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Mainstream Right discovers that Muhammad filmmaker is a political prisoner

May 12, 2013 12:16 pm By Robert Spencer

I had to laugh when I saw this piece by National Review’s Rich Lowry in the New York Post. Only now he is discovering all this? Pamela Geller sums up how absurd this is:

Nakoula has been a political prisoner for so many months. My headline on September 15, 2012 was  Political Prisoner: US Sharia police pick up Muhammad filmmaker. Robert Spencer wrote on September 17 in PJ Media, before Nakoula was jailed: “Nakoula has a checkered past, reportedly including methamphetamine dealing and bank fraud. But if he is indeed sent back to jail because of this video, no matter what priors he has, no matter how checkered his past, make no mistake: he will be a political prisoner. He will be in prison not for the meth or the fraud or for the technicality of the probation violation, but for insulting Muhammad. His imprisonment will be a symbol of America’s capitulation to the Sharia.”

Where has Lowry been for the past eight months? What took him so long? And why does the right suppress voices that speak to this subject? I can assure you that if I or one of my colleagues had submitted such a piece to the Post or any other major publication in September 2012, it would not have run. Why must the mainstream right forever play catch-up, instead of leading?

“Jailed for blasphemy “” in America,” by Rich Lowry in the New York Post, May 9:

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula deserves a place in American history. He is the first person in this country jailed for violating Islamic anti-blasphemy laws.

You won’t find that anywhere in the charges against him, of course. As a practical matter, though, everyone knows that Nakoula wouldn’t be in jail if he hadn’t produced a video crudely lampooning the prophet Muhammad.

After the attack on US facilities in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, the Obama administration claimed the terrorist assault had been the outgrowth of a demonstration against the video. In a speech at the United Nations, the president declared “” no doubt with Nakoula in mind “” “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

After Benghazi, the administration was evidently filled with a fierce resolve “” to bring Nakoula to justice.

Charles Woods, the father of a Navy SEAL killed in Benghazi, said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told him when his son’s body returned to Andrews Air Force Base: “We will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

Lo and behold, Nakoula was brought in for questioning by five Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies at midnight, eventually arrested and held without bond, and finally thrown into jail for a year. He sits in La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Texas, even as the deceptive spin that blamed his video for the Benghazi attack looks more egregious by the day.

Two things must be said about Nakoula upfront. One is that his video can barely be called a video. The thing is lowdown, low-rent and should be offensive not just to Muslims, but to all people of good will….

Even as he reports all this, Lowry feels the need to temporize and backtrack. Why exactly should this video offend all people of good will? Because of its miserably poor production values? Or because it offends Muslims, and airs unpleasant facts about Muhammad?

Be sure to read the full post over at Atlas Shrugs, where Pamela Geller has more on this phenomenon, with examples from Andrew McCarthy and Andrew Bostom.

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