipur-based Milli Council. Several activists of the Milli Council arrived at the venue of the Festival at Diggi Palace on Tuesday afternoon, demanding that the proposed video address by Rushdie be called off, claiming that it was an insult to the Muslims.

Despite Rajasthan government supporting the organisers of the festival, the link was called off amidst much drama at Diggi Palace in Jaipur.

The owner of the Diggy Palace Ram Pratap Singh said that he decided to not allow the video link fearing violence. Singh said that several people had entered the venue and threatened to take the law in their own hands if the video link was allowed.

"I have taken a decision on not to allow the video conference to go ahead on the advise of Rajasthan police. There are a large number people who are inside the property and a large number who are marching towards the property. This is necessary to avoid violence and harm to the property and my family," he said.

Jaipur Literature Festival organiser Sanjoy Roy said he felt disgraced because bering artists they were not allowed to carry put what they had planned to do.

"We are having to step down from the freedom of expression, write and tell stories. It's not a decision to support. We have been pushed to the wall. We have been informed by the police that there are large crowds gathering in various parts of the city marching towards Diggy Palace. It's unfortunate to step down. But Rajasthan Police supported us. The Police Commissioner assured us that they will give us protection if we wanted to go ahead," said Roy.

Claiming that the Festival was one of the best across the world, Roy said the issue was not about him (Rushdie) in person as even seeing his face would have been a problem.

"Ram Pratap and Naina were adamant that they wanted to protect people who were here and would not allowed it to go ahead," he said.

Roy called the entire controversy "idiotic" to loud cheers from crowd and then broke down on stage. He walked off wiping his tears amidst thunderous applause from the crowd.

The Booker-winning author was scheduled to do a video conference at 3:45 pm on Tuesday. But Milli Council, one of the organisations which had filed a complaint against four authors for reading out passages from 'The Satanic Verses' on Friday, had been protesting against the move since Tuesday afternoon.

The organisers had earlier assured that Rushdie would not break any law with his video address at the Festival. Jaipur Literature Festival organiser Sanjoy Roy had said that they would go ahead with the video link with Rushdie at 3:45 pm on Tuesday....

The problem with a law against "outrag[ing] religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs" is that outrage and insult are in the eye of the beholder. Muslims have consistently claimed to be outraged and insulted by any truthful and accurate presentation of Islamic jihad doctrine. Is truth, then, to be outlawed? And what would be the objective of those who want it to be?

An update on this story. "Writers run away after reading out Satanic Verses," from The Indian Awaaz, January 23:

JAIPUR: The four writers, who read out the banned Satanic Verses in violation the law of land, have run away from the Jaipur Literature Festival to undisclosed destination.

They were facing imminent arrest following carrying and reading out extracts from Salman Rushdie's banned novel The Satanic Verses.

William Dalrymple, the co-Director of the Jaipur Literature Festival told the Hindu newspaper that Hari Kunzru, Ruchir Joshi, Amitava Kumar and Jeet Thayil have all left the Jaipur on the advice of their lawyer.

The paper said that the police had gone to Hari Kunzru's room to question him but he had already hurriedly left town.

“What a lot of people don't realise is that even reading from a banned book is against the law. This is part of a piece of absurd and draconian legislation going back to 1867 or thereabouts. I am convinced that the writers who did the readings were not aware that this is a punishable offence and could carry a fairly long prison sentence. You can discuss book, read from other writings by the author, have conversations with him, invite him, but you cannot either possess a copy or publicly read from a book that is banned. That is a punishable offence,” Dalrymple realized after his esteemed guests already committed punishable offence.

Meanwhile noted writer Chetan Bhagat said that organizers of the festival should not make heroes out of people who have been banned.

“Let us not make heroes out of people who have been banned,” said the best- selling author in clear reference to Salman Rushdie.

“They have been banned for hurting people. They have been banned for hurting Muslims. They shouldn’t be banned but they are not heroes,” he said.

“You can say Muslims are backward, aggressive, that’s fine. But they are right to get upset when their god is attacked. I wouldn’t like it if my gods are attacked,” Bhagat contended.

The legal experts say the police should book the authors (who read out portion of the banned book) under sections 153 A (Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion) and 295 A (Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code and immediately arrest them.

As Salman Rushdie could not make it to the festival due to perceived threat to his life, authors Hari Kunzru, Amitava Kumar and two others used their session at the festival to read from "Satanic Verses", giving clear indications that the festival was organized to create ill will within India..

The controversial book was banned in the India shortly after it was published in 1988, for hurting the sentiments of Muslims....

"I have now been informed by intelligence sources in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to Jaipur to eliminate me." Although he remains largely clueless about the jihad threat, Salman Rushdie has for decades now been the most visible symbol of the violent Islamic intolerance for free speech regarding Islam. Islamic supremacists have never forgiven him for his (largely unreadable) novel, and they never will.

"Rushdie cancels India visit after death threat warning," by Henry Foy for Reuters, January 20 (thanks to Java):

(Reuters) - Salman Rushdie will not attend a literature festival in India after authorities warned the controversial author he was a potential target of assassins at the event, following threats of protests from Muslim groups at his planned appearance.

Opposition from some Indian Muslim groups erupted this month after Rushdie was invited to attend Asia's largest literature festival, and senior Muslim leaders called on the government to prevent the 65-year-old author from entering the country.

"I have now been informed by intelligence sources in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to Jaipur to eliminate me," Rushdie said in a statement read out by the festival producer.

"While I have some doubts as to the accuracy of this intelligence, it would be irresponsible of me to come to the festival in such circumstances."

The British-Indian author, whose 1988 novel the Satantic [sic] Verses is banned in India, was due to speak on the first day of the five-day Jaipur Literature Festival but organisers removed his name from the schedule last week.

Rushdie would instead participate via a video-link, festival director William Dalrymple told Reuters on Friday....

The festival's directors had previously asserted that the invitation to Rushdie still stood after rescheduling his planned appearance after Muslim leaders in Jaipur threatened to protest.

"The Muslims of Jaipur were planning a protest against Rushdie. Since he is not coming, we have cancelled it," Abdul Haq Shamshi, member of the Jaipur Jama Masjid committee told Reuters.

"If he is deceiving us, and if he comes, we will protest at a minute's notice," he said, adding that thousands of protesters would take to the streets if the author arrived in the city....

This is an unconscionable infringement on the freedom of speech, and an indication of the dismal state of affairs in England today: a conference on Sharia and human rights in a London university is canceled after an Islamic supremacist thug photographs and threatens the participants that he will kill them if they say anything he dislikes about Muhammad.

English authorities should have arrested this man and should be keeping him and the group he was with under close scrutiny. They should have provided police in sufficient numbers both to allow this conference to go on, and to protect the participants and their families, as well as to track down and prosecute the Muslim thug and his comrades. Yes, this would be a huge expense. It would also be a statement: that this kind of thuggery will not be tolerated, and the freedom of speech will be protected.

