Dutch Cowardice
NEW YORK POST: How do you say "free speech" in Dutch? Apparently, you don't.

Dutch MP Geert Wilders appeared yesterday in an Amsterdam court to face criminal charges for, essentially, criticizing Islam.

The hate-speech charges stem largely from Wilders' film warning of the Islamization of Europe, which connected verses from the Koran with scenes of Islamist terror.

If convicted, he faces up to two years in jail.

Actually, he might consider such a sentence a lucky break: In 2004, Islamist assassin Mohammed Bouyeri gunned down Theo Van Gogh, one of the last Dutchmen to make a movie critical of radical Islam.

After the shooting, Bouyeri used a knife to affix a five-page note threatening Jews -- and the West in general -- to Van Gogh's dead body.

Add to that, say, the attempts on the life of Danish "Muhammad cartoonist" Kurt Westergaard and the creeping reach of Sharia law in Britain, and you have ample grounds for a hard look at the impact on Europe's political and cultural fabric of a growing and assertive Muslim population. >>> | Thursday, January 21, 2010

We Need to Stop Being Such Cowards about Islam
THE INDEPENDENT: This is a column condemning cowardice – including my own. It begins with the story of a novel you cannot read. The Jewel of Medina was written by a journalist called Sherry Jones. It recounts the life of Aisha, a girl who was married off at the age of six to a 50-year-old man called Mohamed ibn Abdallah. On her wedding day, Aisha was playing on a see-saw outside her home. Inside, she was being betrothed. The first she knew of it was when she was banned from playing out in the street with the other children. When she was nine, she was taken to live with her husband, now 53. He had sex with her. When she was 14, she was accused of adultery with a man closer to her own age. Not long after, Mohamed decreed that his wives must cover their faces and bodies, even though no other women in Arabia did.

You cannot read this story today – except in the Koran and the Hadith. The man Mohamed ibn Abdallah became known to Muslims as "the Prophet Mohamed", so our ability to explore this story is stunted. The Jewel of Medina was bought by Random House and primed to be a best-seller – before a University of Texas teacher saw proofs and declared it "a national security issue". Random House had visions of a re-run of the Rushdie or the Danish cartoons affairs. Sherry Jones's publisher has pulped the book. It's gone.

In Europe, we are finally abolishing the lingering blasphemy laws that hinder criticism of Christianity. But they are being succeeded by a new blasphemy law preventing criticism of Islam – enforced not by the state, but by jihadis. I seriously considered not writing this column, but the right to criticise religion is as precious – and hard-won – as the right to criticise government. We have to use it or lose it. We Need to Stop Being Such Cowards about Islam >>> By Johann Hari | August 14, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
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