Bill Maher is going to speak at UC Berkeley, and the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is crestfallen that its fascist campaign to defame and destroy everyone who dares to speak the truth about Islam and jihad has failed this time. Said Hamas-linked CAIR’s Zahra Billoo: “While Mr. Maher has the right to speak whenever and wherever he likes, he does not have the right to have his hate-filled views honored and tacitly endorsed by a prestigious university.” In other words, we support the freedom of speech, as long as no one is able to listen.
Hamas-linked CAIR has been working for years to demonize, marginalize and silence anyone who tells the unpleasant truth about jihad terror and Islamic supremacism. After years of refusing to appear in television debates with me or other counter-jihad speakers, and demanding to be the only point of view featured (a demand to which that the mainstream networks usually acquiesced), Hamas-linked CAIR wrote this blisteringly ironic phrase in a communique today: “The anti-Islam crowd can’t stand it when they are not controlling the conversation…” Hamas-linked CAIR also openly revealed that it is determined to defame foes of jihad and shut down the freedom of speech about these issues, saying about their new defamation-and-smear clearinghouse: “This means that when someone who may think an Islamophobe is a legitimate speaker and searches for the person on the Internet, they will see the hatred that speaker or the group they represent espouses. This information is being used by our friends and allies to delegitimize bigots.” Translation: Hamas-linked CAIR has collected together all the lies and smears they’ve hurled over the years at foes of jihad terror — now you can use it to get them canceled from speaking engagements, so as to remove all opposition to the advance of jihad terror.
If Bill Maher doesn’t have an entry already, I am sure he will soon: Hamas-linked CAIR is acting just like the Nazi brownshirts, who would shout down and menace anti-Nazi speakers in Germany in the early 1930s. UC Berkeley didn’t kowtow to this intimidation this time. However, most do, as most event organizers are completely unprepared to deal with ginned-up “controversy,” and so immediately cave in to the demands of the pressure group. And so the spectrum of acceptable speech in the U.S. continues to narrow, as it did in Germany in the early 1930s.
“UC Berkeley student group votes to disinvite Bill Maher; college overturns it,” by Saeed Ahmed and Jacque Wilson, CNN, October 30, 2014:
…On Tuesday night, the student group that’s tasked with selecting commencement speakers met and voted to withdraw Maher’s invitation.
That would have been the end of the matter except the very next day, the college said it won’t honor the vote.
“This university has not in the past and will not in the future shy away from hosting speakers who some deem provocative,” the school said….
“The UC Berkeley administration cannot and will not accept this decision, which appears to have been based solely on Mr. Maher’s opinions and beliefs, which he conveyed through constitutionally protected speech,” the school said in a statement.
It added that the school’s decision shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement of Maher’s views. “Indeed, the administration’s position on Mr. Maher’s opinions and perspectives is irrelevant in this context.”
As so, it said, the invitation stands; Maher will speak at the December event.
The reaction
The Council on American-Islamic Relations expressed disappointment at the college’s ruling, saying it disrespected students “by casting aside the long-standing process for selecting commencement speakers and instead imposing its own will.
“While Mr. Maher has the right to speak whenever and wherever he likes, he does not have the right to have his hate-filled views honored and tacitly endorsed by a prestigious university,” said Zahra Billoo, of the group’s San Francisco chapter….