It was ironic that this happened at a One Law For All conference. One Law For All is the project of Maryam Namazie, who is just another kind of freedom-hating thug. Her opposition to Sharia does not stem from a commitment to genuinely free societies, for as a Marxist, although she may oppose those who behead people while shouting "Allahu akbar" and post the video to YouTube, she doesn't oppose those who enslave people in gulags and shoot them in the back of the head for being "enemies of the people." Her opposition to Sharia is not a fight for freedom; Hitler and Stalin fought each other, too, but that didn't make either one of them freedom fighters.

Indeed, Namazie has targeted those who are actually working to protect the freedom of speech and the principle of equality of rights of all people against Sharia and Islamization. She has libeled me and others with outright lies, which she refuses to retract, about what we have said and what we stand for. She has retailed Palestinian jihadist propaganda about Israel, claiming that it engaged in "genocide" in Gaza -- thereby spitting in the face of all genuine victims of genocide and advancing an antisemitic lie that was crafted in aid of the jihad against Israel.

And so one gang of thugs has targeted another. The freedom of speech should in all cases be protected, but the conflict between these Muslim thugs and Maryam Namazie's gang is not one between the enemies of freedom and its defenders. It's just a turf war.

"Islamist stops university debate with threats of violence," from the National Secular Society, January 17 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

A talk on sharia and human rights by NSS Council Member Anne Marie Waters' at Queen Mary University of London was cancelled at the last moment because of an Islamist who made serious threats against everyone there.

Ms Waters was due to give a talk on behalf of the One Law for All Campaign on 16 January but before it started, a man entered the lecture theatre, stood at the front with a camera and filmed the audience. He then said that he knew who everyone was, where they lived and if he heard anything negative about the Prophet, he would track them down.

The man also filmed students in the foyer and threatened to murder them and their families. On leaving the building, he joined a large group of men, apparently there to support him. Students were told by security to stay in the lecture theatre for their own safety.

Jennifer Hardy, President of Queen Mary's Atheism, Secularism and Humanism Society, who organised the event said: "This event was supposed to be an opportunity for people of different religions and perspectives to debate, at a university that is supposed to be a beacon of free speech and debate.

"Only two complaints had been made to the Union prior to the event, and the majority of the Muslim students at the event were incredibly supportive of it going ahead. These threats were an aggressive assault on freedom of speech and the fact that they led to the cancellation of our talk was severely disappointing for all of the religious and non-religious students in the room who wanted to engage in debate."...

Here is some important background on Germany's attempt to stamp out truth-telling regarding Islam and jihad, an initiative which accords neatly with Sharia directives: "Germany Attempts to Silence Criticism of Islam," by Soeren Kern for Stonegate Institute, January 12 (thanks to Stefan):

German authorities have officially confirmed that they are monitoring German-language Internet websites that are critical of Muslim immigration and the Islamization of Europe.

According to Manfred Murck, director of the Hamburg branch of the German domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), his organization is studying whether German citizens who criticize Muslims and Islam on the Internet are fomenting hate and are thus criminally guilty of "breaching" the German constitution.

The BfV's move marks a significant setback for the exercise of free speech in Germany and comes amid a months-long smear campaign led by a triple alliance of leftwing German multicultural elites, sundry Muslim groups and members of the mainstream media, who have been relentless in their efforts to discredit the so-called counter-jihad movement (also known as the "Islamophobes") in Germany.

Opinion polls show that growing numbers of ordinary German citizens are worried about the consequences of decades of multicultural policies that have encouraged mass immigration from Muslim countries.

Germans are especially concerned about the refusal of millions of Muslim immigrants to integrate into German society, as well as the emergence of a parallel legal system in Germany based on Islamic Sharia law.

In an effort to reverse this tide of public opinion, the guardians of German multiculturalism have been working overtime to regain the initiative by accusing the critics of Islam of engaging in hate speech to try to intimidate the so-called "new right" into silence.

The media campaign has been led by two financially troubled newspapers, the Berliner Zeitung and its sister publication, the Frankfurter Rundschau, as well as Der Spiegel, a leftwing magazine based in Hamburg that has long served as the mouthpiece for German multiculturalism.

In a January 4, 2012 interview with the Berliner Zeitung andFrankfurter Rundschau, Murck said the owners of anti-Islam blogs "have a disturbed relationship to the democratic constitutional state" and often promote "infringements of human rights protected under our constitution."

Murck continued: "I also see evidence of criminal relevance, such as making threats and public invitations to crime." He said criticism of Muslims and Islam constitutes "an attack against the freedom of religion, which is protected by Article 4 of the Basic Law."

The Berliner Zeitung and Frankfurter Rundschau interview was conducted by Steven Geyer und Jörg Schindler, two journalists and propagandists who have been leading an ongoing effort to shut down a highly popular German-language Internet website called Politically Incorrect (PI), which over the years has grown into a major information resource for Germans concerned about the spread of Islam in their country.

PI's motto reads "Against the Mainstream, Pro-American, Pro-Israel, Against the Islamization of Europe" which encapsulates everything the German left abhors....

And there's the rub. Read it all.

People are sending this to me in large numbers today, and it is even being reported that Reuters broke the story, but actually I had it at Jihad Watch on January 2. Certainly it is abhorrent that DHS would be doing this at all, instead of any real work to secure the nation from actual threats, and it is ominous, given the Department's politically correct willful ignorance about Islam and jihad, as well as its focus on "right-wing extremists," which hints at an intention to target Obama's political opposition, since the "extremists" in question are largely a fantasy of the DHS's own making and include (in the infamous DHS report on this phenomenon from 2009) conservative groups that have never been involved in any violence or illegal activity whatsoever.

Nonetheless, while much is being made of it, it is hard to be too concerned at this point, since the monitored sites are all over the map ideologically. This may simply be cover for targeting truth-tellers about jihad and Islamic supremacism, as well as those who explain other inconvenient realities that the DHS would prefer to ignore, but about that only time will tell.

Much more immediately ominous is what Pamela Geller reports here: Pro-Freedom Websites Come Under Surveillance In Germany. The German government is targeting anti-jihad sites out of an entirely trumped-up fear that they would promote violence. This is, of course, based on their having been cited by the Norwegian mass murderer Breivik, who has become as popular as Tim McVeigh among Leftists and Islamic supremacists who use him to try to establish a connection between my work and those of other counter-jihadists and the murder of innocent people. This despite the fact that we have never called for or approved of violence, and that Breivik is obviously insane and his "manifesto" actually has no ideological coherence: he even called for alliance with jihadi groups, which is hardly something that counter-jihadists would ever do. Nonetheless, he is being used as a stick to beat pro-freedom activists in Germany. And with Clinton and Obama signing on to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's campaign to criminalize truth-telling about Islam and jihad, it is coming here as well.

