If you haven’t woken up yet, will the fatwa on Molly Norris do it for you?

Many individuals and websites (including this one) supported and participated in “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” last May. Now the woman who innocently started the idea, Molly Norris, until recently a cartoonist at the Seattle Weekly, has had to give up her job, change her identity, and go into hiding because of a death fatwa issued against her by the Muslim radical Anwar al-Awlaki who resides in Yemen. As Katherine Kersten reports in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the American media have declined to call attention to Norris’s plight. She is alone. American society accepts that its citizens shall become life-long fugitives in their own land if they are targeted by Islamic death threats.

Consider the differences between the Rushdie affair 20 years ago and this incident. Rushdie, an Indian immigrant to Britain, a disgusting leftist who despised both his adopted Britain and his ancestral religion of Islam, in his novel The Satanic Verses committed gross insults to the Islamic religion, and when the Iranians issued a fatwa commanding his murder, the entire Western world rallied to his defense. Now an American woman, with no previous history as an Islam critic, simply publishes a cartoon calling for people to draw Muhammad in a light-hearted way, and a fatwa is issued for her death, and the American and Western world leaves her in the lurch.

Come on, doubters! Write to me and tell me that we are not already living under the power of Islam! Tell me that warnings of the Islam threat are overstated!

How will this hideous situation turn around, in which Muslims through their death threats—death threats which are plausible solely because of the presence of millions of Muslims living freely among us—can exert complete control over our society? I’ll tell you how. Through the arising of a political movement which declares that Islam is the enemy of our society and that Islam has no business being in our society. Through a mass movement marching under the banners, “Islam seeks our slavery!”, “Islam is the problem!”, “Islam is not a religion of peace, Islam is a religion of war,” “Moderate Muslims are just Muslims who are not following their religion.” Though our elected leaders proposing and passing laws that declare that Islam is not a religion under the meaning of the First Amendment but a political movement seeking our enslavement, and therefore that Islam can be restricted. Through Congress ending all immigration of Muslims into the United States. Through Congress passing a law stating that any resident alien or naturalized citizen who supports, or participates in institutions that support, jihad and sharia shall lose his residency status or his citizenship and be deported. Through a law that states that any public support of sharia is sedition and punishable as such. Through another law that declares Islamic mosques a seditious danger to our society and shuts them down. Though another law barring all foreign funding of Islamic institutions in this country. Through another law that offers law-abiding Muslims in this country a substantial one-time fee if they agree to leave America and never return.

The Islam threat that has taken Molly Norris’s normal life and her identity away from her and that threatens to do the same to our whole society can be defeated, but only if we arise as a people and take serious steps to strip it of its power and remove it from our midst.

Are you bored by my constant repetition of this theme? Do you consider my proposals extreme and unworkable? Then tell me what YOU would do to save Molly Norris and innumerable other Americans who at any moment could be stripped of their normal lives by Muslim death threats. Tell me what steps YOU propose to protect America from being enslaved by Islam.

Here is Kersten’s article:

Radical Islam gets the better of free speech

Did the media stand up in support of a threatened Seattle cartoonist? Not really.

By KATHERINE KERSTEN, Star Tribune

Last update: September 25, 2010—4:11 PM

In April 2010, Molly Norris, an editorial cartoonist at the Seattle Weekly, learned that the creators of the TV comedy “South Park” had been threatened with death by a Muslim extremist. The threat came after an episode in which the Prophet Mohammed appeared in a bear suit—an allusion to Islam’s prohibition against his depiction.

Norris was indignant at this use of threats of violence to stifle free speech. In protest, she drew a lighthearted cartoon of a poster announcing “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” Tongue firmly in cheek, she named the day’s sponsor as a nonexistent group: “Citizens against Citizens against Humor.”

Today, Norris fears for her own life. On the FBI’s advice, she’s “gone ghost”—changed her name and identity and abandoned her livelihood. The reason: A radical Muslim imam has called for her assassination on grounds that she blasphemed against Islam.

This sort of assault on free speech—one of the West’s most cherished liberties—has become sadly familiar in places like the Netherlands and Denmark. In 2004, for example, a Muslim extremist slit the throat of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in retribution for his movie condemning the abuse of women in conservative Islamic societies. In 2006, Dutch-Somali writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali—an outspoken critic of Islam—was forced to flee Holland after threats on her life. In Denmark, cartoonist Kurt Westergaard lives under police protection after a Somali man attempted to murder him.

Now an event like this may be shaping up in America, with chilling implications for freedom and the rule of law. Yet chances are you haven’t even heard about it.

