The Worldwide Jihad: The Truth About Islamic Terrorism (11 page)

Muslims in France Sue to Stop Free Speech

France 24
 reported last week that “two Muslim groups are suing the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after it published inflammatory cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. In a lawsuit that will revive the debate between freedom of speech and dangerous provocation, the weekly magazine’s director along with two cartoonists are accused of inciting racial hatred and defamation.”

This comes after the magazine’s September 19, 2012 edition contained numerous cartoons lampooning Muhammad—and this wasn’t the first time Charlie Hebdo had done this. In Fall 2011, the magazine announced plans to feature Muhammad as “editor-in-chief” of an upcoming issue. The initial response was threats. Hackers broke into the magazine’s website and left this message: “You keep abusing Islam’s almighty Prophet with disgusting and disgraceful cartoons using excuses of freedom of speech. Be Allah’s curse upon you!”

Then, when the issue appeared in November 2011, the publication’s offices were firebombed and destroyed. Yet Charlie Hebdo’s editor, Stephane “Charb” Charbonnier, was not cowed. “We no longer have a newspaper,” he said. “All our equipment has been destroyed or has melted. We cannot, today, put together a paper. But we will do everything possible to do one next week. Whatever happens, we’ll do it. There is no question of giving in.”

Charbonnier also warned of the danger of placing Islam and Muslims above criticism and even mockery: “If we can poke fun at everything in France, if we can talk about anything in France apart from Islam or the consequences of Islamism, that is annoying.”

He reiterated these positions when he published the next batch of Muhammad cartoons in September 2012: “We have the impression that it’s officially allowed for Charlie Hebdo to attack the Catholic far-right but we cannot poke fun at fundamental Islamists. It shows the climate. Everyone is driven by fear, and that is exactly what this small handful of extremists who do not represent anyone want: to make everyone afraid, to shut us all in a cave.”

Charnonnier added: “Muhammad isn’t sacred to me. I don’t blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law; I don’t live under Koranic law.”

Charbonnier disclaimed all responsibility for any violence that might follow his publication of the cartoons: “I’m not the one going into the streets with stones and Kalashnikovs. We’ve had 1,000 issues and only three problems, all after front pages about radical Islam.”

Nonetheless, this lawsuit has come, and that it is taken seriously anywhere and not immediately dismissed as the very definition of a frivolous lawsuit shows how much the public discourse has degenerated. It should be clear that Charlie Hebdobears no responsibility for inciting any hatred; the only ones who do bear such responsibility are those who riot and kill over perceived insults to Islam.

They, and they alone, are responsible for their actions. This should be obvious, but it isn’t in a world gone mad. Let’s say you call me a racist, bigoted Islamophobe. I am deeply insulted. At that moment I have a huge range of options before me. I can calmly explain to you that Islamic supremacism is not a race, fighting for free speech and equality of rights for all is not bigotry, and “Islamophobia” is a manipulative concept used by the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies to stifle resistance to Islamic supremacism and jihad. Or I can start yelling and calling you names. Or I can start muttering into my vodka tonic about the injustice of it all. Or I can murder you, drag your body through the streets, set fire to your embassy, and demand laws against insulting me. Or I can do any number of other things.

Which one will I choose? It’s up to me, not to you. You might have a strong hunch as to how I will react, and say to your companion, “That Spencer, he is going to come out with another windy, closely reasoned refutation of my charges that everyone will ignore,” or “That Spencer, he is going to burn down my embassy,” but you still can’t be absolutely sure what I am going to do, because I am not an automaton, I am a human being endowed with the faculty of reason, and I may always choose to react in a way that will surprise you.

Or I may not. But in any case, it is up to me. If I kill you, there is absolutely no justifiable basis on which anyone could say, “Well, he had it coming. Look how he provoked him.” My choice was my own, and only I bear responsibility for it.

But today that basic and elemental truth is lost. If Muslims rage, riot and murder for any reason, they bear no responsibility. The only ones who bear any responsibility for their raging, rioting and murdering are the non-Muslims who somehow provoked them.

So anyone who may have reacted hatefully to Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons bears responsibility for his actions. Charlie Hebdo doesn’t.

That I have to take the time to explain this at all, and that it will be universally ignored, is an indication of how far we have fallen. The road is being swiftly paved for the destruction of the freedom of speech. When, in another year or so, I am safely imprisoned for daring to speak the truth and a new era of peace has dawned between the West and the Islamic world, and yet the jihad keeps coming, and the full implications of the new “hate speech” laws start to become clear in the quashing of all political dissent, don’t say you weren’t warned.

Of course, maybe none of that will happen, and the freedom of speech will suddenly sport a thousand articulate defenders who have not yet been completely demonized and marginalized out of the public square. But I don’t see them on the horizon right now.

U.S. Imams Call for Restricting Free Speech

As the Muhammad movie riots continued into a second week, two imams based in the United States joined the calls from the
grand imam of Al-Azhar
, the
grand mufti of Saudi Arabia
, and the
Muslim Brotherhood
 for the U.S. to criminalize criticism of Islam.

Sheikh Husham al-Husainy of the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center in Dearborn, Michigan,
said
 about the worldwide Muslim riots that “the only solution is to replace the hate with love.” And “love,” in his mind, meant that “they should put a law not to insult a spiritual leader.”

Meanwhile, Imam Mohammad Qatanani of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, New Jersey,
said
 that “we, as Americans, have to put limits and borders [on] freedom of speech,” for while Americans do indeed have the freedom of speech, they have “no right” to talk about topics holy to Muslims, for to do so will lead to “hatred or war among people.”

