Security, Hate-Speech Laws, and Dhimmitude

We are becoming used to the stepped up security measures to which we are now subjected: metal detectors at shopping malls, schools, and government buildings, body searches and bomb-sniffing dogs, I.D. checks and restricted entry to areas that were once free and open to all. Even looking at the 2005 Inauguration route with all its police presence and bullet-proof limousines, one would have thought that we live in a military dictatorship, not the United States of America. This is a sorry state of affairs.

Yet there are plenty of people that don’t believe in the “War on Terror,” that the bombers, reacting to our foreign policy, will stop and everything will return to the way it was if we pull out of Iraq and leave the rest of the world to its own devices.

Talking about Islam and jihad is useless to these people. They will never accept the premise that Islamists have pretensions on America regardless of what we do or what we don’t say about them.


Diana West clarifies this problem: even our bureaucrats, politicians and military have been duped by apologetics. There is no clarity in their thinking and writers make that attempt are brushed off:

Clarity is the goal. We are unlikely to witness a security-lite inauguration four years -- or eight or 12 years -- hence if we remain confused about the ideology that animates our foes. And we are unlikely to ward off the spread of jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law the world over -- including the U.S.A. -- if we know nothing about it, or, worse, know only apologetics about it. Infinitely more pleasant, they are also misleading.

But apologetics are what we get. Take the reading list that Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, our new commander in Iraq, has given senior staff. It whitewashes jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law with the works of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito. No Bat Ye'or; no Ibn Warraq; no Robert Spencer; no Daniel Pipes; no Paul Fregosi; no Oriana Fallaci; not even any Bernard Lewis. Ignorance before September 11 was bad enough; perpetuating that ignorance is inexcusable.

Politicians, bureaucrats and the military are becoming dhimmis without even knowing it.

Will the threat go away if we ignore Islamism and allow them to have their way? Already some of our citizens have paid the price and media continue to be cowed by charges of “perpetuating terrorist stereotypes.” The deaths of the Coptic Christians in New Jersey may well be unrelated to Islam, but they are being used by CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations are the justification for encouraging Fox to change the Muslim character appearing in the series “24” and for dropping a previously-vetted interview with Fox’s Greta van Susteren about the deaths of the New Jersey family with Michael Meunier as reported in the same Diana West essay. It appears that Muslims are creating a dhimmi attitude at Fox.

A correspondent in Britain recently described the rapidity with which Islam has taken hold in the British government. The Conservative Party has recently put forward a hate-speech law that would make it against the law to quote or even discuss the Koran, ahadiths, or Sira, or even the life of Mohammad. Violators will be jailed. A court in the Australian state of Victoria has a similar law under which Christian ministers have been prosecuted for merely discussing the contents of the Koran, contending that Islam teaches violence. And Canada has decided that teachings in the Bible constitute hate speech.
Will dhimmi attitudes such as Muslim apologetics or hate-speech laws make us safe? No, the Islamists have vowed to make Islam triumphant over the Earth. Dhimmitude will only make it easier for them to enslave us.