Cathy Young and The Daily Beast clearly intended her hit piece on Pamela Geller and me to be a comprehensive source for lazy journalists, for everything that is wrong with us. The problem is that her piece is a farrago of misrepresentations and outright lies. Pamela Geller and I respond at Breitbart today:
The teaser to Cathy Young’s vicious and dishonest exercise in character assassination in The Daily Beast says: “Pam Geller and Robert Spencer are being viewed as free speech champions for their ‘Draw Muhammad’ contest, which turned tragic in Dallas last week. But once a moderate Muslim begins speaking, they quickly turn into what they hate.”
Leaving aside whether or not standing for the freedom of speech against violent intimidation is really “hate” at all, what exactly does Young think we turn into when we see moderate Muslims? People who murder Muhammad cartoonists? Fascist foes of free speech? She follows up this curious claim that we “quickly turn into what [we] hate” by retailing the story of how we both supposedly led a “smear campaign” against Zuhdi Jasser in 2011, yet he “graciously” defended our right to free speech in the wake of the jihad attack on our Muhammad cartoon event.
In Young’s crude black hat/white hat scenario, we’re the vicious flamethrowers smearing a moderate Muslim out of “hate,” while Jasser graciously brushes aside the smears and defends us nonetheless. Young claims that we think Jasser is a “a faux Muslim” or “a camouflaged extremist practicing taqiyya.” She doesn’t see fit to mention that in February 2014, long after this supposed “smear campaign,” Robert Spencer defended Jasser against an actual smear campaign from the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), calling him “a strong voice against Hamas-linked CAIR and other malignant Islamic supremacist forces.”
Young claims that this “sordid episode” shows that we are “no heroes for free speech.” Yet she offers no examples of how we, say, fiendishly tried to deny Jasser’s freedom of speech, or compel publications to censor him. The spirited and substantive disagreement we had with him was not a denial of free speech, but an example of it. For Cathy Young to present it as if it showed that we were somehow against free speech demonstrates that she has no idea what free speech really is.
That’s the way Young’s entire piece goes. If anyone knows smear campaigns, it is she. Her modus operandi is to offer a tendentious, incomplete, misleading version of events, designed to portray us as villainous and hateful as possible, while conveniently omitting everything that doesn’t fit her narrative, with apparent insouciance about how dishonest, false, and even defamatory the resulting picture may be.
How dishonest is Cathy Young? She claims that Pamela Geller has a “lengthy record of peddling anti-Muslim hysteria, targeting Muslims’ First Amendment right to worship, smearing innocent people as jihadists, and even excusing the slaughter of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia.” Notice that only two of those four charges has a link to substantiate it; Young doesn’t – and can’t — offer any examples of Geller “peddling anti-Muslim hysteria” or “smearing innocent people as jihadists.” As for the claim that Geller targets Muslims’ right to worship, Young links to a Geller column about a New Jersey city that had rejected a proposed mosque over zoning issues; after a lawsuit, the city paid the mosque leaders damages and the mosque was built elsewhere. Nowhere in her piece does Geller call for restrictions on Muslims’ freedom of worship or say that mosques in general should not be built; Geller was primarily concerned with the Justice Department and mosque leaders strong-arming the city over its legitimate zoning concerns. But Young doesn’t let the facts get in the way of a good smear.
Even worse is Young’s link to Geller supposedly “excusing the slaughter of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia.” For that, Young links not to Geller actually excusing anyone’s slaughter, but to Young’s fellow smear merchant, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs. Johnson libelously claims that Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladic “slaughtered Muslims, and that makes him an ally of Geller, Robert Spencer, and the rest of their thuggish crowd.” His evidence for this? Geller saying that “there are no heroes in the Bosnian conflict, but the Muslim atrocities were far worse.” Does that sound like someone cheering on the slaughter of Muslims, or even excusing it? Any honest reader would have to acknowledge that Geller said that there were “no heroes” in the conflict and that both sides had committed “atrocities.” But we’re not dealing with honest readers here; we’re dealing with Charles Johnson and Cathy Young.
Young excoriates Robert Spencer for calling Islamic reform “quixotic” and “virtually inconceivable,” while not mentioning that this was in discussion with a moderate Muslim, Thomas Haidon, who said: “Spencer has rightly argued that until a reformist movement tables coherent and irrefutable evidence that the version of Islam envisioned by reformists is the ‘correct Islam’, then the movement will never have mass appeal in the Ummah.” How inconvenient for Young: a moderate Muslim agreeing with Robert Spencer on what she is trying to present as Spencer’s hostility to moderates and hatefulness regarding Islam!
Spencer, says Young, “sweepingly describes the faith of ‘millions’ of Muslim immigrants in the West as ‘absolutely incompatible with Western society.’” In the video to which she links, Spencer is speaking about not about Muslims but about Islamic law, which mandates stoning of adulterers, the amputation of thieves’ hands, the killing of gays and those who leave Islam, the beating of disobedient women, and more – as evidenced by the fact that all these practices and more are seen in Sharia states today, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. Does this mean that each and every Muslim immigrant to the West thinks that these practices should be brought West? No – and Spencer never says otherwise. But here again, Young doesn’t let the facts get in the way of her smear.
Young continues: “When America’s first Muslim congressman Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) (D-Minnesota) chose to use a Quran in his swearing-in ceremony, Spencer flatly stated that ‘no American official should be taking an oath on the Qur’an.’” Millions of Americans agreed – not least because of those passages of the Qur’an that call for warfare against and subjugation of non-Muslims. But Young doesn’t bother to try to refute Spencer’s arguments; for her it is enough to show that Spencer has departed from politically acceptable opinion, to signal to her Daily Beast groupthinkers that he is not to be believed. She does this again when noting that Spencer’s “2005 best-seller, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), has such chapter titles as ‘Islamic Law: Lie, Steal and Kill.’” Does Young prove that Islamic law does not, under certain circumstances, allow for lying, stealing, and killing? No. She doesn’t even try. She knows her Daily Beast readers will assume that it doesn’t, and hate Spencer for daring to say otherwise.
Showing that she will stoop to any low to defame us, Young even links to a hate site devoted solely to collecting libels and falsehoods about Robert Spencer, and claims that Spencer’s “account of Islamic history is blatantly one-sided. Thus, he tries to rebut the ‘PC myth’ that Jews in the Middle Ages fared better under Islamic rule than in Christian Europe by quoting from a 13th Century papal bull that affirmed the rights accorded to Jews—but fails to mention the many expulsions of Jewish communities from European countries and glosses over crusader massacres of Jews.” In reality, Spencer devotes several pages of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades to the Crusaders’ massacres of Jews in Eastern Europe (“Count Emicho of Leiningen and his followers advanced through the Rhineland, killing and plundering Jews in five German cities: Speyer, Worms, Mainz, Trier, and Cologne”) and several more to the Crusaders’ burning of a synagogue full of Jews in Jerusalem, which he calls “this atrocity, this outrage.” That’s “glossing over” in Cathy Young’s book.