But it isn't here yet, and so I repeat the invitation I made when I first wrote about this: "Welcome, agents! Grab a cup of coffee and stay awhile. Read around in the archives and articles. You might just learn something, if you dare to think outside the politically correct intellectual straitjacket enforced at the DHS these days. Go ahead. Dare to embrace the truth."

"Homeland Security watches Twitter, social media," by Mark Hosenball for Reuters, January 11 (thanks to all who sent this in):

(Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's command center routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news and gossip sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report, according to a government document.

A "privacy compliance review" issued by DHS last November says that since at least June 2010, its national operations center has been operating a "Social Networking/Media Capability" which involves regular monitoring of "publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards."

The purpose of the monitoring, says the government document, is to "collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture."

The document adds, using more plain language, that such monitoring is designed to help DHS and its numerous agencies, which include the U.S. Secret Service and Federal Emergency Management Agency, to manage government responses to such events as the 2010 earthquake and aftermath in Haiti and security and border control related to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.

A DHS official familiar with the monitoring program said that it was intended purely to enable command center officials to keep in touch with various Internet-era media so that they were aware of major, developing events to which the Department or its agencies might have to respond.

The document outlining the monitoring program says that all the websites which the command center will be monitoring were "publicly available and... all use of data published via social media sites was solely to provide more accurate situational awareness, a more complete common operating pictures, and more timely information for decision makers..."

The DHS official said that under the program's rules, the department would not keep permanent copies of the internet traffic it monitors. However, the document outlining the program does say that the operations center "will retain information for no more than five years."...

News and gossip sites on the monitoring list include popular destinations such as the Drudge Report, Huffington Post and "NY Times Lede Blog", as well as more focused techie fare such as the Wired blogs "Threat Level" and "Danger Room." Numerous blogs related to terrorism and security are also on the list.

Some of the sites on the list are potentially controversial. WikiLeaks is listed for monitoring, even though officials in some other government agencies were warned against using their official computers to access WikiLeaks material because much of it is still legally classified under U.S. government rules.

Another blog on the list, Cryptome, also periodically posts leaked documents and was one of the first websites to post information related to the Homeland Security monitoring program.

Also on the list are JihadWatch and Informed Comment, blogs that cover issues related to Islam through sharp political prisms, which have sometimes led critics to accuse the sites of political bias....

The uniformity of the language in Islamic supremacist hate mail is striking. It is so formulaic that one could all but program an automatic jihad-mail generator to do one's hating and kick back with a cup of tea. The language here is reminiscent of what we and others have received over the years. Did those guys call each other? Or could there possibly be some other reason they seem to "misunderstand" Islam with such striking uniformity?

"Christian editor receives death threats from Pakistan Islamists," by Ahmar Mustikhan for the Examiner, January 6:

A Pakistani Christian editor has said he receives hate mails and death threats on a daily basis from Pakistan for carrying reports on the persecution of Christians in the South Asian country.

Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti, editor of the Pakistan Christian Post who doubles as founder of Pakistan Christian Congress, Thursday received one such email in whch Aasia Bibi, who is languishing in jail for alleged blasphemy, and former Punjab governor Salman Taseer and minorities affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti, who were assassinated last year for crusading to end the blasphemy law, were called harami or bastards.

A defiant Bhatti said Christians are sons of soil not descendants of Muslim invaders. Over the centuries, Muslim invaders massacred 80 million Hindus to convert India into Islam.

Bhatti posted the hate email on his Facebook page Thursday.

“I have read some of your media and it disturbs me very greatly that your media is responsible for sympathizing with the criminal, dirty harami woman Aasia Bibi, who insulted our beloved Prophet (Peace be upon him). .... Furthermore, your media has been portraying such haramis like Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti as "shaheeds" (martyrs), they are both haramis and jahannamis (destined for hell) and gustakh e Rasool (blasphemer of prophet).”

The writer told Bhatti, "I would like to remind you of one very important fact. Pakistan is an Islamic nation. It is a nation for Muslims, by Muslims, of Muslims."

Pakistan like neighboring Iran and Saudi Arabia is officially an Islamic republic where only a Muslim can become the head of state or government.

"Now you people are not Muslims, and you are not Pakistanis, but you are only guests who happen to live in Pakistan. Truth be told, we do not like you people, and would rather you leave our beautiful country. You can go to Europe or America, but we do not like you to live in Pakistan, the land which is Paak (pure)..

"All of Pakistan is behind Hazrat Ghazi e Millat, Mumtaz Hussain Qadri.... we will make life for you in Pakistan a living hell, I swear to God so don’t forget it.”

In fact, many in the West were stunned as lawyers in Rawalpindi, headquarters of the Pakistan military, garlanded the alleged Qadri and took out rallies in his favor.

After killing Governor Taseer, militants abducted his young son Shahbaz Taseer as a way to protect his killer Qadri.

Christains are routinely killed, forcibly converted and raped in Pakistan, but the culprits are never brought to justice.

This is the kind of law that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is trying to bring West, with willing help from the Obama Administration. "Egyptian Christian faces trial for insulting Islam," from AP, January 9 (thanks to all who sent this in):

(AP) CAIRO — A prominent Christian Egyptian media mogul faces trial on a charge of insulting Islam, lawyers said Monday, based on his relaying a cartoon on his Twitter account.

The case dates back to June, when Naguib Sawiris posted a cartoon showing a bearded Mickey Mouse and veiled Minnie. He made a public apology after Islamists complained, but his action set off a boycott of his telecom company and other outlets. He said it was supposed to be a joke and apologized, but lawyer Mamdouh Ismail filed a formal complaint against him.

After investigation, the prosecution set the trial for Jan. 14. Sawiris was not available for comment.

The case is linked to developments in Egypt after the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak last February. Sawiris and Ismail belong to competing political parties, and sectarian violence between Christians and Islamists has been on the upswing. In Egypt's parliamentary elections, Islamist parties have won a large majority, leaving liberals far behind.

Sawiris co-founded a liberal party, and Ismail heads a party representing ultraconservative Salafi Muslims.

The case has added to fears among many that ultraconservative Islamists may use their new found powers to try to stifle freedom of expression.

Ismail countered that, saying he took legal action against Sawiris because he wants the law to be respected by all, even a famous businessman and politician, in the post-Mubarak era

"The revolution came about because we all are seeking the rule of law without any exceptions," he said. The charge is punishable by up to one year in prison.

Rights lawyer Gamal Eid said the contempt of religion law, in place even before Mubarak came to power, has been used against scholars and activists whose comments about Islam angered conservatives....

Note to AP: it is not "conservatives," but "liberals" who are generally enemies of the freedom of speech.

