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https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-...bdo-publishes-muhammad-cartoons-again-n878689
They’ve done it again: as the trial of some of those who plotted the Charlie Hebdo jihad massacre begins in France, Charlie Hebdo has republished some of the Muhammad cartoons over which so many people are so enraged. And as always, numerous people are saying that mocking Muhammad is “disrespectful” to Muslims, it’s needlessly “poking the bear,” and the like.
How far we have fallen. Back in 1989, when the Islamic Republic of Iran called for his death for insulting Islam, Salman Rushdie became an international hero of free speech. Later defenders of this fundamental freedom, however, have not fared as well, as The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies) shows.
In Rushdie’s day, Christopher Hitchens noted, “We risk a great deal by ceding even an inch of ground to the book-burners and murderers.” Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz denounced the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death as “intellectual terrorism”—although several years later, under pressure himself from Islamic hardliners (who ultimately stabbed and seriously injured him), he denounced Rushdie’s book as “insulting” to Islam, but he still condemned the death sentence.
Novelist Norman Mailer declared his willingness to die for the freedom of speech, saying of Rushdie: “It is our duty to form ranks behind him, and our duty to state to the world that if he is ever assassinated, it will become our obligation to stand in his place. If he is ever killed for a folly, we must be killed for the same folly.”
That may have been the high-water mark of pop culture support for the freedom of speech.
Over 25 years later, on the evening of May 3, 2015, I was standing next to Pamela Geller at the venue of our just-concluded American Freedom Defense Initiative/Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in Garland, Texas when one of our security team ran in and told us that there had been a shooting outside. It is safe to say that if the jihadis had succeeded in their aims, we would both be dead.
ISIS quickly issued a communiqué on the Garland attack, including a death fatwa against Geller. The threat was reinforced by subsequent jihadi attempts on Geller’s life.
But the response of Western politicians and pundits was even more disturbing. This time, they were not nearly as disposed to defend the freedom of speech as they had been at the time of the Rushdie fatwa, or even after the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
“Of course we have a right to draw what we want, but we also have an obligation not to be irresponsibly provocative,” said Michael Coren the ex-Catholic author of Why Catholics Are Right.
“It’s needlessly provocative,” said New York Representative Peter King, whose hearings on Muslim radicalization in 2011 had themselves been widely termed “provocative” back in 2011. King said he thought our event was “insulting someone’s religion.”
They’ve done it again: as the trial of some of those who plotted the Charlie Hebdo jihad massacre begins in France, Charlie Hebdo has republished some of the Muhammad cartoons over which so many people are so enraged. And as always, numerous people are saying that mocking Muhammad is “disrespectful” to Muslims, it’s needlessly “poking the bear,” and the like.
How far we have fallen. Back in 1989, when the Islamic Republic of Iran called for his death for insulting Islam, Salman Rushdie became an international hero of free speech. Later defenders of this fundamental freedom, however, have not fared as well, as The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies) shows.
In Rushdie’s day, Christopher Hitchens noted, “We risk a great deal by ceding even an inch of ground to the book-burners and murderers.” Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz denounced the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death as “intellectual terrorism”—although several years later, under pressure himself from Islamic hardliners (who ultimately stabbed and seriously injured him), he denounced Rushdie’s book as “insulting” to Islam, but he still condemned the death sentence.
Novelist Norman Mailer declared his willingness to die for the freedom of speech, saying of Rushdie: “It is our duty to form ranks behind him, and our duty to state to the world that if he is ever assassinated, it will become our obligation to stand in his place. If he is ever killed for a folly, we must be killed for the same folly.”
That may have been the high-water mark of pop culture support for the freedom of speech.
Over 25 years later, on the evening of May 3, 2015, I was standing next to Pamela Geller at the venue of our just-concluded American Freedom Defense Initiative/Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in Garland, Texas when one of our security team ran in and told us that there had been a shooting outside. It is safe to say that if the jihadis had succeeded in their aims, we would both be dead.
ISIS quickly issued a communiqué on the Garland attack, including a death fatwa against Geller. The threat was reinforced by subsequent jihadi attempts on Geller’s life.
But the response of Western politicians and pundits was even more disturbing. This time, they were not nearly as disposed to defend the freedom of speech as they had been at the time of the Rushdie fatwa, or even after the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
“Of course we have a right to draw what we want, but we also have an obligation not to be irresponsibly provocative,” said Michael Coren the ex-Catholic author of Why Catholics Are Right.
“It’s needlessly provocative,” said New York Representative Peter King, whose hearings on Muslim radicalization in 2011 had themselves been widely termed “provocative” back in 2011. King said he thought our event was “insulting someone’s religion.”
