Whether by church, monarch, or dictator, Europeans are not
unaccustomed to being told what to do and what to think. Perhaps
that is why they have elected the German Hans-Gert Pottering
president of the European Parliament. President Pottering is a
totalitarian official of the Old School, only this time the
reactionary enemy is not the Jew or the petite bourgeoisie, but
anyone not properly sensitive to the religion of Islam. For this
reason the Dutch MP turned filmmaker Geert Wilders is currently in
his crosshairs.
Wilders is infamous for making the short anti-Koran film
Fitna, undertaken around the time of the jihadist
murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Wilders is no friend of
freedom either; he has advocated the banning of the Koran and other
Islamic books and on more than one occasion suggested that the
Dutch constitution and European Convention on Human Rights should
be suspended to protect citizens from Islamic extremism. Unhappily
this pair of Germanic politicos is in no way exceptional in its
belief that Europe’s masses have too much freedom.
Pottering recently decreed that while Europeans do not
necessarily have to love those of other faiths, they must at least
respect them, regardless of whether that respect
has been earned. “We might disagree with others but we have to
respect them,” declared Pottering.
Many Muslims meanwhile have made it plain that they are
unwilling to respect free speech, or to accept the offenses,
inconveniences, and injuries incidental to it. Since Muslims are
easily offended, and offended Muslims tend toward violence thus
becoming a danger to public safety, it is argued, such respect can
only be attained through means of a prohibition or ban on jokes,
satires, parodies, or anything thought to denigrate the faith and
thus cause a breach of the peace.
Last week Pottering told a Gulf newspaper that “Europe” was
against any cartoons that could instigate violence, presumably
including Tom & Jerry cartoons. “We in Europe are committed to
the freedom of the press, on the one hand, but on the
other the media should develop a sort of self responsibility.
They should always know the consequences of what they publish about
other cultures.” (Emphasis mine.)
Immediately after the cartoon jihad there were calls by Muslim
officials to prosecute the Danish newspaper
Jyllands-Posten on charges of blasphemy. Many of us
thought that blasphemy laws had gone out with the stocks and
witch-burning, when in fact the last British citizen to be sent to
prison for blasphemy was John William Gott. In 1922 Gott was
sentenced to nine months’ hard labor for comparing Jesus to a
clown. Some in the British government have realized that with its
growing and easily offended Muslim population, blasphemy charges
could wreak havoc on the court system, though the government has
stopped short of repealing the laws, perhaps out of a sense of sick
nostalgia.
Laws against inciting hatred (and not necessarily violence)
because of their religious beliefs serve much the same purpose.
Substitute “speech” or “words” for “cartoons” and you have
Pottering’s and his radical fundamentalist allies’ real bugbear:
speech they do not like.
The tragedy is that Europeans — who continue to re-elect the EP
official — are willing to give politicians like Pottering the
right — if not the power — to ban speech he does not
like.
MUSLIMS ARE NOT THE only members of a faith community easily
offended by perceived blasphemies, insults or parodies. Indeed,
most followers of developing world religions (whether practiced by
Sikhs, Hindus, Nigerian Christians or African animists) seem
willing to riot at the least offense. It is no surprise that they
convey these enthusiasms with them when resettling in the West.
So in order to assuage and ameliorate these primitive passions
European governments have chosen to crack down on the natural
rights of those — mainly non-religious persons — who are
not rioting and threatening death. That’s the penalty for
not adequately respecting a medieval desert superstition.
On second thought, the EP’s president is too much the
milquetoast to be compared to past totalitarian leaders who sought
to repress freedom and curb liberty. Pottering, in fact, cannot
even bring him self to admit that there is such a thing as
Jihadism.
“If there are people who commit acts of terrorism in the name of
Islam…” Pottering begins. If? What more proof does the leader of
Europe’s Parliament need, a videotaped beheading of his wife and
children?
European leaders believe that their continent will be a much
more congenial place, a regular peaceable kingdom if they will only
clamp down on civil liberties. But by appeasing Muslims, and other
hotheaded believers from the Third World, they risk alienating
those who believe free speech and a free press are the most
important freedoms the West has invented, and are thus worth
fighting for.
Will Europeans again allow themselves to be coerced into silence
by political scoundrels? If history has taught us anything it is
that blackguards, villains and tyrants flourish when freedoms are
suppressed, while honest men and the honest truth are the first
casualties.
