The Muslim world that is vocal and vociferous in its demands for censorship in the West is going through a reenergized paroxysm of anger and hate – fatwas for the Fitna producer (Dutch politician Geert Wilders) and its distributors are flying fast and furious.
The Fitna film, supposedly anti-Muslim and anti-Koran, (is it realistic to mandate that 100% of the world’s population must be pro-Koran and pro-Muslim?) is yet to be viewable anywhere - the orgy of condemnation is however already reaching volcanic proportions.
Whether the film has artistic or philosophic merit is not the point. The issue is free speech and reasonable individual rights of expression and critical thinking, the Western World’s invaluable inheritance of 3000 years of civilizing refinement.
Since most Muslim organizations and countries seem so experienced and professional at censorship and the restriction of individual expression, we should ask them firmly yet politely exactly how they so effectively censor the existing hate speech, the rampant anti-Semitic and anti-West propaganda that fill their media, Mosques, schools and universities on an hourly basis, every day, almost without exclusion.
We could then see if their clearly enormous success in this area can be applied to Geert Wilders’ new and controversial film, Fitna.
If this film produces one superb result it will be to unearth and learn from the Muslim World their most closely guarded secret – how indeed they manage to so successfully remove those endless anti-America and anti-Israel caricatures, the films and harangues from their ever present education system and media, how they achieve such unrivaled respect and manifest such unprejudiced consideration for Christianity, Judaism and the rest of the world’s religious cultures and beliefs.
Clearly their unparalleled censorship is not at all applied to anti-government, democratic, moderate or revolutionary speech and actions within their societies. Rather these societies just as clearly nurture multi-culturalism, religious freedom and unqualified personal expression. That is why they reserve the corresponding right to require, as they now petulantly demand, of the Western World the censorship of Fitna and of any and all criticism of Islam or the Koran.
Once they divulge how exactly they miraculously manage to remove all this hate speech against Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, the Baha’i and assorted other religions and groups we will be able to follow their eminently civilized advances and do likewise in our societies so urgently in need of this Middle Eastern censorship, this sensitizing cultural lobotomy.
I await their generous advice with much anticipation.
Link to the Wall Street Journal article "Islam and Free Speech" by Peter Hoekstra:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120649269618764219.html
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