Guerre and Shalom is The World’s Intelligent Journal. We rely on paid subscriptions to continue our defence of Western democracy and civilisation. Please give generously.
22 years ago, an Islamist extremist murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. His crime? The audacity to criticise Islam. The temerity to create a film on Islamic submission. The murderer went to jail without parole and freedom of speech went with him.
Soon after, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders went into hiding. Criticizing a mere religion became a death sentence in a supposedly free society.
There were no blasphemy laws but none were needed. Where a verbal attack on Islam meant physical death all were too timid to raise their heads.
And they were right not to raise their heads. If the society in which they lived was unable to protect them or to enforce the rule of law, how was the ordinary, humble citizen to proceed? They had no choice but to accept the status quo that their cowardly leaders had imposed upon them.
Assassin Mohammed Bouyeri risked nothing. He got free board and lodging at the expense of the Dutch taxpayer all the while getting everything he wanted in return. Complete silence from the neutered, majority population.
As with antisemitism, it is the complete failure of law enforcement that is the most shocking issue. Jews should not need to take defence of their synagogues into their own hands. Soldiers should not have to be deployed on the streets. But this is what happens when the police and courts are impotent.
Anti-Islam critics face the same dilemmas. Where they speak, their lives are at mortal risk, so they are left with three choices: personal protection, flight or total submission – precisely that which they criticised in the first place.
It seems that the regular police are no more; mere tour guides for the latest Palestine hate march.
Indeed it is ever so shocking, but ever so unsurprising, that Islamists are allowed to march through our streets - intimidating, scowling, hating - yet the hard-working indigenous citizen isn’t allowed to even open their mouths. Those who hate our nations are more than free to leave. Those who stay must abide by our rules or face the full force of the law.
We must be careful not to conflate two issues: whether Islam deserves to be criticised and whether people have the right to criticise it. Many, quite rightly, have strong feelings about the former, yet in many ways it is besides the point. Ultra- progressivism, far-rightism, Marxism, Haredism, secular Palestinianism and postmodernism, among many ism-ic categories, all receive their fair share of deserved rebuke. Political Islam isn’t unique in its problematic aspects —and as a private faith, Mohamedism is open to the same brickbats as Christianity and Judaism incessantly receive.
Yet Islamism, uniquely, brings a spectre of everyday violence into what were previously non-violent societies. Even if - let's be generous - Islam were a religion of peace among 95% of its adherents, the 5% of Islamist thugs would still have no right to murder us for dissent, all the while promoting their own vile, intolerant doctrines. It has a chilling effect on the very foundations of democracy.
So we must resist and, in this most upsetting of weeks, we must stand by the following doctrine: Complete tolerance to the tolerant. Complete intolerance to the intolerant.
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In the coming fortnight, The World’s Intelligent Journal is making a stand. In our editorial position we are not saying whether (private) Islam is bad or good or something in between1. Perhaps it's because we’re scared. Perhaps we should be. But we are making one thing crystal clear: that we have the right to criticise Islam as a faith just as we have the right to criticise every other religion and ideology.
Freedom of speech is not the same as obligation to listen. The United Nations and her minions have the right to promote The Great Genocide Blood Level. We have a right to ignore them, to excoriate them and to call for the total abolition of their organisations. We have the right to call them out for the handmaidens of evil that they have become.
Speech doesn’t not imply authority, expertise nor worth. We can ignore these international anti-peace makers as they increasingly deserve to be ignored.
In much the same way, those who love political Islam don’t have to listen to those they despise. They can continue in their murderous thoughts and their despicable black designs, but we as a society can enforce the law against them. Completely and without tolerance. We can deport them to sovereign territory in the Antarctic.
Meanwhile, followers of private Islam must act democratically. They can write articles to Guerre and Shalom talking about peace, love and being misunderstood. That’s wonderful. It’s the Open Society in action.
Yet what we cannot tolerate is enforced silence. And so we must speak, not in hate, but in hope of continuing civil peace.
In our coming articles and podcasts, we will speak from Germany, Britain and Denmark; from Basra and Australia; from Iran. We will speak openly and without fear.
But first we must speak from the Netherlands, the home of the tragedy that defined a generation.
Tomorrow we welcome Paul Cliteur, Professor Emeritus from Leiden University. And what he says will - or should - reverberate throughout the generations. Either we listen to his diagnosis or we reject our democratic legacy. Either way, his text takes a stand for the Dutch rule of law. We must all follow.
Guerre and Shalom is The World’s Intelligent Journal. We rely on paid subscriptions to continue our defence of Western democracy and civilisation. Please give generously.
Political Islam is awful, no debate.