The Media's Selective Silence

My workweek begins today, and I have a lot to do this morning before getting out the door. Please read the two links below the fold.

1. Geert Wilders's trial has begun.

2. The cartoonifada against Molly Norris is absent from the news.

My previous posts about Geert Wilders are HERE; watch Fitna HERE.

My previous posts about Molly Norris are HERE and HERE.

Turn the page ....

How To End "Islamophobia"

The conclusion of this article by Robert Spencer in Human Events:

1. Focus indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.

2. Renounce definitively not just “terrorism,” but any intention to replace the U.S. Constitution (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Islamic Sharia law even by peaceful means.

3. Teach Muslims the imperative of coexisting peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis.

4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.

5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

Do those things, and “Islamophobia” will vanish.

Read it all.
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In the same essay, Mr. Spencer also says the following:

Once you declare one group off-limits for critical examination or declare that these people must at all costs not be offended, or that if they are they’re perfectly within their rights to stone, or lash, or imprison, or kill the offender, then you have destroyed free speech. In a free society, people with differing opinions live together in harmony, agreeing not to kill one another if their neighbor’s opinions offend them. If offensive speech had been prohibited in the 1770s, there would be no United States of America, and that is one of the reasons for the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Whenever offensive speech is prohibited, the tyrant’s power is solidified. No less in this case, although the tyrant in question is of a different kind.

Instead of being intimidated by the possibility of offending Muslims, we infidels need to crank it up. Any other reaction to the Islamic threat to our freedoms is dhimmitude.

Turn the page ....

Robert Spencer On The OIC

Hat-tip to Reliapundit of THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, where I found the following video, about four minutes in length:

YouTube Link
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Additional reading about the OIC, which is brazenly threatening freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the Western world with the organization's push toward litigation-ifada.

Yesterday afternoon, on Fox News Network, I caught an interview of Brigitte Gabriel. The topic was the Pope's recent baptism of Magdi Allam:

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Italy's most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service.

An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Magdi Allam infuriated some Muslims with his books and columns in the newspaper Corriere della Sera newspaper, where he is a deputy editor. He titled one book "Long Live Israel."

As a choir sang, Pope Benedict XVI poured holy water over Allam's head and said a brief prayer in Latin.

[...]

Vatican Television zoomed in on Allam, who sat in the front row of the basilica along with six other candidates for baptism. He later received his first Communion....

Magdi Allam took the name Christian for his baptism and later stated the following:

"I realize what I am going up against but I will confront my fate with my head high, with my back straight and the interior strength of one who is certain about his faith."

But cowardice and dhimmitude made their appearance yesterday afternoon, when a Fox News Channel anchor said something like this to Ms. Gabriel: "Don't you think that the Pope's baptism should have been done in a less visible manner? Some people might get upset."

In other words, Christianity should tone itself down so as not to offend Muslims.

Huh? What's that?

Turn the situation around, and just imagine the furor if a news anchor suggested during Ramadan season, "How about toning down the Hajj? It upsets non-Muslims." I can see the reaction in my mind's eye right now.

Just take a look at this list of things offensive to Muslims. What doesn't offend them?

Turn the page ....