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Manifesto:

Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

[Source]

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Hat tip: Michelle Malkin, who has much more here.

Rusty Shackleford: "Add my name."  Add my name too, Rusty. Islamism delenda est! Death before dhimmitude.

Agora has more here.

I'll collect more blog reactions as I have time to look around.

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Charles Johnson: "And you can add my name to that list."

Lawhawk's in.

Vince Aut Morire: I'll Take Your Fatwa And Raise You A Manifesto

Bryan Preston: Sign me up.

Pamela at Atlas Shrugs: "Heads are gonna roll...........no pun intended."

Jay at Stop The ACLU:

"What can one say to such a magnificently written, and clear cut message. Wake up America! We are talking about freedom here! Add my name to the list!"

Beth at Blue Star Chronicles:

"Solidarity. The 12 people who wrote and signed this document know very well the risk they take. We need to send a clear message that they don't stand alone."

If you've signed on and I haven't noticed yet please leave a trackback or comment and I'll add you to my list. ... Later: Agora's doing a great job of keeping track of reactions to this so I'm not going to spend any more time prowling around looking for them.

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Don't miss Greyhawk's latest Open Post.

Posted by Bill Faith on February 28, 2006 at 08:08 PM in Death before dhimmitude | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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Needing to wake up, West just closes its eyes
Mark Steyn

In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven."

Is that an gripping story? You'd think so. Particularly when, in the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim. You've got the making of a mini-trend there, and the media love trends.

Yet no major French newspaper carried the story.

[...]

Something very remarkable is happening around the globe and, if you want the short version, a Muslim demonstrator in Toronto the other day put it very well:

''We won't stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.''

[...]

What, in the end, are all these supposedly unconnected matters from Danish cartoons to the murder of a Dutch filmmaker to gender-segregated swimming sessions in French municipal pools about? Answer: sovereignty. Islam claims universal jurisdiction and always has. The only difference is that they're now acting upon it.

[Read the whole thing here.]

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Scott Johnson comments here, as does Ed Morrissey here.

I, for one, will die with a gun in my hand before I'll see my daughter and grandson subjected to dhimmitude. Who'll join me in that pledge?

Posted by Bill Faith on February 26, 2006 at 04:56 PM in Death before dhimmitude | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Alexandra says it best. Click here, and don't miss her links to Ed Morrissey and Michelle Malkin.

Posted by Bill Faith on February 26, 2006 at 01:55 AM in Death before dhimmitude | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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We're Losing
By Ben Stein

Greeting, fellow Americans. I have some serious news for you about the war against the terrorists, the war we are fighting to protect our liberties and our Constitution against Islamic totalitarianism. We're losing, big time. I don't mean we're losing in Iraq, where our brave men and women are fighting well in difficult conditions and with the home grown doubters at their heels. Nor in Afghanistan, where our men and women in uniform are also fighting brilliantly.

No, we are losing our freedom here at home, and in a particularly nasty way. It has to do with those cartoons mocking Mohammed that were published in a Danish publication and have excited riots and burnings across the Moslem world and fear and terror in Europe.

[Read on here.]

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Posted by Bill Faith on February 25, 2006 at 12:30 AM in Death before dhimmitude | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Click the 'toon to see the excellent blog post that goes with it.

Posted by Bill Faith on February 22, 2006 at 04:21 PM in Death before dhimmitude | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

[Read it here. ht: MM]

Posted by Bill Faith on February 21, 2006 at 09:17 PM in Death before dhimmitude | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thank you William Page for sending me the link to this:

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We were brought up to hate - and we do
By Nonie Darwish

The controversy regarding the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed completely misses the point. Of course, the cartoons are offensive to Muslims, but newspaper cartoons do not warrant the burning of buildings and the killing of innocent people. The cartoons did not cause the disease of hate that we are seeing in the Muslim world on our television screens at night - they are only a symptom of a far greater disease.

I was born and raised as a Muslim in Cairo, Egypt and in the Gaza Strip. In the 1950s, my father was sent by Egypt's President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, to head the Egyptian military intelligence in Gaza and the Sinai where he founded the Palestinian Fedayeen, or "armed resistance". They made cross-border attacks into Israel, killing 400 Israelis and wounding more than 900 others.

[Read on here.]

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Posted by Bill Faith on February 20, 2006 at 03:58 PM in Death before dhimmitude | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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When fear cows the media
By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist

THE PHOENIX is Boston's leading ''alternative" newspaper, the kind of brash, pull-no-punches weekly that might have been expected to print without hesitation the Mohammed cartoons that Islamists have been using to incite rage and riots across the Muslim world. Its willingness to push the envelope was memorably demonstrated in 2002, when it broke with most media to publish a grisly photograph of Daniel Pearl's severed head, and supplied a link on its website to the sickening video of the Wall Street Journal reporter's beheading.

But the Phoenix isn't publishing the Mohammed drawings, and in a brutally candid editorial it explained why

But the Phoenix isn't publishing the Mohammed drawings, and in a brutally candid editorial it explained why.

''Our primary reason," the editors confessed, is ''fear of retaliation from . . . bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do . . . Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and . . . could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year-publishing history."

[Read on here.]