And did Jews in the Middle Ages fare better under Islamic rule than in Christian Europe”? Young thinks that Spencer’s denying this is evidence that he is hateful. Yet the philosopher Maimonides, a Jew who lived for a time in Muslim Spain and then fled that supposedly tolerant and pluralistic land, remarked, “You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us….No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have….We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, and absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear.”
No doubt Maimonides would have been the target of Cathy Young’s poison pen had he had the misfortune of being her contemporary.
Young claims: “When Spencer writes about moderate Muslims, it is invariably to disparage them as deluded, insincere, or irrelevant.” She left out endangered, as in the Moroccan cleric Ahmed Assid, who condemned violence in Islam’s name and about whom Spencer wrote: “So why isn’t Ahmed Assid celebrated as a hero, instead of fearing for his life?” Young doesn’t quote this because the specter of Spencer saying a moderate Muslim should be celebrated as a hero wouldn’t fit her demonization of him as supposedly denigrating all moderates.
“His targets,” Young said, “include reformist Muslims who are strongly critical of radical Islamism and have themselves been accused of being Islamophobic shills: Jasser, self-styled ‘Muslim refusenik’ Irshad Manji, Sufi Muslim convert Stephen Schwartz.” Once again, Young’s links are quite far from how she represents them. The one about Manji discusses her characterizations of certain aspects of Islamic history; it doesn’t say anything about her opposition to “radical Islamism.” And regarding Schwartz, Spencer wrote: “I was saddened to read Mr. Schwartz’s letter, particularly its heading, since I have never attacked him in any way. I have merely asked questions about his recommendations for a reconfiguration of Islam so as to make it no longer a refuge and motivating force for international terrorists. Had Mr. Schwartz answered these questions honestly, fully, and civilly, we might have been on the way to a fruitful dialogue that could have helped accomplish what he professes to work for: ‘convincing Muslims of the need for moderation.’”
Ah, but Cathy Young wants her readers to believe that Spencer has no interest in Muslim reformers “convincing Muslims of the need for moderation,” and so she doesn’t include that quote.
Young then bizarrely excoriates Spencer for failing to praise a suicide bombing, saying his “targets” also “include Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State: last October, a Spencer post on his site, JihadWatch, reported a Kurdish woman’s suicide bomb attack on ISIS troops in a besieged town under the jeering headline, ‘Kurdish Muslima carries out moderate jihad/martyrdom suicide attack against the Islamic State,’ and sneered at the idea that “the foes of the Islamic State are all moderate.” Clearly the foes of the Islamic State are indeed not all moderate, and it is hard to see how she can justify suicide bombing in any context, but for Cathy Young, demonizing Spencer and Geller is paramount; all other considerations are secondary, apparently even including basic questions of morality and ethics.
Stooping even lower, and running out of ammo on Spencer himself, Young takes up a nine-year-old post by a former Jihad Watch writer: “Spencer ostensibly disavows bigotry; yet a 2006 JihadWatch post,—written by the site’s co-administrator Hugh Fitzgerald but posted by Spencer himself—suggests that the most peaceful, non-violent, and even secularized Muslims are still a danger to the West as long as they have not explicitly renounced Islam, because either they or their children may revert to a more militant form of the faith.” This is a tendentious misstatement of what Fitzgerald actually wrote – as evidenced by the fact that she does not quote him: she can’t produce an actual damning quote. In any case, there are numerous examples of secularized Muslims becoming devout and militant. Coming so soon after the specter of Nadir Soofi trying to commit mass murder at our cartoon contest, to the professed shock and grief of his father, Young’s taking issue with Fitzgerald’s piece is nothing short of grotesque.
“Both Spencer and Geller,” Young charges, “relentlessly hype the Muslim peril in the U.S. Every violent crime by a Muslim becomes a one-person jihad, from a mentally ill Bosnian teen’s shooting spree at a Salt Lake City shopping mall to a drug addict’s meth-fueled rampage assaulting customers and staff at a Seaside, California Walmart.” With jihad groups calling on Muslims to commit “lone wolf” attacks in the West, Young would need to produce evidence that these cases had nothing to do with Islam. She does not, and doesn’t mention that Salt Lake City mall shooter Sulejman Talovic “was described as a religious Muslim, attending mosque on Fridays and praying outside of mosque as well”; “wore a necklace with a miniature Koran at the time of the shooting,” and “told his ‘girlfriend’ the night before that ‘tomorrow will be the happiest day of my life…’ (a likely reference to martyrdom).” Again, why let the facts get in the way of a good smear?
Young then expatiates on a post Geller deleted from her website. The deletion of material found to be inaccurate, however, is standard practice on the Internet, and a sign of Geller’s commitment to accuracy. Until Young begins to denounce the New York Times for stories it has taken down, her reference to a story Geller deleted is simply contemptible. Young appears to want her readers to believe that “vehicular jihad” is a figment of the “Islamophobic” imagination. She doesn’t tell them that in September 2014, the Islamic State told Muslims in the West: “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car…” And even before that, this was an element of the jihadist arsenal.
Young then adds an outright lie: “In 2011, Geller agreed to settle a defamation suit by removing from her site several posts suggesting—with no evidence—that Columbus, Ohio attorney Omar Tarazi had ties to the terrorist group Hamas.” In her windy and poorly edited piece, she returns to this many paragraphs later, making the same false claims and declaring: “Geller herself has a rather strained relationship with the truth.” In reality, Geller won this case. Tarazi had sued for $10 million; he got nothing. Geller had several posts that made the same claim. She agreed to remove only two of many, as a courtesy; the agreement did not require her not to repost the same substance subsequently, and it was already up on other posts. There was nothing false about Geller’s claims regarding Tarazi: she had said that he had ties to CAIR, which has demonstrable ties to Hamas, and this was all established during the litigation.
Young continues her tissue of false and misleading statements: “Homicidal (and suicidal) non-Muslims can be recruited to the cause as well. In 2007, Geller harped obsessively on the notion that Virginia Tech mass shooter Seung-Hui Cho, a Korean national and a Christian, was a secret jihadi because of the mysterious ‘Ismail Ax’ tattoo on his arm.” No one has ever explained what the “Ismail Ax” tattoo was all about. Cathy Young, however, is sure it has nothing to do with jihad. How does she know? Because she hates Pamela Geller.
