Herb Denenberg
The Second Battle of Britain is over and the British have surrendered without firing a shot. The once towering symbol of freedom and liberty, the land of the Magna Carta, the home of the indomitable Winston Churchill has now turned into the land of censorship, political correctness and cowardice.
The United Kingdom, the land of Churchill, who, during the early days of World War II, urged Britain to never give up, never give up, never give up. The exact quote is phrased differently but makes the same point: “Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
But Britain is now the land of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is acting but not saying, “Give up, give up, give up, don’t even resist and ignore the demands of convictions, good sense and honor.”
The surrender of Britain to radical jihadism and Islamofascism was signaled once again when a Dutchman, Geert Wilders, a member of the parliament of Netherlands, was invited to show the short film he made, which links passages in the Quran to actual violence and rioting. The invitation came from a member of the British House of Lords and called for a showing at the House of Lords.
Mr. Wilders was then banned from entering the country by the British Home Secretary, Ms. Jacqui Smith. When Mr. Wilders arrived at Heathrow Airport in London, he was grabbed by two plain-clothed officers and escorted into the offices of the United Kingdom border agency. He was then sent back to the Netherlands.
Why was he prevented from a simple exercise of the right to free speech? Ms. Jacqui Smith, British Home Secretary, wrote — in a letter to Mr. Wilders — that he was not welcome in Britain because his statements about Muslims and their beliefs “threaten community harmony and therefore public safety.” The Times of London reports that the government has been “very coy about explaining” exactly what that letter to Mr. Wilders means.
But no explanation is necessary. It clearly means if Muslims object to criticism, that which they object to must automatically be censored and banned. That means that freedom of speech in Britain, as we know it, is dead. That means that Muslims have the power to censor any and all discussion or criticism of their religion. That means violence and the threat of violence is enough to determine who gets freedom of speech and who doesn’t.
The irrational and totalitarian mentality of the British decision makers on this matter is illustrated by the words and action of David Miliband, British foreign secretary. He said that the Mr. Wilders film, “Fitna,” is “a hate-filled film designed to stir up religious and racial hatred and is contrary to our laws.”
But then he had to admit he had never seen the film. This is outrageous and inexcusable on many counts, and one such count is that the film is all over the Internet so it could be easily viewed and if it were viewed, it would not be found to be objectionable on some free speech grounds. The film is a series of quotes from the Quran seeming to call for violence, followed by the violence presumably demanded in the quoted passages. I personally found the film powerful with a critically important message, and in no way objectionable on free speech grounds or any other grounds. Robert Spencer, in his book, Stealth Jihad, analyzes the film, and defends every bit of it.
Mr. Spencer shows how Mr. Wilders carefully and properly connects passages from the Quran with violence. He writes,
“The key question is whether or not the violent acts are really related to the Qur’an quotes.
“Most of Wilders’ detractors claim they are not, but Wilders accounted for this objection in the film itself. For example, the first verse of the Qur’an presented in “Fitna” is 8:60: ‘Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah and your enemies.’”
Mr. Wilders follows this with heart-rending scenes from Sept. 11 and the 2004 Madrid train bombings, as we hear two women among the many victims, call for help on those days. The women are indeed terrified, but what does this have to do with Quran 8:60? An Islamic preacher — not Mr. Wilders or any other non-Muslim — soon appears in the film to answer this question, stating in terms that clearly recall that verse of the Quran: “Annihilate the infidels and the polytheists, your (Allah’s) enemies and the enemies of the religion. Allah, count them and kill them to the last one.”
See Mr. Spencer’s Stealth Jihad, pages 84 to 88 for a full defense of Mr. Wilder’s film, “Fitna.” Mr. Spencer then writes that if Muslims wanted to do something about the jihadists, they should show the film themselves: “Islamic groups that profess to oppose today’s global jihad should have been supportive of ‘Fitna’ and other attempts to show the elements of Islamic teaching that jihadists use to make their case in the Islamic world.”
So what were the British Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary thinking to bring them to ban Mr. Wilders? The Times of London tries to explain what the British officials mean: “What I think it means was that some British Muslims — enough to cause trouble and bad publicity for the government — would get upset and angry if both Wilders and his film appeared.”
So what it means is that if anything, if any criticism, if any book, if any statement, if any film makes Muslims upset and angry, that such upsetting cause must be banned. What it means is that freedom of speech in Britain is dead, officially condemned to death by the ruling powers of Britain.
Congressman Peter Hoekstra wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal (March 23, 2008) that put this whole matter into perspective. He says that reasonable men may hold films like “Fitna” to be disrespectful, “But free societies also hold freedom of speech to be a fundamental human right. We don’t silence, jail or kill people with whom we disagree just because their ideas are offensive or disturbing. We believe that when such ideas are openly debated, they sink of their own weight and attract few followers.”
Mr. Hoekstra goes on to compare how Americans and Muslims react to criticism:
“Our country allows fringe groups like the American Nazi Party to demonstrate, as long as they are peaceful. Americans are permitted to burn the national flag. In 1989, when so-called artist Andres Serrano displayed his work ‘Piss Christ’ — a photo of a crucifix immersed in a bottle of urine — Americans protested peacefully and moved to cut off the federal funding that supported Mr. Serrano. There were no bombings of museums. No one was killed over this work that was deeply offensive to Christians.”
“Criticism of Islam, however, has led to violence and murder world-wide.”
He then goes on to show how criticism of Islam sets off violence, mentioning the Danish cartoons, the work of Theodoor van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker, and other examples.
And then Mr. Hoekstra issues a powerful warning:
“Western governments and media cannot allow themselves to be bullied into giving up this precious right due to threats of violence. We must not fool ourselves into believing that we can appease the radical jihadist movement by allowing them to set up parallel societies and separate legal systems, or by granting them special protection from criticism…
“These liberties have been won through centuries of debate, conflict and bloodshed. Radical jihadists want to sacrifice all we have learned by returning to a primitive and intolerant world. While modern society invites the radicals to peacefully exercise their faith, we cannot and will not sacrifice our fundamental freedoms.”
We cannot and should not start down the path of sacrificing our fundamental freedoms and liberties. But there are signs we have already started down the same road that Britain and the rest of Europe are traveling on. For us, that road leads to loss of freedom and liberty and the end of America as our founding fathers envisioned it.
Mr. Wilders prepared a speech he had planned to give when the showing of his film took place.
He started by reminding the British of their history, and it is unfortunate they did not hear the speech, as they seem to be forgetting their own history and values. He was to speak in the chambers of parliament:
“This is no ordinary place. This is not just one of England’s tourist attractions. This is a sacred place. This is the mother of all Parliaments, and I am deeply humbled to speak before you.
“The Houses of Parliament are where Winston Churchill stood firm, and warned — all throughout the 1930’s — for the dangers looming. Most of the time he stood alone.”
Then Mr. Wilders noted that in 1982 Ronald Reagan came to the House of Commons calling on the West to reject communism and defend freedom. He introduced the phrase “evil empire.” Reagan issued a clarion call to preserve our freedom and liberty: “If history teaches anything it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.”
In other words, as Lincoln also told us, we cannot escape history, we cannot ignore ideologies and movements that are out to destroy us, and we cannot select the option of denial.
But Britain may be experiencing self-delusion in the face of unpleasantness, Britain may be trying to escape history, and Britain may be selecting the option of denial in the face of a looming radical jihadist and Islamofascist threat. To borrow Churchill’s phrasing, an Islamofascist curtain is descending on Europe and it may be going into darkness.
This is in a way shocking and surprising, but it should not have been. Mark Steyn, in his classic, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, wrote that Europe is virtually lost to Muslim expansion and Shariah (Muslim law). The same conclusion can be found in Melanie Philipps’ book, Londonistan, and in Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within.
We also have even clearer and more specific warnings in Robert Spencer’s, The Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, and in the work of Steven Emerson, the nation’s leading authority on terrorism, in his classic, Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S., and his earlier work, American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us. There is also the important work of Daniel Pipes, Militant Islam Reaches America. Mr. Pipes writes a column for The Bulletin.
We have been warned in these books and the West is not heeding that warning. Our politicians are by and large asleep and seemingly oblivious to a mortal threat to our survival. The media is in the same deep sleep or perhaps more accurately described as in a coma. For example, I thought the British ban of Mr. Wilders should have been front-page news across America. It hardly made the news, and was either assigned to a small space on a back page or more often was ignored.
We in America are not immune to this folly, and we are already starting down the path to surrender and cultural collapse in the face of advancing radical jihadists and Islamofascism. Mr. Hoekstra notes that the only major U.S. newspaper to reprint any of the controversial 2005 Danish cartoons was Denver’s Rocky Mountain News. He says if these cartoons had mocked Christianity or Judaism, major American newspapers would not hesitate to print them.
Then there is the case of PBS, which tried to suppress the program, “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center,” a hard-hitting documentary with criticism of radical jihadists and Islamofascists. It would have succeeded if Fox News did not agree to air what PBS was too cowardly and too politically correct to show. And these journalistic cowards and appeasers at PBS are financed with taxpayer dollars.
The retreat and surrender is even more obvious in Britain, as we have seen already, and in the rest of Europe. In Germany, a German Muslim man was permitted to beat his wife as it was permitted under Shariah. Britain’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, stated that implementation of some parts of Shariah in Britain was unavoidable.
As Mr. Spencer’s book on the stealth jihad points out, we are slowly being taken over by a foreign ideology, and we better wake up before it is too late. We will get little help from most of the media.
One bit of proof of that is that the books cited above are among the most important of our time, and issue warnings we must heed if we are to survive. But they are by and large ignored by the mainstream media. They should be frequently quoted and cited throughout the media. Instead, they have been largely ignored.
You have a role to play in defending American freedom and survival in this ongoing battle. Start by informing yourself by reading some of the books cited above. Look beyond the mainstream media for your news and information.
There is an abundance of news and information on the Web that tells the whole story. And you better start pressuring your elected officials and the media to pay attention to reality, to stop surrendering our freedom and liberty in the face of threats of violence, and to take the steps that are essential to win the war on terror.
Mr. Wilders final plea in that undelivered speech was crafted for Britain, but it applies to the U.S., too:
“What will be transmitted [from London] forty years from now? Will it still be ‘This is London’? Or will it be ‘this is Londonistan’? Will it bring us hope, or will it signal the values of Mecca and Medina? Will Britain offer submission or perseverance? Freedom or slavery?
“The choice is ours. Ladies and gentlemen, we will never apologize for being free. We will never give in. We will never surrender. Freedom must prevail and freedom will prevail.”
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
Published February 17, 2009, The Bulletin