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Posted by Bill Faith on February 20, 2006 at 01:38 AM in Death before dhimmitude | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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Why I Published Those Cartoons
By Flemming Rose

Childish. Irresponsible. Hate speech. A provocation just for the sake of provocation. A PR stunt. Critics of 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad I decided to publish in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have not minced their words. They say that freedom of expression does not imply an endorsement of insulting people's religious feelings, and besides, they add, the media censor themselves every day. So, please do not teach us a lesson about limitless freedom of speech.

I agree that the freedom to publish things doesn't mean you publish everything. Jyllands-Posten would not publish pornographic images or graphic details of dead bodies; swear words rarely make it into our pages. So we are not fundamentalists in our support for freedom of expression.

But the cartoon story is different.

[...]

... [I]f a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.

[...]

The lesson from the Cold War is: If you give in to totalitarian impulses once, new demands follow. The West prevailed in the Cold War because we stood by our fundamental values and did not appease totalitarian tyrants.

[Read the whole thing here.]

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Hat tip: The Ugly American. Read his excellent post here.

See all of my recent related posts here.

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Don't miss Alexandra von Maltzan's related post here.  A brief sample:

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As they have shown, there is no question that Islam does not allow ijtihad (free play of the intellect - independent or innovative thinking) and qiyyas (analogical reasoning). After all, what is the need for those, if the only thing that matters is taqlid (imitation) of an act that took place in A.D 622 and A.D. 630. In Islam, the fundamental duty of each member is to submit to Allah and whatever Allah demands of him or her. Frequently, the "demands" that Allah makes of Muslims seem to be the unquestioned demands that Islamic clerics have presented, by way of fatwas (or holy edicts), which they issue to Muslims. Many of these fatwas are essentially calls to one "religious war" (jihad) or another, such as has been with Israel, and now is in Europe and America.

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All who love freedom repeat after me: Death before dhimmitude.

Posted by Bill Faith on February 19, 2006 at 06:13 PM in Death before dhimmitude | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I received the following as a forwarded newsletter. (Thank you William Page.) If I am interpreting the statements on the author's web site correctly it is his wish to see it forwarded and republished as widely as possible. That being the case I don't think he'll object to my posting it in its entirety.

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The Press Defaults On Its Duty
Henry Mark Holzer

Unfortunately, the recent spectacle of worldwide mindless Muslim riots—supposedly caused by a Danish newspaper’s publication of the Muhammad cartoons—has obscured a phenomenon even more dangerous to this nation than the rampages themselves: the capitulation of America’s free press, which almost universally has declined to publish any of the drawings.

The issue is not that the press has a right to publish the cartoons. That’s undeniable. It’s Constitutional Law 101.

No, the issue is the duty of the American press to publish the Muhammad cartoons. It’s not a social or political duty, but rather a moral duty, rooted in the legacy of the Founders and the self-generated principle the press has wrapped itself in for over two hundred years: “the public’s right to know”—about such stories as the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, looting of Iraq’s museums, Abu Ghraib, NSA surveillance, alleged torture of terrorists, secret CIA prisons, and much more.

Indeed, it was the perceived moral duty of the press in service of the public’s right to know that brought us editorial cartoons like Joe McCarthy climbing out of a sewer carrying a bucket overflowing with slime, and of Richard Nixon dressed like a plumber.

Now, in the matter of the Muhammad cartoons, virtually all of the American press has suddenly done an about face— in the name of “restraint,” “sensitivity,” “respect,” “tolerance,” and other out-of-context bromides. Yet there was none of this, or any reluctance to “offend,” when the media showed a South Vietnamese policeman shooting a Vietcong killer in the head, or allowed Jews to be caricatured by making them look like Shylock, or depicted Christ immersed in urine, or in publishing other stories that were, certainly as to some members of the public, unrestrained, insensitive, disrespectful, intolerant, and, yes, even offensive.

But then, the press had no reason to fear the South Vietnamese, the Jews, or the Catholics. And therein lies the explanation of what has happened to the media in the United States.

The American press that has ignored the Muhammad cartoons—cognizant of the fatwas against Rushdie and others, the murder of van Gogh, the burning of diplomatic enclaves, and the rash of death threats—has cut and run for at least two reasons.

One, much less important than the second, is that most journalists in America today believe, or at least purport to believe, in the “multiculturalism” gobbledygook that all cultures are equal, that they all deserve respect, etc., ad nauseam.

The more important reason is because they are cowards. In capitulating to the irrational mob, the American press has done much worse than expose their hypocrisy, betray their European and domestic colleagues, and default on their moral duty as custodians of the First Amendment. Much worse.

The compliant American press has shamefully, and dangerously, reinforced the belief of Osama bin Laden and his minions that—like Nixon’s pullout from Vietnam, Reagan’s retreat from Beirut, Clinton’s flight from Somalia, and Bush 41’s failure of will in the Gulf War—Americans can’t take casualties.

Now, despite the sagacity of the Founders and the many First Amendment battles to keep America’s press free, the guardians of that legacy have left the field—not because of actual harm to them (which, had it occurred, they should have proudly accepted and soldiered on), but because of the mere risk of danger. They have capitulated to mere threats from political zealots who worship nihilism, and who in millennia have contributed little to the civilized world but hatred, destruction, and death.

Throughout American history, the principal enemy of a free press has been government. Now, sadly, it is the press itself.

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Don't miss Greyhawk's latest Open Post

Posted by Bill Faith on February 19, 2006 at 04:58 PM in Death before dhimmitude | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack