Several decades ago, growing up in America meant that you understood the common sense behind that old counter-bully comeback: “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” Somehow those words, even though not technically true, had an empowering effect. And if you repeated that dazzling retort ad nauseam, the overbearing kid would usually get tired of hearing it and leave you alone.
Unfortunately there’s not a similar maxim to be found in the Koran. When it comes to Islam, it seems that words – and even pictures –can cause serious harm.
So now, as we find with the Muhammad Art Exhibit & Contest in Garland, Texas, the leftists – not to mention many confused “moderates” – have determined that we are to self-censor to appease an ideology that is completely foreign to our American way of life.
Do these naïve pundits actually believe that by allowing Muslims to circumscribe our definition of free speech we’re somehow being sensible? High-minded? Noble?
Writing at American Thinker, perhaps Karin McQuillan can enlighten them ~
To claim that drawing Mohammed is an insult is a jihadi idea. It is not an American idea. It is applying their code to our behavior. Drawing Mohammed is entirely normal political speech. It is not a gratuitous insult, it is fighting the imposition of sharia law in America.[…]
It is crucial for the survival of civilization that all of us speak out loudly and clearly about the many truly appalling and abominable aspects of Islam. Geller’s speakers were saying true things about Islam that are mislabeled insults because they are critical. Islam must be criticized.
And that was the whole point of the Muhammad Art Exhibit; to criticize, to critique, to discuss and debate.
Pamela Geller wasn’t hoping to provoke Muslim outrage. She was hoping to provoke a long overdue, honest conversation about Islamic extremism. And to expose the intolerance, the real “hate speech.”
In sponsoring the contest, Gellar’s intention was to expose the truth that the Islamic worldview simply cannot coexist with the American one. Any sincere analysis of the Garland exhibit and the foiled terrorist attack makes that abundantly clear.
Names, and criticisms, videos and yes – cartoons, apparently have the supernatural ability to inflict serious injury to the Religion-of-Perpetual-Outrage; injury which must somehow be avenged by jihadis. Are the media apologists for radical Islam suggesting that we surrender our First Amendment rights to a religion that believes it’s perfectly justifiable to murder a cartoonist for drawing a picture? A religion that, by its very nature, is wholly incompatible with our Constitution?
NO. Stop this insanity.
The reality is, words and pictures cannot, in and of themselves, inflict harm. And our American way of life is incompatible with any ideology that believes they can.
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Related:
Pamela Geller: A Response to My Critics—This Is a War
The Mosque Which The Muhammad Cartoons Texas Shooters Attended Financially Supported Terrorists ~ Gee, what a coincidence.