“Two years earlier,” Young tells us, “Spencer was one of the bloggers flogging the theory that Joel Hinrichs, a University of Oklahoma engineering student who killed himself by detonating a homemade bomb in his backpack near the campus football stadium during a game, was a Muslim convert and had planned a suicide bombing inside the stadium. This speculation was based on these incredibly incriminating clues: Hinrichs had recently grown a beard, had lived a few blocks from a mosque, and had a Pakistani roommate.” Once again, the links tell the tale: Spencer never mentioned his beard, and Young doesn’t bother mentioning that “investigators say they also found ‘Islamic jihad’ material in Hinrichs’ apartment when they searched it. Hinrichs, it turns out, attended a mosque near his university-owned apartment — the same one attended by Zacharias Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”
Young isn’t finished lying and distorting. She then turns to our supposed “Muslims-under-the-bed paranoia” which “drives distortion-riddled reports about the alleged encroachment of ‘sharia law’ in America—which can mean nothing more than utterly innocuous accommodations for practicing Muslims such as ritual foot baths on university campuses and at airports.” Can Cathy Young provide examples of public funding being used for holy water fonts or Torah scrolls on university campuses and at airports? Can she explain why she has no problem with public funds being used for this accommodation of Islam when similar accommodation would never be offered for Judaism or Christianity?
Young’s next Geller atrocity is a real stretch, even for her:
Take the “sharia courtroom” scandal in 2012, in which a Muslim judge in Pennsylvania was said to have let a Muslim immigrant off the hook for assaulting an atheist who had marched in a local Halloween parade dressed as “Zombie Mohammed.” The only grain of truth in this story was that the judge, Mark W. Martin, had quite inappropriately lectured the victim for abusing his First Amendment rights before dismissing the harassment charge for lack of evidence. But Martin, a Republican and an Iraq war veteran, was (as he confirmed to the media) a churchgoing Lutheran; the confusion was based on a misheard line in the audio of the court session.
Undeterred, Geller continued to insist that Martin was a “sharia judge” who had declared himself a Muslim in the court hearing and was probably lying about it in the aftermath—because, of course, Muslims lie.
Follow the link to Geller’s piece on this. Martin actually said during the hearing, “I’m a Muslim.” Later he denied being a Muslim, and Geller wrote: “He now denies that he is a Muslim, but that’s what he said. Ultimately, it is irrelevant if the judge is or isn’t a Muslim. What is germane is his sharia ruling, which is worse if he’s not a Muslim.” Young represents this as Geller insisting he was a Muslim and lying about not being one. And she even admits that Martin was wrong to lecture the victim for violating Sharia, but still skewers Geller for saying the same thing. Does Cathy Young, then, have no decency whatsoever?
Young then criticizes us for daring to criticize Bernard Lewis and journalist Michael Totten, without bothering to explain why either’s work should be off-limits to criticism. For a professed supporter of free speech, Young has an ugly and authoritarian tendency to regard substantive disagreement with those whom she favors as evidence of some moral defect. Yet they are richly deserving of criticism and disagreement. She quotes Totten, for example, sneering: “I got on the hit list of Pamela Geller and her flock of honking geese when, while reporting from Bosnia and Kosovo, I wrote about Serbian ethnic cleansing and war crimes. She insists not only that Serbian ethnic cleansing didn’t occur—never mind that I know some of the victims and visited some of the ethnically cleansed areas in person—but also that ‘every major US paper in 1999’ supposedly ‘debunked’ the ethnic cleansing that every knowledgeable and serious person knows happened. The woman lives in an alternate universe.” It is Totten, however, whose universe is off-kilter: the Geller post to which Young links makes it abundantly clear that at issue was not whether there were people killed and areas cleared out; at issue was whether or not the term “ethnic cleansing” was justified. So for Totten to declare that he had spoken to victims was simply off the point.
“Totten’s run-in with Geller,” says Young, “highlights another troubling aspect of her views: a propensity for Bosnian Muslim genocide denial and for valorizing Serbian mass murderers as leaders of anti-jihadist resistance. (‘The Serbs dared to fight. That’s what this is all about,’ she wrote in a 2011 post.)” In any conflict, one chooses sides. We believe Clinton chose the wrong side in the Balkans in the 1990s. We were right. Look at Sarajevo: once a dynamic and pluralistic city, it has now been ethnically cleansed of non-Muslims. Cathy Young won’t tell you that. As for the scurrilous charge of genocide denial, at issue here again is whether or not the term “genocide” is justified, not whether or not Muslims were killed or Serbian mass murderers are heroes. There is legitimate disagreement on this question. In “Srebrenica as Genocide? The Krstić Decision and the Language of the Unspeakable,” published in the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal, Vol. VIII in 2005, Katherine G. Southwick writes:
In August 2001, a trial chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) handed down the tribunal’s first genocide conviction. In this landmark case, Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstić, the trial chamber determined that the 1995 Srebrenica massacres—in which Bosnian Serb forces executed 7,000-8,000 Bosnian Muslim men—constituted genocide. This Note acknowledges the need for a dramatic expression of moral outrage at the most terrible massacre in Europe since the Second World War. However, this Note also challenges the genocide finding. By excluding consideration of the perpetrators’ motives for killing the men, such as seeking to eliminate a military threat, the Krstić chamber’s method for finding specific intent to destroy the Bosnian Muslims, in whole or in part, was incomplete. The chamber also loosely construed other terms in the genocide definition, untenably broadening the meaning and application of the crime. The chamber’s interpretation of genocide in turn has problematic implications for the tribunal, enforcement of international humanitarian law, and historical accuracy. Thus highlighting instances where inquiry into motives may be relevant to genocide determinations, this Note ultimately argues for preserving distinctions between genocide and crimes against humanity, while simultaneously expanding the legal obligation to act to mass crimes that lack proof of genocidal intent.
If Geller is guilty of “genocide denial,” so also is the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal. In reality, neither are. The raising of legitimate questions does not constitute either the denial or the excusing of the evils that Serbian forces actually perpetrated.
Intent on using every professional character assassin’s trick in the book, Young then throws in guilt by association, claiming that Srdja Trifkovic is one of Spencer’s “closest associates” and that Trifkovic is “not only a denier of Serbian war crimes but a former advisor to one of the accused perpetrators, Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadzic.”
