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September 26, 2006

Mayor of Berlin Calls for Islamists to Be Told, Hands Off Our Freedom of Speech

The occasion of the cancellation of an opera in Berlin due to threats from Islamists, has given the mayor of Berlin the opportunity to make a statement of great significance:

But Berlin's mayor, Klaus Wowereit, said the director had made the wrong decision to scrap the production.

"Our ideas about openness, tolerance and freedom must be lived out on the offensive," he told the Associated Press.

"Voluntary self-limitation gives those who fight against our values a confirmation in advance that we will not stand behind them."

Germany's interior minister called the cancellation "unacceptable"

Directly related to the subject of efforts by Islamists to impose subservient behavior on the West, is today's post by Daniel Pipes:

• 1989 - Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses prompted Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a death edict against him and his publishers, on the grounds that the book "is against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran." Subsequent rioting led to over 20 deaths, mostly in India.

• 1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court refused to remove a 1930s frieze showing Muhammad as lawgiver that decorates the main court chamber; the Council on American-Islamic Relations made an issue of this, leading to riots and injuries in India.

• 2002 - The American evangelical leader Jerry Falwell calls Muhammad a "terrorist," leading to church burnings and at least 10 deaths in India.

• 2005 - An incorrect story in Newsweek, reporting that American interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, "in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet," is picked up by the famous Pakistani cricketer, Imran Khan, and prompts protests around the Muslim world, leading to at least 15 deaths..

• February 2006 - The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten publishes twelve cartoons of Muhammad, spurring a Palestinian Arab imam in Copenhagen, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, to excite Muslim opinion against the Danish government. He succeeds so well, hundreds die, mostly in Nigeria.

• September 2006 - Pope Benedict XVI quotes a Byzantine emperor's views that what is new in Islam is "evil and inhuman," prompting the firebombing of churches and the murder of several Christians.

These six rounds show a near-doubling in frequency: 8 years between the first and second rounds, then 5, then 3, 1, and ½.

...These incidents also spotlight a total lack of reciprocity by Muslims. The Saudi government bans Bibles, crosses, and Stars of David, while Muslims routinely publish disgusting cartoons of Jews.

No conspiracy lies behind these six rounds of inflammation and aggression, but examined in retrospect, they coalesce and form a single, prolonged campaign of intimidation, with surely more to come. The basic message - "You Westerners no longer have the privilege to say what you will about Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur'an, Islamic law rules you too" - will return again and again until Westerners either do submit or Muslims realize their effort has failed.

This statement from the mayor of Berlin is a shot across the bow of the Islamists. To protect our freedom of speech, we're all going to have to make sure to use it, in the face of Islamist stupidity, threats, and riots. And if Islamists want to riot in Western nations, we're going to have to learn to arrest and expel them for it.