Many people have asked if I am supporting “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” tomorrow, May 20th. I am and two of the most moving arguments of why you should too come from the Huffington Post and Reason Magazine.
In response to Islamic reaction over the movie Fitna, which juxtaposes images of Muslim violence with passages from the Qur’an (the same passages Islamic terrorists cite as justification for their violence), writer Sam Harris at the Huffington Post penned one of the best critiques of Islam (and our refusal to engage it) I have ever read: Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks. In it, Harris rightly points out:
The controversy over Fitna, like all such controversies, renders one fact about our world especially salient: Muslims appear to be far more concerned about perceived slights to their religion than about the atrocities committed daily in its name. Our accommodation of this psychopathic skewing of priorities has, more and more, taken the form of craven and blinkered acquiescence.
There is an uncanny irony here that many have noticed. The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we will kill you. Of course, the truth is often more nuanced, but this is about as nuanced as it ever gets: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we peaceful Muslims cannot be held responsible for what our less peaceful brothers and sisters do. When they burn your embassies or kidnap and slaughter your journalists, know that we will hold you primarily responsible and will spend the bulk of our energies criticizing you for “racism” and “Islamophobia.”
Our capitulations in the face of these threats have had what is often called “a chilling effect” on our exercise of free speech.
In Mark Goldblatt’s Reason Magazine article this week The Poet Versus the Prophet he expands on many of Harris’ arguments and states:
[O]ur tip-toeing around Islamic sensibilities is nothing more than plain, old-fashioned cowardice…. We lack the moral courage to walk the walk, to put our individual lives on the line in order to defend the principles of free thought and free expression–the very principles that allowed the Judeo-Christian West to leave the Islamic East in the dust, literally and figuratively, three centuries ago.
Goldblatt makes multiple excellent points throughout his piece and closes with:
Since 2001, many Americans have asked how they can contribute in a direct way to the war against totalitarian Islam. Now we have an answer. If it’s legal, and likely to offend the radicals, just do it. That seems straightforward enough. But how many of us will have the nerve to stand up to a million or so Muslim dirtbags, and to scores of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of their fellow travelers and psychic enablers, and say in unison, “You want to kill the Enlightenment, you’re going to have to come through me.
Islam is not above question, criticism, critique, or examination. In fact, Islam is fourteen centuries overdue for some serious questioning, criticism, critiquing, and examination. People the world over need to be reminded that the freedom of speech most certainly includes the freedom to offend. The right of non-Muslims to draw pictures of Muhammad is equaled by a right just as powerful, the right of Muslims to ignore pictures they find offensive.
Though I can’t believe I am going to quote Captain Jean Luc- Picard, there is no better way to express why tomorrow’s world-wide event is so important:
“We’ve made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no farther!”
While Picard goes on to say that he will “make them [the Borg] pay,” that’s not our job. Our job is to stand and defend free speech. No more outrageous outrage and Muslim grievance theater over cartoons, operas, and videos.
We will no longer retreat. We will no longer fall back. We will no longer demand from every other community on the face of the planet that they meet us on the playing field of civilized, rational discourse, yet carve out a special, protected, no-holds-barred zone for Islam.
It’s over. This far and no farther. No more special treatment. It is time for Islam to come into the 21st century.
This is why I support “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.”
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