In reality, Spencer has met Trifkovic in person only once. They are not associates, close or otherwise. They do not work together and never have. Ten years ago they were both featured in a documentary that neither of them produced; they did not meet on the set. This is not to say that Spencer accepts Young’s claims about Trifkovic – they are almost certainly as false as the rest of her claims – but only yet again to point out her cavalier disregard for accuracy. The claim that Spencer and Trifkovic are close and that therefore Spencer must share the thirst for genocide that Trifkovic supposedly harbors is the work of an earlier libel merchant whom Young invokes: “Kejda Germani, the Kosovar émigré writer who documented the Spencer/Trifkovic connection five years ago.”
Young can’t even get basic facts right: her fellow smear artist’s surname is actually Gjermani; Spencer documented the falsity of her claims years ago, but Young doesn’t deign to take notice.
After all these lies, all these distortions, all these half-truths, all these libels, Young, covered in mud and slime, piously intones: “treating Islam as a monolith, denying the possibility of reform, and demonizing Muslims en masse is not the answer.” Where either of us ever have done any of those things, she doesn’t say, and cannot say, for she is lying about us again. She claims: “Spencer has argued that Islamic reform has no theological foundation, but he ignores the work of such 20th Century thinkers as Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, who made the case for the abrogation of the Quran’s later, harsher texts by the earlier, more peaceful ones (rather than vice versa).”
Young is lying yet again: Spencer does not ignore Taha’s work at all. Last year, he wrote: “The Sudanese government executed Mahmoud Mohammed Taha for heresy after he said that the Qur’an’s Meccan suras, which are more peaceful, should supersede the Medinan suras, which are more violent.” In 2006, he published a piece by moderate Muslim Thomas Haidon, “Some reflections on the death of Mohammed Taha.” The one who is ignoring important facts is Young: she doesn’t mention that Taha was executed as a heretic for his ideas about Islam – a stark illustration that, as Spencer has pointed out (to Young’s disgust), reform will not be easy.
However dishonest and mendacious, Cathy Young’s piece is exhaustively researched. She clearly spent a great deal of time on it. Ponder for a moment the specter of a journalist spending dozens of hours researching and writing, and the Daily Beast publishing, a piece libeling two people who were just targeted by jihadist assassins. Cathy Young could have spent all that time researching and writing a piece about the would-be jihad mass murderers, Ibrahim Simpson and Nadir Soofi, laying bare for Daily Beast readers their guiding ideology, investigating to what extent their jihadi beliefs were taught in their mosque, and more.
Instead, this. Young’s protestations about supporting free speech are belied by her avidity to defame us; clearly she, and the Daily Beast, looked at the shooting at our event and decided that the real enemy was not Ibrahim Simpson and Nadir Soofi and their murderous ilk, but Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer and their “flock of honking geese.” They would rather see more people like Ibrahim Simpson and Nadir Soofi than like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. And so they will.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
… the trial chamber determined that the 1995 Srebrenica massacres—in which Bosnian Serb forces executed 7,000-8,000 Bosnian Muslim men—constituted genocide.
If you go back to the press reports of the day, the United States under the leadership of Bill Clinton bombed long time ally Serbia for the mass murder of maybe a quarter million Moslems out of religious driven Christian hate for them. The “narrative” made no mention of Moslem aggression in the region. Then, after years of bombing Belgrade and the country in general, when the smoke cleared the U.N. officials moved in to exhume hundreds of thousands of Moslem victim corpses. But the body count was way disappointing, which is where the 7,000 – 8,000 number came from.
But that is twice as many Moslems dead as the count of Infidels killed in 9/11, and so it was genocide. Much like 2 million Armenian corpses was genocide, or 100 million Hindu corpses killed during the Moghul was genocide.
But, even given that, somehow the news entertainment industry never did go back and publicly retract their estimate from a quarter million to several thousand. Who was keeping count, what at that point did it matter?
RonaldB says
Yes, Alarmed PIg Farmer,
And the question for me is, what caused Clinton to bomb the Serbs? I remember from the time that the news media, like the Wall Street Journal, and the broadcast media, clearly portrayed the Serbs as vicious aggressors. But, why would the US get involved? And did the President not have his intelligence briefings to give a more balanced perspective on the reports?
I’m afraid that the Presidential actions, like that of so many others, revolved more around money and influence, rather than the best interests of the United States. The behaviors are openly on display:Hillary making decisions as Secretary of State affecting deep-pocketed contributors to her foundation and her husband’s speaking income.
I think the Serbian intervention represents the future of resistance to Islam: our worst enemies will not be the Muslim fighters, who can be handled, but our own allies. Let me give an example: should any country in Europe degenerate into street fighting, it is likely that the European Union, via the Euro-police, will intervene. And guess which side they will take?
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
should any country in Europe degenerate into street fighting, it is likely that the European Union, via the Euro-police, will intervene. And guess which side they will take?
Actually, we already saw which side when the Belgian police had a cop riot putting the stomp down on the Vlaams Belang several years ago. The Vlaams protestors were holding a peaceable protest in Brussels, but their message that Moslem immigration must be stopped, was unwelcome both to the Belgian national officials and to the EU bureaucrats running Europe from there. So the police actually attacked the protesters unprovoked, and got quite rough with them, pounding them with their truncheons from behind their plexiglass shields wearing their fiberglass motorcycle helmets. I was shocked when I saw that, and thought that it portended things to come. You are right, there will be more of that, and the police will attack on behalf of the Moslems.
sheik yer'mamih says
“Bill Clinton bombed long time ally Serbia for the mass murder of maybe a quarter million Moslems out of religious driven Christian hate for them.”
Sorry mate, completely wrong. Barely 10.000 Moslems lost their lives as a result of Serbian ethnic cleansing. The Moslems scream ‘genocide’ to this day, but its them who own the land now and they are still driving the remaining Kosovar Serbs out.
Beagle says
“…it is the duty of those who have accepted them [Allah’s word and message] to strive unceasingly to convert or at least to subjugate those who have not. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state.”
— Bernard Lewis from The Political Language of Islam, 1988
Or, in other words, Geller and Spencer are right. Now we have a literal “Islamic (S)tate” driving the point home every day.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
Geller and Spencer may be right on the facts of Islam, but facts are no longer of central importance in our society, public image is. The facts of the matter don’t preclude the two from being purposeless troublemaking publicity whore religious bigots, and now we find out on top of everything else that they are terrorists. That is disturbing.
Andrei says
Young has written in the past for “Reason” magazine. Ayn Rand would have been ashamed of her.
