New York Review of Books calls for criminalizing of criticism of Islam

New York
Review of Books calls for criminalizing of criticism of Islam
By Robert Spencer

A piece published last week in the New
York Review of Books and written by the formerly respectable Islamic
scholar Malise Ruthven is so full of errors, false claims, and inaccuracies
that it is surprising that the New York Review of Books published it at all. On
the other hand, as the mainstream media increasingly abandons all pretense of
objective reporting and becomes ever more a propaganda arm for the Left and
Islamic supremacists, it isn’t all that surprising after all.

In it Ruthven expatiates at length about what he thinks is “hate
speech” directed at Muslims. Invoking Salman Rushdie’s criticism of the crude
video of Muhammad that was recently blamed for riots and murders all over the
Islamic world, Ruthven says: “On the motives behind the film Rushdie is surely
right: researchers have revealed close connections between Nakoula, a militant
Coptic separatist, and out-and-out Islamophobes such as Pamela Geller and
Robert Spencer. (Indeed, even as people in the Middle East were rioting against
the film in late September, Geller was sponsoring a controversial anti-Muslim
advertising campaign in the New York subway, raising questions about hate
speech in the United States.)”

This is actually false in every
respect. Pamela Geller and I have no connections whatsoever, close or
otherwise, to Nakoula, who may not be a "militant Coptic separatist"
or a Copt at all. Geller's advertising was not "anti-Muslim," but
against jihad attacks against innocent civilians. Ruthven's use of the
manipulative and inaccurate media slogans "anti-Muslim" and
"Islamophobe" is unworthy of him as a scholar, as is his willing
propagation of the spurious concept of "Islamophobia," which Islamic
supremacist groups use nowadays to intimidate people into thinking that there
is something wrong and "racist" about resisting jihad.

After that, Ruthven’s piece gets really risible. “Matthew
Feldman, a political scientist,” Ruthven notes, “has used the term “Christianism”
to describe ultra-right-wing anti-Muslim polemicists such as Geller and the
Quran-burning pastor Terry Jones, who also supported the film, in order to
highlight their similarities to their Islamist enemies. Both rely on religious
feelings to mobilize much larger groups because of the esteem for their
respective religions in the broader cultures in which they reside.”

This is even more of a howler than
Ruthven's claim that we were behind the Muhammad movie: Pamela Geller, who is
deeply proud of her Jewish identity, is now a "Christianist" who is
relying on "religious feelings" to "mobilize larger
groups"? It is astonishing that Ruthven would have the audacity to write
about people that he clearly knows nothing about. In reality, the American
Freedom Defense Initiative that Pamela Geller and I head up is not a religious
organization, but is dedicated to defending the freedom of speech, the freedom
of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law. Clearly
these are "ultra-right-wing anti-Muslim" goals!

Ultimately, after a great deal of long-winded chatter that
doesn’t get much of anywhere, Ruthven calls for the criminalization of
criticism of Islam as “hate speech”: “These contrasting responses suggest the
possibility of a two-pronged approach to the free speech issues raised by
images of the Prophet. ‘Insulting’ the Prophet with the intent of stirring up
hatred might be categorized as a form of ‘hate speech’ comparable to
anti-Semitism, racism, flag desecration, or Holocaust denial, which are
forbidden by law in many countries (though not the US, where a proposed
amendment protecting the US flag failed to pass by a single Senate vote in
2006), because the sacred image of the Prophet has become a fundamental part of
how Muslim communities have come to define themselves. While in practice it may
be difficult to draw the line between ‘insult’ and ‘criticism,’ if there is a
distinction it must lie in intention.”

Who will judge intentions, once
Ruthven's authoritarian law is passed? What will Malise Ruthven do if someone
in power decides that something he has written about Islam was actually
intended to “insult” Muslims, rather than to provide reasonable “criticism”?
And why is the New York Review of Books publishing this invitation to the suicide
of the free press?

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad
Watch and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam
(and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His
latest book is Did Muhammad Exist?.