Al-Husainy and Qatanani are not marginal, fringe characters. Al-Husainy last year was the featured cleric on All-American Muslim, a reality showed that aired on The Learning Channel and was dedicated to countering the chimerical threat of “Islamophobia” by showing Muslims as ordinary folks leading ordinary lives. Yet, according to Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack, he is also “a signatory to the
Jerusalem Document
 of 2009, which reads more like Mein Kampf. It refers to the war on Zionism as a war between “good and evil.” Zionism is considered an “aggression” that is infecting “the entire human race.” Muslims are told to “get ready for the holy Jihad.” The document also expresses support for a jihad terrorist group: “We remind our sons to get ready to carry out their duty in Holy Jihad and continue the path which our young valiant men in Hezbollah began in Southern Lebanon.”

Al-Husainy also gave an invocation at the Democratic National Committee’s Annual Winter Meeting in 2007. Al-Husainy prayed:

Through you, God, we unite. So guide us to the right path. The path of the people you bless, not the path of the people you doom. … And help us to stop the war and violence, and oppression and occupation.

He was echoing the Fatiha, the first sura of the Qur’an and most common prayer of Islam. It asks Allah: “Show us the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast favoured; not the (path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.” The traditional and mainstream Islamic understanding of this is that the “straight path” is Islam, while the path of those who have earned Allah’s anger are the Jews, and those who have gone astray are the Christians. Thus al-Husainy was condemning Judaism and Christianity right under the bowed heads of the assembled Democrats. And his reference to “occupation” was clearly, coming from this supporter of Hezbollah, a dig at Israel.

As for Qatanani, investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield
reports
 that,

despite the fact that
Mohammed Qatanani
 was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that is behind both al-Qaeda and Hamas, despite his own guilty plea
to being a member of Hamas
, and despite the fact that even in the United States,
he had defended a charity
, that provided funds to children of suicide bombers (this is done as an incentive to reassure terrorists that if they die their families will be taken care of), Qatanani was not deported.

Yet New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently had Qatanani at the governor’s mansion for his Ramadan Iftar dinner. Christie was glad to see him, calling him his “friend” and telling him before the audience: “I’m glad to have you here.” Of Qatanani,
he said
: “In all my interactions with the imam, he has attempted to be a force for good in his community, in our state with law enforcement, with those of us who have gotten to know him for the years.” Will Christie now explain to his friend about the importance of the freedom of speech?

The striking thing about the statements from al-Husainy and Qatanani is not that they called for restriction of the freedom of speech. After all, they are mainstream Muslims, and Islamic law, both Sunni (Qatanani) and Shi’ite (al-Husainy), denies the freedom of speech and forbids criticism of Allah or Muhammad on pain of death. What is striking is that despite their obvious attachment to Sharia in its traditional and mainstream form, as well as their support for the jihad terror groups Hamas (Qatanani) and Hezbollah (al-Husainy), both clerics continue to enjoy a reputation as “moderates.” Qatanani has the fervent allegiance of a state governor and prominent player in national politics, and al-Husainy is featured at gatherings of a major party and on national television.

It is certain that if al-Husainy and Qatanani were evangelical Christian pastors who had expressed support for the Ku Klux Klan and called for repeal of the First Amendment, Chris Christie, the Democratic National Committee, and The Learning Channel would be nowhere near them, except to issue condemnations wherever necessary. But when it comes to Muslims, the rules are different: so avid are politicians and the mainstream media to find “moderates” and feature them, thereby proving that they are not “Islamophobic,” that they uncritically embrace any Muslim leader who smiles and talks of peace.

What’s even worse is that when these “moderates” are exposed as not quite so moderate as all that, no one cares. No supporter of al-Husainy or Qatanani is going to rebuke either one for their opposition to the First Amendment—not even Chris Christie. More’s the pity.

Did “Islamophobia” Beat Romney?

Since the election the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamic supremacists, along with their Leftist allies, have been crowing that the voters rejected “Islamophobia.” They claim that the defeats of Allen West, Joe Walsh, and Adam Hasner, and even of Mitt Romney himself indicate that the American electorate has decisively rejected candidates who sound the alarm about the threat of jihad and Islamic supremacism, and that there is no such threat, and now we are all moving happily into a glorious multicultural future. But actually, the resounding defeat of Mitt Romney and the Republican Party say nothing at all about the public’s view of candidates who speak the truth about Islam and jihad, because this was not and never has been part of the Republican Party’s approach.

The unreality began right after 9/11, when President George W. Bush went to a mosque and proclaimed that Islam was a religion of peace. The Left was already beginning to articulate the line that any resistance to jihad and Islamic supremacism constituted “hatred,” “bigotry” and “Islamophobia,” and instead of pushing back and pointing out that the 9/11 hijackers and other jihadists used the texts and teachings of Islam to justify their actions and make recruits among peaceful Muslims, and challenging Muslim groups in the U.S. and elsewhere to deal honestly on that point, Bush capitulated. When he stood in a Washington mosque on September 17, 2001 in the company of Nihad Awad of Hamas-linked CAIR and other Islamic supremacists, he was signaling that his administration would not scrutinize Islamic supremacist groups in the U.S. in light of 9/11, no matter how unsavory their ties, or call on them to do anything genuine or effective to reform Islam. He would pursue the “war on terror”—our first-ever war against a tactic—without dealing with the motives and goals of the enemy.