Norris’ disappearance was prompted by a “fatwa” issued by Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born imam living in Yemen. Awlaki has been cited as inspiring Nidal Hasan’s massacre of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, as well as Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to bomb Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009 and the botched Times Square car bomb in May 2010.

Awlaki’s fatwa against Norris was posted on the Internet by an Al Qaida- inspired magazine whose mission is to radicalize young Muslims. The fatwa ordered the cartoonist’s “execution.” Her “proper abode is hellfire,” wrote Alwaki. “She “does not deserve life, does not deserve to breathe the air.”

Surely, you say, American journalists and media moguls—always staunch defenders of the First Amendment—are proclaiming outrage and rallying round this young woman? On the contrary. The media have largely been silent about her nightmarish plight.

When the Washington Examiner, an on-line newspaper in Washington, D.C., asked the American Society of News Editors for a statement about Norris, none was forthcoming. Ditto for the Society of Professional Journalists. This, despite the fact that the editors group’s mission statement extols “the First Amendment at home and free speech around the world,” while the journalists claim to stand for “the perpetuation of the free press as the cornerstone of our nation and liberty.”

Principle and backbone were more in evidence back in 1989, when Iran’s radical Ayatollah Khomeini launched the current drive to extend Islamic law to the West. After Khomeini accused British novelist Salman Rushdie of blasphemy in “The Satanic Verses” and called for his death, the U.S. Senate unanimously resolved “to protect the right of any person to write, publish, sell, buy and read books without fear of violence.”

But since 9/11, American media have increasingly caved to threats from radical Islam. The new norm is a self-censorship consistent with Muslim teaching that Islam must be free from insult, though other religions may be insulted at all times.

[end of article]

- end of initial entry -

Dean Ericson writes:

“Tell me what steps YOU propose to protect America from being enslaved by Islam.”

Here’s what I propose: passing a law that declares that Liberalism is not a religion under the meaning of the First Amendment but a political movement seeking our enslavement, and therefore that Liberalism can be restricted.

LA replies:

Cool, daddio.

September 27

William D. writes:

How about “A Moderate Muslim is a Lapsed Muslim”?

LA replies:

That’s not necessarily the case. You have many, perhaps the majority of believing Muslims who basically follow the Five Pillars, governing their daily observance, and who don’t know more about the religion than that, don’t know about jihad. They are not lapsed Muslims, they are believing Muslims, but their knowledge of Islam is superficial.

Leonard D. writes:

Dean Ericson wrote you, “I propose … passing a law that declares that Liberalism is not a religion under the meaning of the First Amendment but a political movement seeking our enslavement, and therefore that Liberalism can be restricted.”

This is witty as a response to your proposed means of fighting Islam. (It also has about the same degree of difficulty and thus low chance of happening.) But really, Mr. Ericson has things backwards. What we need is to recognize that Liberalism is a religion under the meaning of the First Amendment.

Leonard D. writes:

I won’t deny that we are very slightly “living under the power of Islam.” But there are degrees to any power, and the degree to which we are under Islam’s power is slight. So, yes, the Islam threat as you see it appears to me to be overstated, for example when you write “exert complete control over our society,” they are hardly exercising complete control. Even their political patrons the progressives don’t have complete control. [LA replies: “Complete” control was a wrongly chosen word. But in principle they do exert decisive control over our society right now, as is revealed by the Molly Norris situation. ]

It is a matter of numbers. Any group of fanatics willing to kill and die for their beliefs can get a heckler’s veto in our open society. (The only other group that I can think that does this in America is the extreme anti-abortion fringe, and they have been quite successful.) Islam does have more than an isolated fanatic or two, and thus the threat of Islamic terrorism is not going away completely until we sap their fanaticism. We can help with that, but mostly they must do it themselves. But they require mass numbers to start having more than minor effects. (And yes, as objectionable as it is, the ability to force a miniscule percentage of Westerners into hiding or armed guard is a minor effect on the scale of things that worries me.)

I don’t think the USA needs your full suite of proposals. (Some European countries might.) And that is fortunate, since progressives will never, ever, consent to any Constitutional amendments regarding Islam. [LA replies: you miss a point I’ve made numerous times if you think that I’m saying that liberals will consent to my proposals. How could you believe that I would be so naive as to believe that liberals would pass my program? The passage of my proposals assumes the defeat of the rule of liberalism.] All we need to do is shut off Muslim immigration. (Which is hard enough on its own.) We can and will assimilate our current small fraction of Muslims like any other group.