All the better to monitor its citizens against thoughtcrime: "the residents of Iran must give their name along with their father's name, telephone number, address and national ID to log in to access internet."

The "Government Knows Best" mentality meets "Allah knows best." "Iran Begins Internet Crackdown, Preps Countrywide 'Halal' Intranet," by Ravi Mandalia for ITProPortal, January 7 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Just before the parliamentary elections, to be held in March, Iran has decided to strictly control web users in the country by bringing some draconian rules to be implemented in cybercafes besides preparing to introduce a national intranet. Residents of Iran are complaining that they are unable to connect to the Internet anonymously at Cyber Cafes in the country as government is creating a "censored" national intranet.

The government of Iran, on Wednesday, introduced a new rule under which the residents of Iran must give their name along with their father's name, telephone number, address and national ID to log in to access internet, reported UPI.

Besides these rules, the government is also conducting various tests for a new countrywide network which is aimed at "substituting services" which operates through the internet. This move has lead to fears that the country is planning to withdraw itself from global internet.

Iran's "Green Revolution" activists depended heavily on Twitter and other social networking services. This move would attempt to eliminate those means of criticism and organization.

In fact, just a week before the judiciary of Iran commented that the messages that are distributed through the social networks or e-mail asking for boycotting elections should be treated as "national security crimes".

This rivals North Korea. When you make any policy decision reminiscent of North Korea, you're probably doing something wrong:

The domestic Intranet of Iran will be called "halal" which means pure and once it is activated the country will be shutting global web access to the 23 million internet users in the country.

Remember: this is the kind of law that Islamic supremacists want the U.S. to adopt, and the Obama Administration appears willing, judging by their support for a resolution calling for the criminalizing of religious defamation (i.e., telling the truth about Islam and jihad) at the UN recently.

Note also what Nasrin says about what the book is about: "But Lajja is not a novel of blasphemy: it is just the defense of a persecuted religious [Hindu] minority, one that is constantly harassed by the Muslim majority." Here again: truth-telling, if it is something that reflects negatively on Islam or Muslims, is "blasphemy" as far as Islamic supremacists are concerned.

An update on this story. "Teacher arrested for having a copy of a book by Taslima Nasrin," from Asia News, January 5 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Dhaka (AsiaNews) - The principal of a technical school in the district of Pirojpur (southern Bangladesh) was arrested for possession of a copy of Lajja (Shame), the famous novel by writer Taslima Nasrin. The book has been banned in Bangladesh since 1993 because it is considered blasphemous against Islam the state religion. The teacher, Yunus Ali, faces up to three years in prison.

The police took him out of the KC Technical and Business Management College after finding a copy of the book in the school library. Ali defended himself against accusations claiming to be the victim of a conspiracy. The inspector Abdul Malek said: "Lajja is a banned book. Nevertheless, the principal kept it in the library. He must answer for this crime. "

In Lajja, Taslima Nasrin, 49, tells the life of a Hindu family persecuted by Muslims. The author had to flee the country in 1994 after receiving death threats from Islamic fundamentalists. Since then, she has lived between India and Europe, without being able to return to Bangladesh. Her family is Muslim, but today she proclaims herself to be atheist.

Contacted by AsiaNews, Nasrin said: "The arrest of this teacher is a sign that Bangladesh is not in reality a democracy but a totalitarian regime. Since 1990, Islamic fundamentalists have silenced my freedom of expression and tried to kill me, forced me to flee my country and leave my family. "

Now, she concluded, "someone is in danger because of my book, and risks his freedom. But Lajja is not a novel of blasphemy: it is just the defense of a persecuted religious [Hindu] minority, one that is constantly harassed by the Muslim majority. I wish the best for this man and for those who are every day deprived of their freedom of expression. " (GM)

This is the kind of restriction on the freedom of speech that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is trying to bring to the West, with willing help from the Obama Administration. There is, as always, a symbiotic relationship here between the violent and the stealth jihad; note the threats against the Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin. Also, when the world's foremost soprano saxophonist, the late great Steve Lacy, performed settings of Nasrin's poetry set to music (The Cry, above), he and his band performed in bulletproof vests, and it wasn't hostile jazz critics they were worried about.

"Bangladesh teacher arrested over banned book," from the Associated Press, January 4 (thanks to The Religion of Peace:

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Police have arrested the head teacher at a college in southern Bangladesh after a book considered blasphemous by some Muslims was found in the school's library, an official said Wednesday.

Police officer Abdul Malek said S.M. Yunus Ali was arrested for possessing the novel "Lajja," or "Shame," written by exiled writer Taslima Nasrin.

Malek said Ali, head teacher at the K.C. Technical and Business Management College, could face up to three years in jail if he is found guilty of authorizing the book's inclusion in the library.

The Prothom Alo newspaper said Wednesday that Ali denied having the book and said he was the victim of a conspiracy.

Police corruption and misuse of police investigations by politicians are widespread in Bangladesh.

The novel was banned a year after its publication in 1993 and Nasrin was forced to flee Bangladesh to escape death threats from radical Muslims who considered it blasphemous for advocating secularism. She has been living in India and Europe since then.

Sure. Reward the mob. That'll fix things right up. An update on this story. "Egypt arrests Christian over Muhammad drawing," by Maggie Michael for the Associated Press, December 31 (thanks to Kenneth):

CAIRO — Egyptian authorities have detained a Coptic Christian student accused of posting a drawing of Islam's prophet on Facebook that triggered two days of violence in southern Egypt.

Gamal Massoud has been accused by fellow students of ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad.

A possible setup?

According to a security official, the 17-year-old student denies that and says friends posted the picture on his Facebook page. The official spoke Saturday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Since Wednesday, villagers have attacked Massoud's house while chanting "Allahu akbar," or "God is Great."

Because nothing proves your deity is superior like setting fires in a rage:

They have set fire to other Christians' houses.

Many Christian villagers fearing retaliation have left their homes.

Security forces intervened, using tear gas to disperse Muslim protesters.

What is your first thought when you see something offensive? It's probably not to get together with a few dozen of your closest friends and burn stuff. As has been the case in similar incidents, the ease of the transition to violence here all but suggests a rampage waiting for an excuse.

Then comes the collective punishment. "Muslim villagers burn houses of Christian family Upper Egypt," from Al Masry Al Youm, December 30:

Dozens of residents of the village of Baheeg in Assiut, Upper Egypt, burnt three houses owned by a Christian family after a Christian villager allegedly published cartoons mocking Islam on his Facebook account.

Cartoon alleged to offend Islam = three houses on fire. This mindset threatens a future of poverty and instability for Egypt, as no one is going to invest in a country where assets can be destroyed in a fit of rage at the drop of a hat.

There can be no prosperous society without stability, and no stability without a sense of priorities and self control on the individual, familial, and societal level. Stable self-government, as Egypt is said to want, depends on the government of the self.

A number of Muslim students attacked their Coptic classmate for posting the cartoons, a Muslim student told Al-Masry Al-Youm.

The Muslim students attacked the Coptic student on Thursday at Monqebad Secondary School in Assiut. Eyewitnesses said the military intervened to break up the fight and escorted the Coptic youth and his family away from the village. Later, Muslim villagers set fire to the family’s houses.

Firefighters extinguished the blaze and armed forces and police imposed a security cordon around the site of the incident.

Major General Mohamed Ibrahim, director of security in Assiut, said security forces are attempting to coordinate with Muslim clerics to calm citizens and contain the situation....

The fact that it takes this much to settle the situation speaks volumes.

This case demonstrates one of the many problems with curtailing "offensive" free speech and criminalizing hurt feelings. Simply expressing a belief at variance with Islam can be seized upon as "blasphemy," or as "offending religious sentiments," and simply being visible in daily life as an adherent of a non-Islamic faith can be seized upon as "proselytizing." It is all in the eye of the overlord/beholder.

The move against this station is just a higher-tech extension of Sharia's traditional ban on the display of crosses, ringing of bells, preaching in public, and of course, evangelization. "Egypt Muslim group orders Christian TV station off air: report," from the South African Press Agency and Deutsche Presse Agentur, December 29:

An offshoot of Egypt's top religious institution, Al Azhar, has called on the government to take a Christian television station off the air, allegedly for offending Muslims, the semi-official Al-Ahram newspaper reported Thursday.

The Islamic Research Centre, which made the demand, is headed by Ahmed al-Tayeb, the sheikh of Al Azhar, which is the Sunni Muslim world's oldest seat of religious learning.

It is based in the U.S. They can't shut it down, but they might attempt to block it or get its transmission arrangement canceled:

The centre accused US-based Christian broadcaster Al Karma (Vineyard) of insulting Islam and inciting sectarian divisions in Egypt, at a meeting late Wednesday, the newspaper reported.

Al Karama transmits its programmes via the Egyptian state-run satellite NileSat.

Christians, who make up around 10% of Egypt's population, often complain of being treated as second-class citizens and feel marginalised by the predominately Muslim population...

Not only are Islamic supremacists absolutely unwilling ever to acknowledge that Muslims have ever done anything wrong; they will also persecute and harass anyone who dares point out that they have.

An update on this story. "Genocide law MP receives death threats," from The Local, December 26 (thanks to Fjordman):

The French parliamentarian who proposed a controversial genocide denial bill has received death threats and had her website attacked.

Valérie Boyer, a member of the governing UMP party, was successful in getting parliamentary approval for a bill that outlawed the denial of a massacre of Armenians by Ottoman troops in 1915.

The bill’s passage unleashed a wave of indignation in Turkey.

Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the vote represented “politics based on racism, discrimination and xenophobia.”

Daily newspaper Le Parisien reported that Boyer’s website was attacked on Sunday.

Visitors were redirected to a site showing the Turkish flag and a message attacking the French government and the Armenian community in France.

“You, the Armenian diaspora, are so cowardly that you don’t have the guts to open up the archives and face the truth,” said the message.

In an attack on French politicians the message said “you, the French, are so pitiful and pathetic that you ignore the truth to get votes.”

On Monday morning, the site, valerie-boyer.fr, was still unavailable with a "site indisponible" message being shown.

Boyer said she has received numerous “insults and threats of murder and rape” over recent days on her Facebook page and her Twitter account.

“That such a level of violence is being expressed shows the necessity to punish genocide denial,” she told the newspaper.

“What I’m experiencing is without doubt nothing compared to the experience of the Armenian community."...

Quite so.

"Freedom of speech means you can curse the prophet, and democracy will protect you."

Cartoon Rage from a Muslim spokesman who must be some kind of Islamophobe.

Video thanks to Answering Muslims.

No one is in favor of actual "stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion." The problem is that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which is driving this resolution, considers any truthful speech about the global jihad and Islamic supremacism to be "stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion." This is an attempt to quash truth-telling about Islamic jihad so that the West stands mute and defenseless before its advance. And now the Obama Administration, fresh from a secret meeting with the OIC on just this topic, joins in.

Free Speech Death Watch Alert: "U.N. Adopts ‘Religious Intolerance’ Resolution Championed by Obama Administration," by Patrick Goodenough for CNS News, December 20 (thanks to Wimpy):

(CNSNews.com) – The U.N. General Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution condemning the stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion, and urging countries to take effective steps “to address and combat such incidents.”

No member state called for a recorded vote on the text, which was as a result adopted “by consensus.”

The resolution, an initiative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), is based on one passed by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council in Geneva last spring. The State Department last week hosted a meeting to discuss ways of “implementing” it.

Every year since 1999 the OIC has steered through the U.N.’s human rights apparatus a resolution condemning the “defamation of religion,” which for the bloc of 56 Muslim states covered incidents ranging from satirizing Mohammed in a newspaper cartoon to criticism of shari’a and post-9/11 security check profiling.

Critics regard the measure as an attempt to outlaw valid and critical scrutiny of Islamic teachings, as some OIC states do through controversial blasphemy laws at home.

Strongly opposed by mostly Western democracies, the divisive “defamation” resolution received a dwindling number of votes each year, with the margin of success falling from 57 votes in 2007 to 19 in 2009 and just 12 last year.

This year’s text was a departure, in that it dropped the “defamation” language and included a paragraph that reaffirms “the positive role that the exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the full respect for the freedom to seek, receive and impart information can play in strengthening democracy and combating religious intolerance.”

The nod to freedom of expression won the resolution the support of the U.S. and other democracies, with the Obama administration and others hailing it as a breakthrough after years of acrimonious debate.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the opportunity of the State Department-hosted talks with foreign governments, the OIC and other international bodies last week to stress the importance of freedom of speech in the U.S. She argued that “the best way to treat offensive speech is by people either ignoring it or combating it with good arguments and good speech that overwhelms it.”

Saudi initiative singled out for praise

Nonetheless, the resolution adopted in New York on Monday does contain elements that concern some free speech and religious freedom advocates.

It calls on states “to take effective measures to ensure that public functionaries in the conduct of their public duties do not discriminate against an individual on the basis of religion or belief.”

Governments also are expected to make “a strong effort to counter religious profiling, which is understood to be the invidious use of religion as a criterion in conducting questionings, searches and other law enforcement investigative procedures.”

“Effective measures” to counter cases of religious stereotyping and stigmatization include education, interfaith dialogue and “training of government officials.”

And in the worst cases, those of “incitement to imminent violence” based on religion, the resolution calls on countries to implement “measures to criminalize” such behavior....

All such things are in the eye of the beholder, meaning that the enforcement agency will decide what is offensive and what is incitement, and silence people accordingly.

Pamela Geller has the incredible story here: "Emulating their Sharia Partner, the OIC, State Department Detains Andrea Lafferty as 'Threat,' 'The very restriction on free speech the UN Resolution was pushing is exactly what they used against me'":

The Obama administration is harassing and detaining law-abiding patriots.

SIOA and the Traditional Values Coalition have been carefully monitoring the anti-constitutional collusion of Obama's State department and the global Islamic supremacist org, the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation). Today, SIOA partner and TVC president, Andrea Lafferty, was detained by the State department as a "threat" merely for covering the secret event....

On Monday, I wrote in the American Thinker, the respect and deference that the United States is paying to the OIC amounts to surrender in installments. The call for "respect and empathy and tolerance," coming from the most brutal and oppressive ideology on the face of the earth, reminds me of the "peace and equality" that was promised in Hitler's campaign posters for the Nationalist Socialist Workers (Nazi) party.

How prescient:

Andrea Lafferty Targeted, Detained By State Department Security Personnel as “Threat”

Washington D.C. (December 15th, 2011)-- Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) president Andrea Lafferty was targeted and detained by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security personnel this Wednesday during the closing event capping the three day closed-door conference advancing the implementation of U.N. Resolution 16/18.

“For weeks we have been asking whether the true aims of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and U.N. Resolution 16/18 would be used to apply “old fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to chill and coerce those critical of the Islamist agenda,” said Lafferty.

“Hillary Clinton was as good as her word,” said Lafferty.

Lafferty was circled by several members of Secretary Clinton’s staff before being approached by a member of the security detail, demanding Lafferty follow him. When asked why she was being removed from the reception hall, the security detail announced that a phone call had identified Lafferty as a “security threat” to Secretary Clinton.

“I was shocked and angry at the pressure and shameful intimidation tactics our State Department put on, even to the point of identifying me as a threat to Hillary Clinton.”

Secretary Clinton in a June 2011 conference in Istanbul, Turkey remarked how certain comments from those concerned about Islamic fanaticism have been deemed as “incendiary” and looked to sympathize with efforts that would criminalize certain speech that is “an incitement to imminent violence.”

“This language -- “incitement to imminent violence” -- has been used time and time again to close events here in the United States concerning the impact of Islamic shariah law, detain law-abiding Christians elsewhere, and now even target and detain as security threats people from State Department events,” said Lafferty.

“The very restriction on free speech the UN Resolution was pushing is exactly what they used against me,” said Lafferty.

“I had warned previously how members of the U.S. State Department and Hillary Clinton have pointedly remarked that part of the implementation of U.N. Resolution 16/18 will be an effort to utilize “techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to silence critics of Islamic shariah,” said Lafferty. “Little did I realize how quickly Clinton and her Islamist friends were set to make examples out of law-abiding Americans."

Read it all.

Off the cuff, Hillary says things that are likely to get her in dutch with the boss. "Hillary Clinton suggests Islamic governments fear religious debate," by Neil Munro in The Daily Caller, December 15:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used an international conference on religious freedom Wednesday as a platform to suggest that Islamic governments which suppress Christianity are secretly afraid Islam will lose out in a public debate.

“Every one of us who is a religious person knows there are some who may not support or approve of our religion, but is our religion so weak that statements of disapproval cause us to lose our faith?” she asked the attendees, who included national representatives from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

“Especially when one person’s speech seems to challenge another person’s religion’s belief, or maybe even offends that person’s religious beliefs … we defend our beliefs best by defending free speech for everyone,” she said, while citing her own experience as a Methodist — a Christian movement made up of many Protestant denominations, and where debate is common.

Clinton’s senior aide, the Saudi-born Huma Abedin, said the speech was largely unscripted. “Mostly, it was off-the-cuff,” Abedin told The Daily Caller.

Among the attendees were representatives of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Clinton did not mention any country by name, nor did she specifically mention Islam.

But her diplomatic rebuke of Islamic governments was daring and novel, partly because it may prompt a violent response, or even a careful counterargument, from advocates of Islam in the Arab world.

However, Clinton’s speech did not address similar sensitivities in the United States, where cooperating progressives and Islamists frequently say Islam’s critics are mentally ill, and typically refuse to debate the context and meaning of their own religious texts.

In August, for example, the liberal Center for American Progress issued a report titled “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.” The report was aimed at several critics of Islam, including Robert Spencer, a best-selling author whose repeated requests for debates have been ignored by allied progressive and Islamic advocates in the United States.

Similarly, Department of Justice officials have described American critics of Islam as mentally unstable, a danger to national security, or similar to the Ku Klux Klan, whose history includes frequent murders of black and Republican legislators and activists.

“Materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive … will not be tolerated,” and are a threat to national security, Dwight Holten, a top DOJ official, said on Oct. 19 at a Washington, D.C. event scheduled by the department....

Throughout her speech, Clinton returned to the argument that religion requires freedom. And she repeatedly, although diplomatically, prodded Islamic governments to tolerate other faiths. Without citing any countries, she directed her criticism at Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where laws actively penalize or bar rival religions.

“We know governments which fear religion can be quite oppressive, but we know that societies that think there is only one religion can be equally oppressive.”

Uh oh. Hillary is committing "Islamophobia"!

There is much more. Read it all.

Hot on the heels of my sounding the alarm about Islamic supremacist pseudo-moderate Reza Aslan, he obligingly drops his mask and shows his thuggish side in the tweet above.

In it, he writes approvingly of the hacking of the Florida Family Association's website. The FFA's crime? Calling on advertisers to drop ads in the misleading All-American Muslim program. Although I expect that Aslan wholeheartedly approved of the same effort directed at advertisers on Glenn Beck's old Fox show, in this case he is slinging the usual epithets ("Bigotry!") and demanding that Lowe's and other American businesses be forced to advertise where they do not wish to, and punished if they don't comply.

And he thinks freedom fighters should be "punished" with hacking, as you can see above. Yet this Islamic supremacist thug still meets with the approval of the politically correct elites. In coddling such thugs, they are signing their own death warrant.

Shameful indeed: the Obama State Department is meeting today with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to discuss ways to sweep away our fundamental protection against tyranny: the freedom of speech. More on this story. "A Shameful State Department Initiative," by Pamela Geller in the American Thinker, December 12:

Today the Islamized State Department will be meeting with the Islamic supremacist Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to discuss strategies and develop action plans in which to impose the restriction of free speech (or blasphemy, as truthful speech about Islam is considered in Islamic law) under the Sharia here in America.

Photos accompanying news reports about the upcoming meeting shows Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at a meeting last summer in Istanbul. Such prominence is given to this totalitarian organization. That photo reminds me of Neville and Adolf.

The respect and deference that the United States is paying to the OIC amounts to surrender in installments. The very idea that the U.S. Secretary of State is meeting with the OIC to discuss "religious tolerance" is like having Himmler meeting with Jews to condemn Jew-hatred. Under Islam. there is a complete and utter absence of "religious tolerance" of non-Muslims living in Muslim countries under the Sharia.

