The Norwegian editor who abased himself before the Muslim clerics

Living in Scandinavia in recent years, the American homosexual author Bruce Bawer became deeply alarmed by the growth of Islam’s power in Europe, and he has written a book about it, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within. Bawer is one of those rare liberals who, like Pym Fortuyn, is a consistent liberal, meaning that he recognizes the rise of Islam in the West as a mortal danger to liberal freedoms and opposes it on that basis, rather than actively or passively welcoming it as a way of bringing down a supposedly oppressive West.

At his website he tells the hair-raising story of how the Norwegian editor who initially re-printed the Muhammad cartoons did a 180 degree turn and abased himself before Muslim leaders. It is like a classic scene out of the histories of subject peoples living under Islam. We almost expect one of the clerics to strike the editor on the side of his jaw, or maybe throw dirt into his mouth, as a sign of his humiliation before the one true faith. Since the text seems to lack a permanent link at Bawer’s website, I’m copying it here.

February 15, 2006: In a 2005 book, Eurabia, a scholar who goes by the nom de plume Bat Ye’or wrote illuminatingly about what she called “dhimmitude”—the relegation of non-Muslims, in the Muslim world, to the subordinate social position of “dhimmis,” individuals who have no rights and who are tolerated as long as they behave obsequiously and accept their inferior status. Ye’or warned that many European leaders were assuming an increasingly dhimmi-like posture in relation to radical Muslim leaders both in Europe and beyond, reflexively overlooking the more unpleasant aspects of Muslim culture and the widespread resistance to integration. Ye’or noted that if this dhimmitude persisted, and if present immigration and birth rates held up, Europe would soon fall under the sway of Koranic law—sharia. To many, this sounded outrageous. But on February 10, in Oslo, came a dramatic capitulation that seemed a classic case of sharia in action. For days, Velbjørn Selbekk, editor of the tiny Christian periodical Magazinet—the first publication to reprint the now-famous Muhammed cartoons from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten—had firmly resisted pressure by Muslim extremists (who made death threats) and by the Norwegian establishment (which urged him to give in). But then, on that morning—the day before a planned mass demonstration against the cartoons—Norway’s Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion, Bjarne Håkon Hanssen, hastily called a press conference at a major government office building in Oslo. There, to the astonishment of his supporters, Selbekk issued an abject apology for reprinting the cartoons. At his side, accepting his act of contrition on behalf of 46 Muslim organizations and asking that all threats now be withdrawn, was Mohammed Hamdan, head of Norway’s Islamic Council. In attendance were members of the Norwegian cabinet and the largest assemblage of imams in Norway’s history. It was a picture right out of a sharia courtroom: the dhimmi prostrating himself before the Muslim leader, and the leader pardoning him—and, for good measure, declaring Selbekk to be henceforth under his protection, as if it were he, Hamdan, and not the Norwegian police, that held in his hands the security of citizens in Norway.

Selbekk, in his prepared remarks, leaned heavily on the usual soothing multicultural language, including the word “understanding.” It was clear that Selbekk had indeed come to an understanding: he understood that if he didn’t relent, he risked physical harm. He also spoke of “respect”—a word that in this context must surely have been understood by the imams to refer not to a volitional regard for a social equal but to the obligatory deference of a repentant infidel. As for Handam, he noted that “Selbekk has children the same age as my own. I want my children and his children to grow up together, live together in peace, and be friends.” This was rather chilling, given that Selbekk’s family, too, had been under threat. The Norwegian government hailed this “reconciliation.” Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who had faced off with Selbekk in several TV debates when the latter had been defending free speech, now congratulated him for his apology, which he characterized, grotesquely, as an act of “responsibility” that displayed “integrity and courage.” Norway’s imams were ecstatic: one said that “the fact that Norwegians have apologized gives Norway…a higher status than before.” And Aftenposten, Norway’s newspaper of record, cheered Selbekk’s action, while denying that it constituted an admission that he had no right to publish the cartoons. Alas, Selbekk’s surrender plainly represented a giant step toward a purely theoretical “freedom of speech”—a “freedom” of which fewer and fewer Norwegians, after this officially sanctioned act of national humiliation, will dare to avail themselves. On Tuesday, as if Norway hadn’t already been disgraced enough, an official Norwegian delegation met in Qatar with Muslim leader Yusuf al Qaradawi (who has defended suicide bombers and the murder of Jewish women and children) and implored him to accept Selbekk’s apology for the cartoons. Lucky them: he did. “To meet Yusuf al-Qaradawi under the present circumstances,” the Norwegian-Iraqi writer Walid al-Kubaisi told Aftenposten yesterday, “is tantamount to granting extreme Islamists and defenders of terror a right of joint consultation regarding how Norway should be governed.” Yep. Then again, at least Norway had its brief, shining moment of resistance. Not Sweden. Among the European leaders who have insisted firmly in recent days that their nations enjoyed free speech—only to insist even more firmly that that right must be exercised “responsibly”—was Swedish foreign minister Laila Freivalds, who, responding on February 9, to a Muhammed cartoon in the newspaper of the right-wing Swedish Democratic Party, didn’t just call for “responsibility” but enforced it, sending the Security Police to close down the party website. “It is frightful,” she sniffed, “that a small group of Swedish extremists can expose Swedes to a clear danger”—as if it were the Swedish Democrats, and not Islamic extremists, who were threatening violence. Lately, many Europeans have sought to explain to enraged Muslims that democratic states cannot silence the free expression of ideas; Freivalds appeared determined to show that in Sweden, at least, this is no longer the case. In recent days, these acts of dhimmitude by Norway and Sweden have had their counterparts in the corridors of international power. On February 9, Franco Frattini, EU Commissioner of Justice, Freedom, and Security, promised to take steps to “regulate” speech (though he later denied this); Kofi Annan, in a February 12 interview on Danish TV, said “You don’t joke about other people’s religion, and you must respect what is holy for other people.” Since when do the EU and UN tell supposedly free people what to respect and what not to respect? Since now, apparently. Many Islamists do not hide the fact that their long-term goal is to turn Europe, step by step, into a Muslim caliphate ruled by sharia law. Alas, it looks at present as if the cartoon controversy may turn out to have been a significant step on the way to that goal. One thing is clear, at any rate: these have been the darkest days for European freedom in many a decade.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 16, 2006 10:46 PM | Send