Robert, you need to post this incredibly clever parody of the recent events in Garland, TX. Here is the link:
http://patterico.com/2015/05/08/area-man-denies-that-mass-shootings-are-reason-for-his-sudden-change-of-mind-on-the-color-of-that-dress/
Walter Sieruk says
The massage is so important that is should be reiterated somewhat. Which about those Muhammad cartoons at that contest . That is was not the cartoons or Pamela Geller or the A.F.D.I. it was the fault and blame of Islam and those two violent Muslims who committed the shooting. Those two Muslims could had chosen to stage a peaceful protest to the cartoon event. Instead they chose the violence of terrorism as the way to handle things. They were responsible for their own actions. Their jihad violence says something about them. Likewise, their jihad violence also says something about Islam.
pumbar says
Europe is importing islamic lunatics at a desperate rate to try and keep up with the US’ cultural suicide. I believe that our marxist leaders are envious of your Baltimore and Ferguson show and tell parties. Rather than sitting on the sidelines, exceptional… I think you are the headline; unremarkable. I think what you in the US do will have a great deal of impact on us in European nations. When you elect Hillary it will be like a seismic change. It will cause chaos and turmoil in Europe but it will lead to the betterment of its people: I don’t think the same is true for the people of the US.
Justin will be pleased.
spot on says
From the article: Ponder for a moment the specter of a journalist spending dozens of hours researching and writing, and the Daily Beast publishing, a piece libeling two people who were just targeted by jihadist assassins.
The left (as represented by Ms. Young) makes less sense now than every before. The gap between the truth and what is said by the left is widening. They seem to be able to absorb narratives ok but they cannot understand facts. This is the lazy way of life, They only learn what they like to learn and only accept the facts they like, all to fetter their ego. They hate whom they want to hate and make up hateful stories against those they dislike. They make up stories out of thin air and misrepresent almost everything. They are unable to use any perspective in their thinking, if they are able to think at all.
Everything to them has a political ring to it and they stay tuned to the political winds in search of another fictitious story to tell about their political adversaries.
Muslims are their friends, They have a lot in common with Muslims and would fit right in with them except that the women may be sold as sex slaves or submit to being obedient to some man as a sex slave and be treated like his goat.
They are unable to understand the world around them. They don’t realize that the freedoms they enjoy all come from the Judeo-Christian society in which they live.
voegelinian says
I don’t get why so many in the Counter-Jihad are baffled by the logic of PC MC. There’s nothing baffling about it. In the minds of the PC MCs, they see over a billion Brown People threatened with discrimination, bigotry, and from there, “backlash” entailing lynch mobs, rounding up, putting in camps, and genocide. Given this hyperventilating scenario of cosmic ethical proportions, it’s only natural that the PC MCs (and all the more so their more caffeinated cousins, the Leftists) become so self-righteous on their High Horse. They are fighting on the side of the angels in a grand and noble cause, saving over a billion Brown People from the “racism” of evil right wing white Christians. Once we factor that in, there is nothing baffling about their behavior, nor the lengths they will go to do what in their mind is the right thing.
Sam says
I understand the liberal mind. So I agree with you. However, still, how can anyone be so f*****blind? It is almost like science fiction; this cuddling to Islam that wants to cut your throat.
Wellington says
Because, Sam, hatred of Western Civilization by the Left trumps everything, even self-preservation, so deep is the antipathy by the Left to the West.
mortimer says
Cultural Marxists like Cathy Young (working for the cultural Marxist rag Daily Beast) tries to muddy the waters of their game to destroy European civilization by using surrogates.
The Left needs the Muslim ‘noble savages’ to wreck what remains of European civilization and so they import them as exotic, dangerous pets to intimidate, assassinate and obstruct defenders of free speech, freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.
The Left is similar to people who bring dangerous, wild animals into their homes, believing that the exotic pet will not turn on them!
The Muslims have already turned on us, whenever we try to help them or defend ourselves…whether Green on Blue killings of soldiers in Afghanistan or Major Hasan Nidal at Fort Hood.
Cathy Young has a lot of willful blindness to answer for.
spot on says
Voegelinian,
They are fighting on the side of the angels…
True, and sympathy for minorities is also a learned behavior. I have a dear member of my family who is this way and she is a liberal. She does not hate the West at all and she loves our culture. She is also a physician and most certainly does not lack intelligence by any means. She is a very strong Christian with children and is not a cultural Marxist.
Our subconscious minds set priorities for us and her mind assigns ‘sympathy for minorities’ near the top of her list. This fits the PC MC theme and makes her feel good.
These priorities are set by the subconscious mind and are based on the central focus in our daily lives. The ‘feel good’ part is what reinforces this focus. What feels good can easily change as we grow older and then the priority changes. (Dr. Maxwell Maltz in one of his excellent books “Psyco-Cybernetics” explains this subconscious phenomena in great detail. This book has been in continuous print since 1960.)
This type of liberal is a good person and does not represent the left that hates the West. However, they are dependable Democrat voters and have sympathy for those that do hate the West, which I am sure is why the left accentuates this theme in government schools and the government loving MSM.
People can easily switch their minds’ focus to ‘hatred of the West’ as a result of this kind of thinking. This is where family and church become such a major part in keeping these good people on the right track. (This is why salesmen often start believing their own bullshit after a while.) I don’t know anything about Cathy Young except that her article would strongly imply that she is beset with hatred for Robert and Pamela.
With focus on hatred and no offsetting religious values or spiritual guide, a person’s subconscious priority can gradually switch to hatred. This happens beyond their control. A person’s support group can play a very strong part in all this.
This is also why Islam is such a vile cult. From cradle to the grave, hatred of non Muslims is instilled into a Muslims psychic and the Muslim’s subconscious mind takes over from there. Some go over the top to violent Jihad. Others may not but at any time in their life, this could change. With their family, friends, and Mosque to reinforce this hatred of non Muslims every day, Their conscious and subconscious mind can become ruled by hatred. I believe that this eventually destroys their mind.
This is why I don’t give any Muslims a free pass. There is no way to know when or how a Muslim can be dangerous to others. Further evidence of all this is that a Muslim can operate strictly in accordance with their conscience while savagely killing innocent kids, women, or men. They are following the path of Allah, Mohammed, (and I believe Satan) when they do this. They are not unlike the Kamikaze or other failed evil military cults of the past.
