You Know, It Ain't Easy For An Islamist To Stifle Free Speech!

In short, politically active Islamists must walk a fine line, must choose their fights carefully: if they scream bloody murder to silence free speech — scream "racist," "hater," "Islamophobe" — they risk bringing unwanted attention that backfires on them; yet if they sit back and do nothing, they risk having more and more people speak up and expose them.
Raymond Ibrahim  Is Simple Attention the Islamists' Greatest Enemy?

Ibrahim points out that unlike before 9/11, today people are more aware of Muslims, Islam--and some of of its doctrines, especially the ones that apply to non-Muslims. He goes so far as to suggest that there was a time, not so long ago, that something like the Ground Zero mosque would not have attracted the kind of negative attention that it does now.


It is that negative attention, in part, that drives the Islamists to lash out against critics of Islam--regardless of the intent and accuracy of the critique.

We are all familiar of the stories, both here and abroad, of radical Islamists racking up successes in demanding, and receiving, special treatment requiring the limitation of free speech to prevent the insulting of Muslim sensibilities.

Ibrahim himself faced opposition to an invitation he received to speak at Seattle's Everett Community College back in May 5. Islamists seeking to suppress Ibrahim's right to free speech came out in force, with Jafar 'Jeff' Siddiqui "writing a letter to the college president entitled "Don't Invite Bigots!"

Of course, the director of the local chapter of CAIR--Arsalan Bukhari--came out warning that "[i]nviting Raymond Ibrahim to give an alternative viewpoint on being Muslim is like inviting the KKK to speak about African American history."

Bukhari also wrote an op-ed in the local paper, claiming that: by inviting a known conspiracy theorist with a history of making unfounded claims about Islam, the college is doing a disservice to the public and risks creating a hostile learning environment for its students.

Even the main branch of CAIR chipped in, contributing a press release that included the following:

By issuing Mr. Ibrahim an invitation, giving him an audience, and in any way providing him a platform, Everett Community College is complicit in inflaming a tinder box of hate and violence against Islam and Muslims, and is abusing its public trust as a federally funded educational institution. Therefore, we urge the College to cease its promotion of bigotry and hate speech by rescinding its invitation to Raymond Ibrahim to speak on campus.

The outcome of all of this venom?

The college refused to cave in to the wild accusations, and Ibrahim did speak.

In an interview, Ibrahim was asked to explain why he thought the college did not give in to the pressure. Besides the fact that it is kind of odd to accuse a Muslim of being an Islamaphobe-- Ibrahim suggested that the tide is being to turn against Islamist hatemongers. ,

I think that people are getting tired of Islamists always trying to kill freedom of speech—always crying wolf. For example, if you look at the nearly 3,000 comments on the MSNBC report on my talk [War for American hearts and minds rages over Islam], you’ll find that, as “leftist” as MSNBC is, at least half of its readers are against censoring free speech critical of Islam; in more centrist media, the numbers are overwhelmingly larger.

So on the one hand, Ibraham claims that CAIR's failure to stop him from speaking after such a well-planned attack--both embarrassed CAIR and belittled its influence.

But by the same token, Ibrahim said in his interview that the audience he spoke to was receptive, but:

you wouldn’t know that from news media such as King 5 which distorted the Seattle event by interviewing the two Muslims present at the talk (Sidiqqui himself and a woman in full burqa), while ignoring the many, once again demonstrating the great disconnect between what the media portrays and what the regular people think.

The tide may be turning, but there is a long way to go.

Technorati Tag: Islam and CAIR.