On Inauguration Day, after it got the United Nations to pass a gag rule on insulting religions, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) told our new president in a New York Times ad that Muslims "have compelling strategic and moral reasons to cooperate and peacefully coexist with the United States in particular, and with the West in general."What Hentoff doesn't mention is the threat to free speech in the US posed by Muslim immigration. See The Larger Lessons Of The Danish Cartoon Crisis by Steve Sailer. See also this item by Daniel Pipes on recent Muslim immigration to Britain, and remember that this huge upsurge in Muslim numbers in Britain happenedMany Muslims here and elsewhere want that partnership; but some, jihadists in the name of Islam, disagree violently. In its address to our new president, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (which has permanent status at the United Nations) made no mention of its own strategic skills that resulted, on Dec. 18, in the passage by the U.N. General Assembly of a nonbinding resolution (with strong advice to its members) that condemns "defamation of religion," especially Islam. ... Already, for example, as Reuters reported last June, Jordan prosecutor Hassan Abdullat subpoenaed "11 Danes for drawing and reprinting" cartoons that offend Islam. The Danes were charged - in Jordan - with "threatening the national peace." Under Jordanian law, Reuters reported, "reproducing images of the Prophet Muhammad inside - or even outside - the country is illegal under the Jordanian Justice Act."
One of the Danes summoned to Jordan was Kurt Westergaard, who, for years, has been subject to death threats for his cartoon, among others, of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb.
When the riots and deaths following those Danish cartoons were reported in American newspapers, none of the offending cartoons was published accompanying the stories in major dailies, except the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Sun. But I ran the story at the Village Voice, where I then had a column, with the cartoon of Prophet Muhammad wearing the bomb-shaped turban.
I was damned if I'd be intimidated for doing my job as a reporter. For a couple of weeks, I was more vigilant than usual walking the streets, but I'm still here. What most stays in my mind is that long before the Dec. 18, 2008, resolution on defamation of religions, so much of the American free press refused to run even one of the cartoons at the core of the story, and hardly anything about the U.N.'s Dec. 18 resolution.
Did they not want to offend certain readers? Were they afraid? If the U.N. resolution became international law, the First Amendment would still protect opponents here, but think of the bloody impact on "defamers" around the world. [A free speech killer, by Nat Hentoff, February 2, 2009]