Mohammed mastered the art of instilling and keeping hatred alive as the the focus of his army directed toward it’s enemies. He mastered it so well that we are still fighting Muslims today, 1400 years later.
voegelinian says
Indeed, spot on, and your friend who is not a “Leftist” in the simplistic sense many in the Counter-Jihad think of (which do exist, of course, but not in numbers sufficient to explain a whole West earnestly myopic about the problem of Islam), who is not a “Cultural Marxist”, and who is relatively intelligent and decent, may be multiplied by the literally tens and tens of millions throughout the West (not as carbon copies of each other, of course, but sufficiently so to present a sociopolitical demographic that remains unexplained by the reflexive retorts so often seen in Jihad Watch comments).
Not to mention that such a simplistic view cannot explain how it is that so many intelligent conservatives (mostly Academics, by the way) among the Eric Voegelin society have PC MC reflexes when it comes to Islam, which I have not only studied and analyzed, but also personally experienced.
As I wrote years ago, we need not only to “Know thine Enemy” — we also need to “Know thy friend”. This simplistic caricature and demonization of our fellow Westerners as “Leftists” and “cultural Marxists” (a caricature certainly made tempting by Leftists like Cathy Young and her ilk) has really got to go.
An excerpt from that essay of mine:
“Those damned Leftists”. This last Idity turns out to be rather idiotic and quickly dissolves under the unremarkable light of thinking about it for a few seconds: It fails to explain all the multitudes of non-Leftists who continue to do their part to purvey PC MC throughout the modern West: Conservatives, Centrists, and that sociopolitical demographic too often unnoticed — the Comfortably Apolitical (a post-modern permutation of the “Bourgeoisie” who abound in our time).
Now, the aforementioned Explanatory Vacuum leads to the natural question: if we rule out the Three Elves of Stupidity, Cupidity and Timidity — as well as the Leftist Explanation — we must intelligently ask:
Why would an intelligent public servant not realize, after all the facts that have been amassing around us in our highly informed cultured, how evil and deadly Islam is?
If, in addition to Cupidity and Stupidity, we also rule out Timidity and “Those Damn Leftists” as explanations, then, there would seem to be no other explanations — that is, if one has an impoverished appreciation for the depth and breadth of the sociocultural phenomenon of PC MC.
spot on says
Voegelinian, I agree. The decent liberal person that I used as an example watches MSM and has no interest nor time to dig deeper about Islam or minorities. She is a caring person who attends church and is full of love. Neither she nor her liberal husband see anything to worry them and they do not want to hear negative comments regarding minorities. They are busy with their family activities. I am sure there are millions like her.
I believe that the only way for her to change her mind is to see it on MSM. That is unlikely to happen until the wolves are at the door, if then. I further believe that the MSM falls into the “Hate America” crowd and wants to see America taken down by minorities. They are more hard core in their management and would prefer a completely different form of government in America. They would use the Muslims as a tool against Christians and Jews to help them get there.
duh_swami says
If Satan had a daughter…This person is more than wrong, she’s evil. There seem to be a lot of evil people with evil intent, using poison pens, or the power of the microphone to do it…
The only thing I can recommend is, beware of word magick and word trickery…You can see samples in Young’s article…or you can tune in the Bill O’Reilly show, on FOX…
Champ says
The problem is that her piece is a farrago of misrepresentations and outright lies.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The same thing that islam was founded on …
and moohamhead was probably the worst criminal that ever lived — some ‘prophet’, eh?
Wellington says
“The same thing that Islam was founded on…”
Yes, quite fitting, Champ. Two peas in a pod and all that.
spot on says
Hi Champ, Yes indeed…Big Mo was the worst criminal… ever… to walk upon this earth!
PRCS says
Through all the years–though I believe he is sincere–Jasser’s primary tactic is very similar to that employed by CAIR.
Uncle Nihad and Honest Ibe assure us that “they” oppose violence and hatred of any kind but never denounce/renounce the passages from the “Big Book” which drive it.
Dr. Jasser wants to reform Islam, but I’ve never heard him denounce/renounce those passages either–and of more importance as it relates to his personal crusade–he doesn’t identify the specific chapters/verses which would have to be deleted or changed in order to achieve his pie-in-the sky scheme before the Iranians do whatever needs to be done to hasten the return of the 12th Imam.
Mica says
We should change the name from ‘news’ to ‘populist commentary’ since most written has become just that. No need to do research here nor present both sides without judgement, and by no means any critical thinking.
profitsbeard says
Exposing Islam as a Death Cult is considered uncouth.
Not the Death Cult or its homicidal cultists.
No, the exposure is blamed.
As H.G. Wells once noted: In the land of the blind the one-eyed man gets his eye poked out.
Mica says
We need to change her her profession from ‘reporter’ to ‘populist commentator.’ No research here. No presenting both sides without bias. And certainly no critical thinking.
Papa Whiskey says
Be it noted that “Cathy Young” was born Ekaterina Jung in the old Soviet Union, whence she emigrated in 1980. Living under that wicked regime, her first exposure to news writing would have been in Communist Party papers such as Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestiya (“News”). The quality of the journalism in these two publications led wags to comment that “In ‘Truth’ there is no news, and in ‘News’ there is no truth!”
spot on says
“In ‘Truth’ there is no news, and in ‘News’ there is no truth!”
This fairly well describes the MSM.
Mirren10 says
The Daily *Beast* ? What an extraordinary name for a newspaper.
Papa Whiskey pointed out this Cathy Young was brought up on Pravda and Izvestiya; that knocks the nail on the head. Most on the left are the same. Facts must never get in the way of ideology.
Mirren10 says
By the way, what happened to the list of ”latest comments” ? I always looked for my favourite commenters, there ! 🙁
Champ says
Hi Mirren10! …yeah I miss the “latest comments”, too …for some reason that feature was removed a few days ago. Please bring it back.
Take care, my friend! 🙂
Champ says
Yay! …the “recent comments” feature is back in action!
Angemon says
Ugh, merely reading Cathy Young’s lies makes me feel dirty. Like, really dirty, Like in “no amount of water, soap and scrubbing will ever make me feel clean again” dirty.
Champ says
You must live in California …
Bezelel says
I confess that I was out of touch during the Serbian tragedy and it was not until much later when I actually met some Serbs here in the US. that I got some first hand info. and done some online research on the subject. hussein obola did an apology tour and Serbia was not on the list. cathy young is not part of the solution. She is far too typical though. Serbia was a test model for the rest of us.
Wellington says
Oh yeah, this Cathy Young was out to smear Geller and Spencer, which helps to prove what Dennis Prager has said, to wit, that those who won’t fight evil often hate those who do. She also has something in common with moderate Muslims. They’re both lazy.
