Attacks on Tuesday against American missions in Cairo and Benghazi
fit into a familiar pattern of Islamist intimidation and Western
appeasement that goes back to the Salman Rushdie
affair in 1989. The Obama administration’s supine response to the
murder of American diplomats increases the likelihood of further such
assaults.
The Rushdie crisis suddenly erupted when the ruler of Iran, Ayatollah
Khomeini, put a death edict on a novelist for having written a magical
realist novel, The Satanic Verses, declaring that the book was
“against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran.” That incident was then
followed by a long list of similar assaults – concerning a U.S. Supreme Court frieze in 1997, American evangelical leader Jerry Falwell in 2002, Newsweek in 2005, the Danish cartoons in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI also in 2006, Florida preacher Terry Jones in 2010, and U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan
early in 2012. In each of these cases, the perceived insult to Islam
led to acts of violence, sometimes against Westerners but more often
among Muslims themselves.
Indeed, the 2010 incident caused some 19 deaths in Afghanistan, prompting David Goldman, then of First Things
magazine, to observe that “a madman carrying a match and a copy of the
Koran can do more damage to the Muslim world than a busload of suicide
bombers.… What’s the dollar value of the damage from a used paperback
edition of the Koran?” Goldman speculated how intelligence services
could learn from Jones and, for a few dollars, sow widespread anarchy.
So far, the 2012 spasm has led to four American deaths, with more possibly to follow. Jones (with his “International Judge Muhammad Day“) and Sam Bacile (who may not exist but is alleged to have created the anti-Islamic video
that mainly inspired this 9/11′s violence) can not only cause deaths at
will but they can also put a wrench in U.S.-Egypt relations and even
become a factor in a U.S. presidential election.
As for the Obama administration:
acting in its usual appeasing and apologetic mode, it blamed the
critics of Islam. “The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns
the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious
feelings of Muslims. … We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse
the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of
others.” Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (“The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others”) and Barack Obama (“the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others”) confirmed the initial cringe.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney
rightly retorted that “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s
first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions,
but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.” This argument has
very large implications, not so much for the elections (Iran is the key
foreign policy issue there) but because such weakness incites Islamists
again to attack, both to close down criticism of Islam and to impose one
aspect of Shari’a, or Islamic law, on the West.
Terry Jones, Sam Bacile, and their future imitators know how to goad
Muslims to violence, embarrass Western governments, and move history. In
response, Islamists know how to exploit Jones, et al. The only way to
stop this cycle is for governments to stand firmly on principle:
“Citizens have freedom of speech, which specifically means the right to
insult and annoy. The authorities will protect this right. Muslims do
not enjoy special privileges but are subject to the same free-speech
rules as everyone else. Leave us alone.”
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