One tactic you don’t mention is that we can push Islamic moderation and modernization by simply studying the Koran as a normal ancient text, that is, in the same way we study the Bible. For example the pseudonymous Koran scholar Christoph Luxenberg, whose book The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran, asserted that “the language of the early compositions of the Koran was not exclusively Arabic,” and found numerous places where a muddled Koranic text made more sense using his assumption that it is a mistranslation of an earlier text. [LA replies: Oh this is ridiculous. Do you think that Muslims’ understanding of their holy texts is going to be altered by what some Americans say about it? This is naive beyond belief. And you think my proposals are unrealistic!]

It would not be terribly difficult to set up a foundation to give away prizes for the study of the Koran; any moderately rich man could do it. (Of course any such foundation would have to be careful about paying prize money to its winners, who would probably mostly be pseudonymous. And the foundation itself might find pseudonymity advisable for its apparat.) Imagine the difference a single $100000 prize would make to someone like Luxenberg.

I expect Koranic scholarship will be far more destructive of Islam than modern Biblical scholarship was and is to Christianity, for several reasons. For one, Christianity does not require Biblical inerrancy the way Islam insists on Koranic inerrancy. For another, the core tale of Christianity is tragic, fantastic, and uplifting. Whereas the tale of the Koran has much less basic appeal, being the story of a warlord who does exactly what every other warlord does. That he’s also a prophet does seem to twist his story a little, but not in any really surprising direction.

Mark Major writes:

You asked your readers:

“Are you bored by my constant repetition of this theme?”

Absolutely not. You are one of the very few who have successfully connected the dots about the Islamic ideology. Just having the courage to say it in your straightforward manner is heartening to us lurkers (your readers who don’t write).

You also asked:

“Do you consider my proposals extreme and unworkable?”

Yes, they are extreme, but logical. Western civilization and Islam are completely incompatible. Your proposals will only become workable in the event of a direct, immediate threat to a common person’s daily life. This is why the “stealth jihad” is working. Leonard D.’s attitude is indicative of the opinion of 99 percent of Americans. Until we are educated about the REALITY of Islam nothing will change and your ideas could eventually land you in jail. Robert Spencer’s books are a step in the right direction, but, as you continue to point out, he will not cross the “what should we do about it” line. Until John Q. Public KNOWS that Allah is not God and that Islam requires the forceful subjugation of all non-Moslems, we are in trouble. As long as “willful ignorance” and “wishful thinking” are our guiding principles toward the evil of Islam, we are in danger of being the assimilated culture.

Please continue your “constant repetition” of our plight.

Irv P. writes:

This is one of the most powerful and important posts in recent memory. It’s truly amazing how you have put into words and potential actions the things I knew had to be done on the morning of 9/11/01. If a guy like me could know through simple survival instinct, what needed to be done, how could we be in such a predicament now, nine years LATER?

Your contribution to our society has yet to be recognized, but it will be!

LA replies:

“If a guy like me could know through simple survival instinct, what needed to be done, how could we be in such a predicament now, nine years LATER?”

Because ONLY a guy like you, with a simple survival instinct, can understand this. The people who control the mind of society, the journalists and intellectuals, lacking that instinct, do not understand it.

N. writes:

I’m afraid that Leonard D. has missed the entire point of the Molly Norris issue. It is one thing to have writers, artists, and others in some place like Pakistan afraid to say anything about Islam for fear of being arrested and executed for violation of the law. It is another thing entirely to have resistance to the invasion of our country essentially put off limits, because of fear of violence on the part of the invaders. That is what is happening, in a nutshell. It is no surprise that the self-anointed elites cannot see this, or will not see this, because of their faith-based approach to politics that demonizes any discussion of differences between peoples.

But even if all Moslem immigration were stopped, currently impossible, there still would not be the assimilation Leonard D. expects, because the U.S. is a fragmented country in which autonomy and “rights” trump everything else, including basic decency—do a search on “female genital mutilation” and see how common this disgusting practice has become within the United States in just the last 10 years or less. Thanks to the conformity of non-conformism, any immigrant to the U.S. can expect to bring his entire cultural baggage with him and no one will say he should leave some it at home.

Therefore, we can expect more of this kind of intimidation, not less, on anything to do with Islam, regardless of immigration levels, because it is a part of Islam itself, and no one is encouraging Moslem immigrants to give it up.

And I suggest that Leonard D. should get out more, not just to Dearborn or “Dearbornistan” as some call it. A friend of mine just returned from Minneapolis/St. Paul, and informed me that the airport at night has more Somali workers than Scandinavian- descended Americans. He saw more green robes in the mall on dark Africans than blonde, blue-eyed Americans.

LA replies:

Leonard has a longer, 400 word comment arguing that the Molly Norris case does NOT show that Islam is controlling us. I haven’t posted it yet because I still have to write a reply to it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 26, 2010 07:22 PM | Send