Hey, real irony here too, no? What this poor excuse for a journalist arguably did was engage in true hate speech, pure defamation, which speech her ilk opposes but when they do, nine times out of ten, what they describe as hate speech is just the truth, which in turn proves that the truth is the new hate speech for deficient people like Cathy Young.
Oh yeah, what a goofy world we live in. Islam, though spiritual fascism, gets a pass time and time again by “good” dhimmis. Truth tellers like Spencer and Geller are not only excoriated but threatened with death. Double standards exist aplenty, for instance The New York Times defending the right of an “artist” to dip a crucifix in a jar of urine and calling it art, defending the right of The Book of Mormon to be performed, but castigating Pamela Geller for holding a cartoon contest. Can’t make this stuff up. Existing, I might add, courtesy of modern leftism, which even many gutless and/or clueless people on the right have bought into. Time for a beer.
TheBuffster says
Wellington quoted Dennis Prager, “… those who won’t fight evil often hate those who do.”
Yes, aside from such things as animosity towards those on the ‘wrong’ side of politics, ideological blinders, and fear of being viewed as alleged bigots, there’s the sucking up to those whom they fear might kill them if they criticize or mock them. But cowardice despises itself. It fights against that internal humiliation by attacking the courageous, by imagining the brave as villains to be despised.
Unfortunately, that kind of cowardice seems to have practitioners among those both on the left and the right. And there are some courageous people on either side as well.
Enragedsince1999 says
Meanwhile, the rabidly racist, sadistic, genocidal Kosovar Albanian KLA terrorists had crossed the border and attacked the little, peaceful Macedonia. These are the same KLA who did unspeakable evil unto the Serb Christians with aiding and abetting by the US and NATO.
A Nuremberg trial for the US and NATO criminals and their Kosovar Albanian Einsatzgruppen !
mgarrett says
We should change her profession from ‘journalist’ to ‘populist commentator.’ #judgemental #nocriticalthinking
John C. Barile says
Test post. Hello!
dumbledoresarmy says
Hello back!
Nice to see you again.
John C. Barile says
DDA, you’re a dear.
katarzyna says
“In Cathy Young’s World, Everybody Surrenders”
In Pamela Geller’s World, the Poles are ”the offspring of the Nazi executioners”(PG).
It looks like she resorts to lies, distortions, half-truths, libels because it suits her agenda.
Maybe she is only showing off her anti-Polish sentiment(anti-Polonism).
Does she have no decency whatsoever?
Western Canadian says
And you are from what planet??
mortimer says
The lesson to be learned from Cathy Young’s piece is obvious: when an intelligent person allows a wrong premise to govern his intellect, the result can be quite bizarre. They misdirect their minds into folly and then, worse still, believe it.
Instead of seeing the facts as they are, Cathy Young has no doubt been listening to highly slanted interpretations from Islamist propagandists.
Does Cathy Young not realize that Sharia law forbids a kafir to even discuss Islam, let alone teach Islam? (CATHY, GET A MANUAL OF SHARIA LAW AND READ WHAT IS SAYS ABOUT ‘IMPERMISSIBLE’.)
Cathy Young is out of her depth on Islam and so the Islamists are feeding her, having her on and having a field day. She’s a useful idiot of the Islamist propagandists.
mortimer says
Islamic reform is “virtually inconceivable” because would-be reformers get killed for blaspheming.
Sharia law allows any private Muslim without any special authorization to murder (yes, murder) an apostate or deviant. Vigilantism is Islam’s dirtiest, yet most effective secret.
But, as well, the local religious scholar could write a fatwa-death-sentence that all Muslims would be bound to carry out with the blessing of the community.
This is the way Islam gets rid of freedom of speech.
Cathy Young knows very little about the enforcement of Sharia law.
abad says
Young is a firm believer in Ivory-Tower Islam, which is NOT quite the same thing as real-world Islam – the latter being which Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer are quite well-educated in.
jewdog says
This is a long post, but I read enough of it to get the sense that this woman doesn’t deal in specifics. Instead, she seems to just assume that Islam is fine, and that severely criticizing it is equivalent to denigrating the mass of people who have so much faith in it. Put another way, if so many people follow it, it must be okay and one must be a cad or a racist to denigrate their beliefs. As Ali Sina has pointed out, validity by numbers is a common logical fallacy, where the truth or value of something is established merely by the numbers of people who believe it. Think of all the times that most people rejected heliocentrism and antiseptic medicine, believed in alchemy or in gimcrack racial theories. Historical progress is often a measure of steps taken by brave pioneers willing to think outside the common box. It’s seldom been easy.
dumbledoresarmy says
Good point.
Bezelel says
Lemmings might argue with you but I wont.
Xero_G says
No one can “Fisk” a dishonest hit piece like Robert Spencer. This thorough refutation using logic and facts supported by links absolutely SLAYS Young’s propaganda buy sadly the majority of Daily Beast readers will likely not read Jihad Watch and the Daily Beast will surely not post this or retract one word. The loss is theirs (and their readers).
William Lucas Harvey Jr. says
“Why Won’t Pamela Geller Shut Up?”
Basically BECAUSE Pamela Geller has the “Chutzpah” to Speak out and EXPOSE Islam for what it IS, and the Islamists and the Radical Mainstream apparent “Muslim Pandering” Media doesn’t like that.
THEY want to “Ban” and “Criminalize” it as “Blasphemy, “Islamophobia” and “Hate Speech”.
However THEY have NO problems when ANY other Non Islamic Faith or Belief IS “Blasphemed” and “Demeaned” with ISLAMIC “Slurs” and “Hate Speech”.
THEY prefer ONLY “Pro Islam” Speech that advances the cause Islam, such as Taqiyya and Kitman, Islamic Qur’an condoned, Lying and Deception, which is really by gaining the trust of non-believers in order to draw out their vulnerability and defeat them, with Islam’s “Grand Deception” Lies.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/418067/im-more-hateful-pamela-geller-david-french
More Ham Ed says
Cathy Young’s ad-hominem attacks, slander, lies, putting words in another’s mouth, all further examples of being opposed to free speech and level discourse. Kind of like jihadis.
dumbledoresarmy says
From the introduction – “The teaser to Cathy Young’s vicious and dishonest exercise in character assassination in The Daily Beast says: “Pam Geller and Robert Spencer are being viewed as free speech champions for their ‘Draw Muhammad’ contest, which turned tragic in Dallas last week..”.
Who wrote that ‘teaser’?? Because they’re an idiot. In what way did the Draw Muhammad contest turn ‘tragic’??
