TOWNHALL.COM: What's wrong with the following Associated Press headline? "Charlie Hebdo cartoon spurs French gov't to order embassies, schools to close."
Cartoons of Muhammad in the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo didn't send France into lockdown. Their publication this week was a simple exercise in free speech on Islam, which Muslims in France and everywhere else in the world oppose as a violation of Islamic law (Shariah). It is Islamic rage over the fact that Islamic law is not dominant everywhere, all the time -- Muslims' signal weapon against a timid West -- that drove French authorities to take security precautions, not the publication of cartoons.
What's wrong with the following headline? "Cinemaniac: Feds question loon who set Muslim world on fire." Again, this headline in the New York Post leaves the actual pyromaniacs out of the picture, instead demonizing an individual who made a film about Muhammad -- his lawful right. Muslims set "the world" (American embassies) on fire in one more fit of jihad to punish a violation of Islamic law. Like other cycles of Islamic rage before it -- whether the pretext is a Miss World pageant in Nigeria or cartoons in a Danish newspaper -- this one, too, will temporarily abate, ready to flare up next time the point must be driven home: Criticism of Islam and its prophet is verboten.
This is no media flap. This is war. Islam is attempting to dominate the West by attacking the basis of the West -- freedom of speech. Our leaders won't tell us that because too many of them have already surrendered. They deplore the violence against our people and our sovereign territory, yes, but their priority is not to defend free speech but to see that Islamic speech codes are enforced. They have already decided to discard liberty for Shariah. The U.S. government and the Islamic bloc known as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) couldn't be more in sync on this vital issue.
How to get around the First Amendment? Through "some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last year. She was speaking about the so-called Istanbul Process, the international effort she and the OIC are spearheading to see Islamic anti-"blasphemy" laws enforced around the world. » | Diana West | Friday, September 21, 2012
