My latest at Breitbart:
When the Islamic Republic of Iran called for his death for insulting Islam, Salman Rushdie became an international hero of free speech. Later defenders of this fundamental freedom, however, have not fared as well, as I show in my new book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies).
The Islamic jihad against free speech in the West began in modern times on February 14, 1989, when Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a death fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses, which Khomeini believed insulted Islam and Muhammad.
Rushdie was hailed as a hero, a living martyr for the freedom of speech. Writer Christopher Hitchens noted, “We risk a great deal by ceding even an inch of ground to the book-burners and murderers.” Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz denounced Khomeini’s fatwa as “intellectual terrorism”—although several years later, under pressure himself from Islamic hard-liners (who ultimately stabbed and seriously injured him), he denounced Rushdie’s book as “insulting” to Islam, but he still condemned the death sentence. Novelist Norman Mailer declared his willingness to die for the freedom of speech, saying of Rushdie: “It is our duty to form ranks behind him, and our duty to state to the world that if he is ever assassinated, it will become our obligation to stand in his place. If he is ever killed for a folly, we must be killed for the same folly.”
It may have been the high-water mark of pop culture support for the freedom of speech.
On the evening of May 3, 2015, I was standing next to Pamela Geller at the venue of our just-concluded American Freedom Defense Initiative/Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in Garland, Texas, when one of our security team ran in and told us that there had been a shooting outside. It is safe to say that if the jihadis had succeeded in their aims, we would both be dead.
Since that day, Pamela Geller has never been safe; she is now the Islamic State’s number one target in the United States. ISIS quickly issued a communiqué on the Garland attack, including a death fatwa against Geller. The threat was reinforced by subsequent jihadi attempts on Geller’s life.
But the response of Western politicians and pundits was even more disturbing. This time, they were not nearly as disposed to defend the freedom of speech as they had been at the time of the Rushdie fatwa, or even the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
“Of course we have a right to draw what we want, but we also have an obligation not to be irresponsibly provocative,” said Michael Coren, the ex-Catholic author of Why Catholics Are Right.
“It’s needlessly provocative,” said New York Representative Peter King, whose hearings on Muslim radicalization in 2011 had themselves been widely termed “provocative.” King said he thought our event was “insulting someone’s religion.”
Coren and King were expressing the dominant view. Other more prominent voices soon piled on, including even voices on the right such as Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, and Greta Van Susteren (although Sean Hannity, Mark Steyn, National Review’s David French, Rich Lowry, and others robustly defended the freedom of speech, as did Megyn Kelly, with a bit less robustness).
After being on the receiving end of a chorus of condemnation from the media, Geller was harshly questioned by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota. Geller told Camerota, “The fact that we have to spend upwards of $50,000 in security speaks to how dangerous and how in trouble freedom of speech is in this country. And then we have to get on these news shows, and somehow we are, those that are targeted, those that were going to be slaughtered, are the ones who get attacked speaks to how morally inverted this conversation is.”
The dominant line was essentially that if Pamela Geller and I had just left well enough alone, all would have been well.
The erroneous assumption behind the widespread condemnation of Muhammad cartoons is that to make America compatible with Islam, all we have to do is give just a little. What non-Muslims have to give up is the right to draw and publish cartoons of Muhammad. And surely that’s not so great a sacrifice. Why insist on being gratuitously “provocative”?
The problem with this rosy little scenario is that the jihadis are already “provoked.”
It was the murderous jihadis who made drawing Muhammad the flash point of the defense of free speech, not Pamela Geller. It is they who, by their determination to murder non-Muslims who violate their religious law on this point, have made it imperative that free people signal that they will not submit to them. If we give in to the demand that we conform to this Sharia principle, there will be further demands that we adhere to additional Sharia principles.
It is ultimately a question of whether we will submit to Sharia, or stand up for freedom.
At Garland we were standing. In the aftermath, it is clear that a huge segment of the Western political and media elites are ready, if not eager, to kneel, not daring to “provoke” their new masters.
If anything had happened to Pamela Geller, we can be sure that the talking heads would have looked soulfully into the cameras and said, Well, she had it coming. It’s a sign of how much our respect for the freedom of speech, and understanding of its importance, has degenerated since the days of Rushdie.
jack grandville says
In my view, that sums it up — period. Stay free and maintain freedom of speech, as it is protected under the law where violations thereof carry penalties, otherwise, our social structure collapses.
OVERTURNED BY HI says
good news; the UK street preachers that were convicted of hate speech /inciting hatred for proclaiming
the gospel of Christ over muhammed and were initially convicted and sentenced to pay 10000 dollars -this year, have both had their convictions overturned by a higher court judge who affirmed they were just practicing freedom of religion
Shane says
To keep our first amendments freedom of speech, we need to exercise our 2nd amendment right to bear arms. When Europeans gave up their right to own guns, the government took away their freedom of speech. It is now happening in Canada with their left wing dhimmi government headed by Pretty Boy Trudeau the tool of the Marxist.
tom parry says
Yes even if the muslim is on a no fly list the nra has his back.
Shane says
There were a huge number of people on that list that have committed no crime, and who did nothing wrong. Unlike liberals, conservatives support all of American’s rights under our Constitution.
epistemology says
Never give up any of your freedoms, they’re civil and human rights.
I remember the time before 1989 very well; we never had any issues about freedom of speech in the West. During the cold war Western aligned people and communist aligned people labeled each other liars, reviled each other and called each other names, but that was it. No rallies because of Communistophobia or the like. The world was free of that kind of nonsense.
