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Why is criticism of Islam forbidden?

There is apparently no amount of mass murder, no number of innocents tortured or women raped, no amount of female degradation, no number of people enslaved, no number of Christians expelled from or murdered in the Middle East, no amount of Nazi-like Jew-hatred in its societies, no number of beheadings or even crucifixions, and no amount of terror that allows criticism of Islam.
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October 29, 2014

There is apparently no amount of mass murder, no number of innocents tortured or women raped, no amount of female degradation, no number of people enslaved, no number of Christians expelled from or murdered in the Middle East, no amount of Nazi-like Jew-hatred in its societies, no number of beheadings or even crucifixions, and no amount of terror that allows criticism of Islam.

And why is this?

A major Egyptian writer, Aly Salem, who has written 22 plays and 15 books, gave the answer in the Wall Street Journal this week. 

His answer: The left. 

“Many of my fellow Muslims are trying to reform Islam from within. Yet our voices are smothered in the West by Islamist apologists and their well-meaning but unwitting allies on the left. For instance, if you try to draw attention to the stark correlation between the rise of Islamic religiosity and regressive attitudes toward women, you’re labeled an Islamophobe.

“In America, other contemporary ideologies are routinely and openly debated in classrooms, newspapers, on talk shows and in living rooms. But Americans make an exception for Islamism. Criticism of the religion — even in abstraction — is conflated with bigotry toward Muslims. There is no public discourse, much less an ideological response, to Islamism, in academia or on Capitol Hill. …

“My own experience as a Muslim in New York bears this out. Socially progressive, self-proclaimed liberals, who would denounce even the slightest injustice committed against women or minorities in America, are appalled when I express a similar criticism about my own community. …

“This is delusional thinking. Even as the world witnesses the barbarity of beheadings, habitual stoning and severe subjugation of women and minorities in the Muslim world, politicians and academics lecture that Islam is a ‘religion of peace.’ ”

(The italics are mine.) 

Coincidentally, on the same day this article appeared, I had an hour-long dialogue on my radio show with another Muslim who made the identical point: that the left prevents honest discussion of Islam. Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is not only a Muslim, but a believing and practicing one. Despite fatwas issued calling for his death, this courageous Muslim continues to work to fundamentally transform his religion. (It is worth recalling President Barack Obama’s famous pledge right before the 2008 election to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” If a Muslim wishes to fundamentally transform Islam, he is labeled an “Islamophobe,” but if an American wishes to fundamentally transform America, he is not considered an America-phobe; he is merely another Democrat.)

Jasser is a medical doctor who practices in Arizona. He is a Navy veteran who reminds people that America embodies better values than any Muslim country. He wants Muslims and Islam to adopt American political, social and moral values. He wants, in a nutshell, a Muslim Reformation.

Yet, aside from Fox News and talk radio, both of them conservative media, one rarely encounters Jasser on national radio or television. Instead the mainstream — that is, liberal — media feature Muslim spokesmen from organizations such as CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), apologists for Islam and Islamists. 

None of this is about bigotry against Muslims. There are hundreds of millions of non-Islamist Muslims (an Islamist is a Muslim who seeks to impose Shariah on others), including many “cultural” or secular Muslims. And individual Muslims are risking their lives every day to provide the intelligence needed to forestall terror attacks in America and elsewhere.

It is about the left preventing any criticism of Islam, the religion that serves, rightly or wrongly, as the ideological and religious source of the greatest atrocities being committed in the world today.

It is about, among myriad left-wing examples, Brandeis University canceling its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born woman who leads a worldwide effort on behalf of Muslim women and reforming Islam. 

Nothing today better illustrates the subject of my last Jewish Journal column — that the left doesn’t fight evil — than the left’s smearing every critic of Islam, even Muslim critics, as “Islamophobes.” It also proves this law of life: Those who do not fight evil fight those who do fight evil. From the 1960s on, the left fought anti-communists, not communists. So, today, the left fights the anti-Islamists, not the Islamists. Why are so many Jews on the wrong side, again? 


 

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host (AM 870 in Los Angeles) and founder of PragerUniversity.com. His latest book is the New York Times best-seller “Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph” (HarperCollins, 2012).

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