The call for "respect and empathy and tolerance," coming from the most brutal and oppressive ideology on the face of the earth, reminds me of the "peace and equality" that was promised in Hitler's campaign posters for the Nationalist Socialist Workers (Nazi) party.

The OIC is comprised of 56 governments along with the Palestinian Authority. It also asserts authority over the Muslims living in non-Muslim lands, claiming that "Muslim immigrant communities in Europe are part of the Islamic nation." It also recommends, according to the renowned historian Bat Ye'or, "a series of steps to prevent the integration and assimilation of Muslims into European culture."

The OIC's foremost target is truthful dialogue about Islam, which it calls "Islamophobia" and claims hysterically is a "a crime against humanity" that must be criminalized. In line with that initiative, back in July, Obama's State Department reached a Sharia blasphemy agreement with OIC in Turkey. Hillary Clinton actually said this to the OIC:

We each have to work to do more to promote respect for religious differences in our own countries. In the United States, I will admit, there are people who still feel vulnerable or marginalized as a result of their religious beliefs. And we have seen how the incendiary actions of just a very few people, a handful in a country of nearly 300 million, can create wide ripples of intolerance.

She wasn't referring to Islamic jihadists. Clinton meant that the "ripples of intolerance" were those fighting against those jihadists.

Clinton went on to say:

We also understand that, for 235 years, freedom of expression has been a universal right at the core of our democracy. So we are focused on promoting interfaith education and collaboration, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, protecting the rights of all people to worship as they choose, and to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don't feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.

"Peer pressure and shaming." That is exactly what these useful idiots try to do with anyone and everyone who tells the truth about Islam and jihad: me, Robert Spencer, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, and more.

Read it all.

When fascism comes to America, it will be waving a "Co-Exist" bumper sticker and telling you to "be nice."

Which is more disturbing: the notion that the administration is overrun with gullible idealists lost in politically correct fantasies, or that they know exactly what they are doing? Either way, the outcome threatens to be disastrous.

While the Organization Formerly Known as the Organization of the Islamic Conference, long committed to crushing free speech, suffered a setback in achieving an international ban on "religious defamation" (or defamation for me, but not for thee) in March, the Obama administration has gone in hook, line, and sinker for the OIC's game.

Hillary Clinton announced her intentions to coordinate a meeting on religious "defamation" and "stereotyping" in July. At a meeting she co-chaired with the OIC's secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC, US, and EU agreed to "take concrete steps" to combat "intolerance" and "negative stereotyping." The measure is supposedly taken in the name of all religions, but would be used as a club by the OIC with which to beat other nations into submission against criticism of Islam. But Clinton also said in mid-July that she believes the US and OIC can come to an agreement on "tolerance."

The White House is now gearing up for the next round. Even if the OIC does not get exactly what it wants just yet, it will have moved the ball down the field toward the goal line by having its agenda dignified with a response other than "No. We're on to you, and we refuse to play along." "Obama Administration Welcoming Islamic Group to Washington for Discussion on ‘Tolerance’," by Patrick Goodenough for CNSNews, December 9:

(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration says a meeting in Washington next week seeks to make progress in combating religious intolerance, but critics say the U.S. is pandering to an ideological agenda aimed at restricting speech critical of Islam.

Yes.

According to the State Department the aim is to find ways to combat religious hate without compromising freedom of expression. Detractors are skeptical that this can be done, and they suspect that free speech will end up the loser.

Yes.

Among those criticizing the event are GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, the Traditional Values Coalition, and scholars at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

The State Department-hosted meeting is the latest step in a process stemming from a resolution on “combating intolerance based on religion,” adopted by consensus at the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) last March.

The move marked the first time in more than a decade that the U.N.’s top human rights body did not pass an annual “defamation of religion” resolution, sponsored by the bloc of Islamic states, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Many rights advocacy groups regard the OIC campaign as an attempt to outlaw valid discussion of Islamic teachings – to extend to democratic societies the type of blasphemy provisions enforced in some Islamic states.

The new resolution, known as “resolution 16/18,” called on countries to combat “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization” based on religion, without seeking to criminalize speech – except in cases of “incitement to imminent violence.”

The administration characterized it as a significant breakthrough: “[T]he Council took an important step away from the deeply problematic concept of defamation of religion by adopting a constructive new resolution that promotes tolerance for all religious beliefs, promotes education and dialogue and is consistent with U.S. laws and universal values.”

Some human rights and religious freedom advocacy groups opposed to the “religious defamation” drive also praised the development.

Others were skeptical, noting that the OIC had watched its defamation resolutions receive less and less support each year and may view resolution 16/18 as an alternative route towards achieving the same end.

OIC leaders themselves did not help to allay these suspicions, stressing that the Islamic bloc had not abandoned its agenda of “protecting” Islam and insisting that the “religious defamation” campaign was not dead.

On the sidelines of a first meeting held to advance resolution 16/18, in Istanbul last July, Pakistan’s U.N. ambassador Zamir Akram said that the OIC would not compromise on three things – anything said or done against the Qur’an, anything said or done against Mohammed, and discrimination against the Muslim community. (Akram represents a government overseeing some of the Islamic world’s most controversial blasphemy laws, where “blaspheming” the Qur’an or Mohammed carries the death penalty.)

At that Istanbul meeting, co-chairs Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu issued a statement urging countries “to take effective measures, as set forth in Resolution 16/18, consistent with their obligations under international human rights law, to address and combat intolerance, discrimination, and violence based on religion or belief.”

Next week’s gathering in Washington is a follow-up to the one in Istanbul, and it aims at “implementation.”

From the OIC’s viewpoint, resolution 16/18 is clearly part of the defamation campaign: “Washington plans to host a meeting on resolution opposing defamation of religions,” the OIC’s official news agency reported last August.

Ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom Suzan Johnson Cook says the meeting will bring together international organizations, including the OIC, European Union, Arab League and African Union, as well as law enforcement and justice officials representing some 30 foreign governments.

The meeting will “discuss best practices for two of the recommended actions from resolution 16/18: engagement with members of minority religious communities and enforcement of laws that prohibit acts of discrimination on the basis of religion or belief,” she said.

The State Department would afterwards submit a report on “best practices identified during these sessions” to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and for public distribution....

There is more.