None of our side got killed; and two dangerous wannabe mass-murderers are now dead. I don’t see *their* deaths as “tragic”. Their deaths are no more ‘tragic’, from the point of view of any sensible Islamoinformed Infidel, than would be the deaths of a whole bunch of Islamic State rapists, beheaders and slave-traders in a missile strike.
dumbledoresarmy says
Maybe Bosch Fawstin could amuse himself by creating a suitable cartoon of *her* (and of some of the others who are peddling a similar line), captioned “Useful Idiots For Jihad”.
Islam_Is_Islam says
Sort of OT: Who has access to a rubber stamp maker–one who would engrave a picture of Mohammad along with ‘NO SHARIA in the USA’. This could be purchased and used by anyone on envelopes and packages that will travel the globe–a grassroots effort to support free speech.
Paul says
Nice idea I is I,
Unfortunately, here in France the only ‘Je suis Charlie’ posters left are hanging in tatters after the French decided that it was yesterday’s news.
In the days after the attack there were posters and bumper stickers everywhere, even in tiny village shops in tiny villages.
It doesn’t help that the artists are leftards.
Sadly, I am convinced that the only wake up call that will be responded to is another 9/11 style assault.
Even then I fear that the West will still not respond effectively.
Our best hope is that Geert Wilders will lead Holland, and so the rest of Europe, to an effective counter jihad.
Europe needs this more that US and Oz and revolutions have to start somewhere.
My fear is that this one will start as a response to something so dreadfull.
.
sheik yer'mamih says
Cathy Young could be a convert. She would look so much better under a burqa.
Peter says
Great treatise on the poster-dhimmi-beastling incarnate Young…
“Lazy journalis(ism” is too kind. It is deliberate Goebbels-style propaganda, as we learned in the Western media’s non-coverage of the Yugoslav civil wars (See my Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting… ).
If we don’t admit we are blindly trying to describe the elephant from only “both” ends, then we will continue to grope around and never come to the truth that this is all about ultimate pathology. Apologetically Jungian at least; classical Nimrod-ism at best.
Media is what it is, mediumist on all counts. Look at its myriad manifestations. It will never be conventionally “defeated” unless it is first exposed…AND resisted.
Yes, Young is caricature of the corps of Beastlings… It is the way she was taught.
My utmost appreciation for you and Geller.
Yes, it will get worse before it gets better…
Mark says
https://youtu.be/o_qYcJ-GSZc
Pyewacket says
I’m very disapponted in Maajid Nawaz for brandin Pamela Geller a ‘bigot’ – and shocked that he agrees with Cathy Young’s spiteful and misleading smear campaign. He says as much on Facebook and Twitter.
I had started to trust Maajid and support his usually sensible anti-Jihad approach. However, the first crack appeared when I read about the £20-ago lap dancing episode, especially as he still claims to be a ‘feminist’. Nevertheless, I let it pass because I can’t ignore his otherwise good work.
But his support of Cathy Young’s amateurish smear campaign really is the last straw. I’ve lost my trust in Nawaz completely. He tries to be all things to all people, and thus is a highly manipulative individual. Above all, I can’t help feeling he is more interested in attaining fame and fortune. His innate arrogance makes him believe he is wiser and holier than thou. If it’s actually true that he still believes in Allah, then I cannot see that he is offering anything beneficial to humanity. For this reason, I’m surprised that Sam Harris has been swayed by him too. Even he appears to believe that islam will attain enlightenment some time soon. Sigh.
mortimer says
Cathy, please read this Salon article:
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/10/the_left_has_islam_all_wrong_bill_maher_pamela_geller_and_the_reality_progressives_must_face/?source=newsletter
Sunday, May 10, 2015 05:59 AM EDT
“The left has Islam all wrong: Bill Maher, Pamela Geller and the reality progressives must face
Confusion over Islam and how to relate to it imperils free speech, without which no secular republic can survive” by Jeffrey Tayler
QUOTES:
Pamela Geller is right about one thing: last week’s Islamist assault on the “Draw Muhammad” cartoon contest she hosted in Texas proves the jihad against freedom of expression has opened a front in the United States.
“The only path to victory in this war in defense of free speech lies through courage. We cannot wimp out and blame the victims for drawing cartoons, writing novels, or making movies. We need to heed Gérard Biard, Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief, who declared, as he received the PEN award, that “They don’t want us to write and draw. We must write and draw. They don’t want us to think and laugh. We must think and laugh. They don’t want us to debate. We must debate.”
“This is not a battle we have chosen; the battle has chosen us.
It’s time to fight back, and hard.”
KenD says
Mortimer- Thanks for the link. I enjoyed the article very much.
The vilest of creatures says
Does anybody know the story of how Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs did a 180 degree turn from someone who rightfully vilified Islam to becoming an Islam apologist? The transformation was immediate. He turned on a dime. It was very, very suspicious, as if he was suddenly getting payoffs from Saudi funds.
It was as shocking as if Robert suddenly turned into a defender of Islamic ideology.
I haven’t even thought about him in years. I was wondering if any information came out about why he turned into a turncoat overnight.
Sam Hawkins says
I don’t know the answer to your question. But given how all-around nasty a person Charles Johnson is, maybe he had a falling-out with his partners in the Pajamas Media venture… and out of spite, he decided to do maximum damage to their causes?
Just a guess, nothing more.
Lioness says
The Muhammad cartoons contest was an amazing success. In order to keep the momentum, another such event should be organized. I suggest an exhibition depicting pigs and dogs. Nothing could be more innocent to normal people and more infuriating to muzzies, who are infuriated by everything except beheadings. Wonder if the media will show a cartoon of a pig and risk offending Islam.
David says
Claim. Counter claim. He said – she said.
Offer a solution to the problem of terrorism. This is one solution I humbly offer. The East and west need to become friends not enemies if we are to solve terrorism. We need a better understanding of each other.
“If you desire with all your heart, friendship with every race on earth, your thought, spiritual and positive, will spread; it will become the desire of others, growing stronger and stronger, until it reaches the minds of all men. “Abdul-Baha
Angemon says
David posted.
“Offer a solution to the problem of terrorism. This is one solution I humbly offer. The East and west need to become friends not enemies if we are to solve terrorism. We need a better understanding of each other.”
What dreck. It’s hard to “become friends” when one of the sides has branded the other as an enemy until the end of days. If we in the West had the same mindset as muslims, the so-called “islamic world” (meaning, occupied christian lands) would be nothing more than a smoldering glass crater, and islam would be a skidmark footnote in the briefs of History.
It’s been 1400 years already – why don’t you try preaching that in, for example, Saudi Arabia, or the areas controlled by the islamic state? Let us know how that turned out for you.