The book burning rally in January 1989 in Bradford, a Yorkshire city that is highly infiltrated by Muslims, was the beginning of the the assault of freedom of speech in Europe and we didn’t stop the Muslims appropriately, the Bradford police only deescalated they were npo0t hard enough against those who want to implement barbaric sharia in our civilized societies.
Today we have to face the consequences the fatwa against Salman Rushdie is still valid, the reward is for his killing is even raised more or lees every year, he didn’t win the well deserved Nobel prize, the Danish cartoonists have been threatened, the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists have been killed and Robert’s and Pamela’s lives are threatened a dreadful outcome.
Enough is enough, we should have taken measures a long time ago, it’s irresponsible to leave a sharia compliant word to our children and their children. All this should have been nipped in the bud.
I strongly recommend Robert’s latest book “The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Freedom of Speech” very good reading and as brilliant as all his books.
yiyoya says
Maybe just maybe it’s more than cowardice, maybe it’s stealth complicity. It would benefit the totalitarian, big government left to have the precedent set that sometimes free speech must be curtailed, not by them, but by the enemy of their enemy, not in the name of brute political power, but in the name of the decency of respecting someone’s religion.
Cowardice, maybe, in some cases, but maybe strategic stealth complicity in others.
Robert17 says
Freedom to be dismissive of a primitive tribal ideology that advocates killing people. There, I said it.
Robert17
Robin Datta says
If a belief system is so fragile that it can be damaged by a caricature, then surely it should be abandoned by all rational people.
faraway says
Anyone who says:’I believe in freedom of expression but…’,does not believe in it.We should be free to criticise anyone or anything.Why give a pass to religion for which there’s no proof or even evidence?
Vann Boseman says
Faraway,
I strongly believe in your first sentence. Once I had a drunk neighbor come to the curb in front of my house and attack garbage I had placed at the curb to be taken away by the city. He then came to the garage I was standing in and cussed me out. My gf at the time wanted to call the police and report him for trespassing. I suppose I had the right to do that if I had asked him to leave. But I insisted on letting him have his say. He said true things, false things, and things that a drunk person would say. Nothing he said was going to impact my actions concerning my way of disposing of my garbage. But it was important to me that he have his say.
Here, on Robert Spencer’s site, I believe I have the privilege to have my say. It doesn’t mean much if all I have to express is agreement. It actually does mean something when I say things that there is not necessarily agreement on. I have discovered that it doesn’t necessarily follow that just because Google and Twitter do not allow this privilege, and many Muslims would disallow the right to speech of those in the anti-Jihad movement anywhere, that anti-Jihad sites will always allow this privilege.
The right to “”Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
John S. Obeda says
I have the right to hurt people’s feelings. I have the right to tell a Muslim that Muhammad is false and his ways lead to hell and he has the right to tell me what he thinks of Jesus and the Trinity, etc. Now, as a Christian I will want to put a lot of salt on my words so as to hurt his feelings as little as possible, but whether I do or don’t do matters not per se. Free speech is free speech. And just as soon as I attach a “but” to it, it no longer is free speech.
We are quickly losing free speech. The arrest of Kevin J. Johnston in Canada a day ago is proof how quickly in Canada we are succumbing to Sharia law. Very sad. No thanks to our political leaders and many clueless people. It takes eternal vigilance to preserve the precious gift of free speech and democracy and liberty. Islam is utterly incompatible to free speech and democracy and liberty. God help us! Let us pray and work to hold on to free speech..
Flavius Claudius Iulianus says
Robert,
I hope your new book sells out, over and over and over again!
Lydia says
The quran is indeed satanic verses!
A fatwa must mean you did something right!!!
Honi soit qui mal y pense. says
I think the problem is that freedom of speech is dead anyway, because it’s either mohamedanism which is curtailed in spreading its incitements to violence and revolution, or it’s the right which is curtailed in trying to curtail (albeit ever so correctly) mohamedanism. And I think that it is not really a problem to curtail mohamedanism’s free speech. Nobody ever hesitated shutting the Nazis up after WWII, so what’s the probglem in the case of mohamedanism? That it’s a religion? Freedom of religion was invented in the West, for Western religions, not for non-Western religions which preach the destruction of ‘nonbelievers’. Karl Popper: you can’t be tolerant of the intolerant. And presently the intolerant include the left.
Amy Smithe says
Pam Geller is a courageous and very strong patriot! The Muslims that don;t like what was done are frankly
just brain dead because Muhammad is a horrific historical figure and it is a fact right in the history books. If they cannot accept the truth, that is too bad and they have no right to say they are going to harm anyone…that is not what life is about! Nor is it peaceful- as they say they are….What is peace to them is killing anyone that does not agree with them and NO ONE HAS TO. WHY DO THEY NOT ‘GET IT’? We do not have to be tolerant to anyone that says we HAVE to do or be what we do not want to! Nor is that anything to do with freedom- that is who we are and started the freedom of the world with the founding of America!!! God began freedom first in the Garden with Adam and Eve before any of us! The are the intolerant and do nto understand that we can be what e\we want to because they are so subjugated and brainwashed to Islam which is of satan, not faith in God–the REAL one. Allah is nothing at all but a figment of their evil imaginations! God Bless the Truth, the Word of Father God and Jesus Christ, Our Savior!!!!