Islam and Free Speech (Encounter Broadside) by Andrew McCarthy

Author:Andrew McCarthy [McCarthy, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781594037498
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2015-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

The key to the conquest strategy is to coerce the West into accepting a Muslim right to resist assimilation, to regard sharia as superseding Western law and custom when the two conflict. For precisely this reason, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation – a bloc of 56 Muslim countries (plus the Palestinian Authority) – has decreed that “Muslims should not be marginalized or attempted to be assimilated, but should be accommodated.” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Islamist president of Turkey who has systematically dismantled that country’s secular, pro-Western system, similarly pronounces that pressuring Muslims to assimilate in the West “is a crime against humanity.”

Free expression is the gateway to assimilation. Consequently, radical Islam cannot tolerate it.

As a result, France is now rife with zones urbaines sensibles – “sensitive urban areas.” The government officially lists some 751 of them: Islamic enclaves in the banlieues, often referred to as no-go zones because the indigenous populations discourage the presence of non-Muslims who do not conform to Islamic standards of dress and social interaction, and of public officials – police, firefighters, emergency medical teams, and building inspectors – who are seen as symbols of the state’s effort to exercise sovereignty in areas that Muslims seek to possess adversely.

Some of those zones inevitably evolve into hotbeds of jihadist activity. As the Gatestone Institute’s Soeren Kern notes, citing a report by the Middle East Media Research Institute, there has been no shortage of Internet traffic suggesting, for example, “the killing of France’s ambassadors, just as the ‘manly’ Libyan fighters killed the U.S. ambassador in Benghazi.” In a low-intensity jihadist thrum stretching back several years, the torching of automobiles has become commonplace: as many as 40,000 cars are burned annually. Perhaps most alarmingly, over a thousand French Muslims, more than from any other Western country, are estimated to have traveled to Syria to fight for ISIS – meaning many will return to the country as trained, battle-hardened jihadists. Beyond the direct ISIS participants, moreover, the Washington Post has reported that a recent poll found 16 percent of French citizens expressing some degree of support for ISIS – an organization whose rule over the vast territory it has seized is best known for decapitations, rapine, burning prisoners alive, the execution of homosexuals, mass graves, and the enslavement of non-Muslim communities.

Once one grasps the voluntary-apartheid strategy, it becomes obvious why radical Islam’s inroads in France, and elsewhere in Europe, seamlessly translate into demands for the enforcement of sharia’s curbs on speech and artistic expression. What is not so obvious is just what a profound challenge to the West this constitutes.

The shocking Charlie Hebdo atrocity called global attention to the offensive caricatures, as well as renewed attention to the Danish cartoons, the Innocence of Muslims trailer, and other instances in which Islam’s detractors have resorted to insult – what Obama breezily distorts as “slander” – to make their points. The focus on blatant provocation grievously minimizes the stakes of the Islamist threat.

Even free-speech enthusiasts are repulsed by obnoxious expression. One who passionately

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.