The Cartoon Wars

GATESTONE INSTITUTE: It is most important to keep on challenging these would-be censors, so that people with Kalashnikov rifles do not make our customs and laws. / One of the false presumptions of our time is that people on the political left are motivated by good intentions even when they do bad things, while people on the political right are motivated by bad intentions even when they do good things. / When people prefer to focus on the motives of the victims rather than on the motives of the attackers, they will ignore the single most important matter: that an art exhibition, or free speech, has been targeted. / It does not matter if you are right-wing or left-wing, or American, Danish, Dutch, Belgian or French. These particularities may matter greatly and be endlessly interesting to people in the countries in question. But they matter not a jot to ISIS or their fellow-travellers. What these people are trying to do is to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws across the entire world. That is all that matters.

ISIS appears to have inspired its first terrorist attack in the United States: in Garland, Texas. This item may have slipped the attention of many people because as is so often the case today, much of the reporting and commentary has got caught up on other, supplementary issues.

The supplementary issues are first, that the attack targeted a competition set up to show images of what people thought Muhammad may have looked like. Then, there is the identity of the people who organized the exhibition and spoke at it.

Before coming to this, let us just return to that main issue. Since January, the idea that ISIS-like groups can inspire people to carry out murderous attacks in Paris and Copenhagen has come to be accepted. But that this can happen in Texas, of all places, could yet have an even worse "chilling effect" on free speech than the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen. No European country has the constitutional commitment to free speech of the United States. And Texas is not stuck in the moral relativism and fearful multiculturalism of most European countries.

There will be a feeling, post-Garland, that if ISIS can strike in Texas, it can strike anyplace. The entire developed world is therefore a potential site for an attack from ISIS. Although no one will put his hands up and surrender, neither will anyone be likely to draw attention to himself by saying or doing anything that might displease such homicidal censors. » | Douglas Murray | Thursday, May 07, 2015