It couldn't happen here, right? We have the First Amendment, right? Well, look at how the Second Amendment has been interpreted almost out of existence in some areas. The same thing could happen to the First -- and the process is already underway. "Criticism of Islam Could Soon be a Crime in America," by Clare M. Lopez for Family Security Matters, December 8 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Six years later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to host OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Washington, DC in mid-December 2011 to discuss how the United States can implement the OIC agenda to criminalize criticism of Islam. Cloaked in the sanctimonious language of Resolution 16/18, that was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in April 2011, the WDC three-day experts meeting is billed as a working session to discuss legal mechanisms to combat religious discrimination (but the only religion the Human Rights Council has ever mentioned in any previous resolution is Islam). The UN Human Rights Council, which includes such bastions of human rights as China, Cuba, Libya, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, introduced Resolution 16/18 to the UN General Assembly (UNGA), where it was passed in March 2011.

The Resolution was presented to the UNGA by Pakistan (where women get the death penalty for being raped and "blasphemy" against Islam is punished by death). Ostensibly about "combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and…incitement to violence against persons based on religion or belief," the only partnership mentioned in the text is the one with the OIC. The U.S., whose official envoy to the OIC, Rashad Hussain, helped write Obama's Cairo speech, actively collaborated in the drafting of Resolution 16/18.

Now, the OIC's Ihsanoglu will come to Washington, DC, the capital of one of the only countries in the world with a Constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and a judicial system that consistently defends it, with a publicized agenda to criminalize criticism of Islam. His agenda, and, apparently that of his host, the U.S. Department of State, seek to bring the U.S. into full compliance with Islamic law on slander, as noted above.

Events in the nation's capital seemed timed to ensure Ihsanoglu a warm welcome. The Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank aligned with the Democratic Party and Obama White House, published "Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America" in August 2011. Disturbingly specific in naming individuals associated with speaking truth about the doctrinal foundations of Islamic terrorism, the report is a blatant assault on the First Amendment and free speech in America—at least as far as Islam is concerned.

The Justice Department soon got on board the "Islamophobia" bandwagon. In the wake of the cancellation of a number of scheduled official training sessions at national security agencies by deeply knowledgeable scholars of Islamic doctrine, law, and scriptures, such as Stephen Coughlin, Steven Emerson, William Gawthrop, John Guandolo, and Robert Spencer, Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole confirmed at an 11 October 2011 press conference that the Obama administration was pulling back for review all training materials used for the law enforcement and national security communities in order to eliminate all references to Islam that Muslim Brotherhood groups have found offensive....

Read it all.

It is surprising that Swamy lasted as long as he has in Harvard's hyper-politically correct environment; his original piece ran at Atlas Shrugs on July 16. At Harvard, the wheels of injustice grind more slowly than I would have expected.

In any case, here is another assault on the freedom of speech and another victory for the ongoing Leftist and Islamic supremacist attempts to demonize, stigmatize and marginalize all speech regarding any kind of resistance to jihad terrorism and Islamic supremacism.

"Harvard removes courses taught by Subramanian Swamy," from PTI, December 8 (thanks to all who sent this in):

NEW YORK: Harvard University has decided to remove courses taught by Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy at its annual summer school session, terming his views as " reprehensible" in a controversial piece he wrote on Islamic terrorism in India.

At a meeting of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, faculty members voted with an "overwhelming majority" to remove two economics courses - 'Quantitative Methods in Economics and Business' and 'Economic Development in India and East Asia' - that Swamy teaches at the three-month Harvard Summer School session.

The faculty meeting, convened to approve the 2012 Summer School course catalogue, resulted in a "heated debate" when Comparative Religion Professor Diana Eck proposed an amendment to exclude Swamy's courses from the catalogue, the Harvard Crimson reported.

In a July op-ed piece for an Indian publication, Swamy had recommended demolishing hundreds of mosques and suggested that only Muslims in India who "acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus" should be allowed to vote.

Anyone who actually reads Swamy's piece will see that he recommended the first in response to Muslims targeting Hindu holy places, and the second in response to the jihad to turn India into dar al-Islam. Harsh? Maybe, but Eck and Harvard offer no alternatives for how Hindus can defend themselves from the jihad. They would prefer that they sit back passively and consent to Islamization rather than say something that jars the adherents of the Religion of the Perpetually Offended.

Eck said Swamy's op-ed "clearly crosses the line by demonising an entire religious community and calling for violence against their sacred places," adding that Harvard has a moral responsibility not to affiliate itself with anyone who expresses hatred towards a minority group.

And yet Harvard accepted millions from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who after 9/11 demonized Israel by suggesting that U.S. Middle East policies provoked the 9/11 attacks. New York Mayor Giuliani was so indignant that he refused the 10 million dollar check Alwaleed had sent him for the rebuilding of New York. But as far as Harvard and the academic establishment in general is concerned, some forms of "demonization" are more acceptable than others.

"There is a distinction between unpopular and unwelcome political views," Eck said.

That's an arbitrary distinction. The anti-freedom Left and the Islamic supremacists are working very hard these days to drive all resistance to the global jihad and Islamic supremacism out of the realm of acceptable public discourse. This is just another small victory for them in that effort.

Earlier, more than 400 students had signed a petition calling for Swamy's removal after Harvard had decided to stand by him, affirming its commitment to free speech principles.

So much for free speech principles.

He insulted the companions of Muhammad. This is the kind of law that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is working hard to bring to the West. Here, if you mention something impermissible about Islam or Muhammad, you're not lashed yet -- except by the mainstream media.

"Australian sentenced to 500 lashes in Saudi Arabia," from AFP, December 7 (thanks to all who sent this in):

An Australian man has been sentenced to 500 lashes and a year in jail by a court in Saudi Arabia after being found guilty of blasphemy, Canberra said on Wednesday.

Reports said Mansor Almaribe, 45, was detained in the city of Medina on November 14 while making the hajj pilgrimage and accused of insulting companions of the prophet Mohammed.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said he was sentenced on Tuesday and Canberra's ambassador in Saudi Arabia had been in touch with authorities to plead for leniency....

A consular official attended the sentencing, where the Shiite Muslim was initially slapped with a two-year jail term that was subsequently reduced, the spokeswoman added....

His eldest son, Jamal, told the newspaper this week that his father had been reading and praying in a group when accosted by religious police and arrested....

This report is skeletal in its level of detail. One will recall that according to this report and others in September, men "of Somali and Iraqi" origin were arrested, and a mosque raided, after an art center in Göteborg had to be evacuated of 400 people and the event, which Lars Vilks had said he might attend, had to be cancelled.

"Three charged in Sweden with conspiring to kill cartoonist," from Reuters, December 6:

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Three people have been charged with plotting to murder a Swedish cartoonist whose depiction of the Prophet Mohammad stirred Muslim outrage around the world, the Swedish Prosecution Authority said Tuesday.

Whose prophet?

Lars Vilks has been the subject of several death threats since his drawings were published in 2005. A Pennsylvania woman known as "Jihad Jane" pleaded guilty earlier this year to plotting to kill Vilks.

"The three people now charged at the Gothenburg District Court are suspected of conspiring to murder in September 2011 in Gothenburg," the prosecutor said in a statement.

The three are expected to appear in court later in December.