By Andrew Whitehead

Omer Subhani, the communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) South Florida, authors a blog. On April 16, he wrote that he had “serious doubts” about Sami Al-Arian, the disgraced former college professor and Islamist terrorist. Read his post here.

In his blog entry, Subhani attempts to come across as an impartial observer of the trial who was swayed by the outcome of the case. If his claim weren’t so biased, it’d be funny. But when it comes to CAIR and radical Islam, nobody is laughing.

(more…)

by Mary Madigan*

The poster advertising New York University’s “Academic Freedom in the Age of Permanent Warfare” conference featured a scolding Statue of Liberty pointing an accusatory finger and stating: “YOU! Stop Asking Questions. You’re Either With US or You’re With the TERRORISTS!”

The speakers and attendees gathered around the pastry-laden table at NYU’s new Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center last week didn’t appear to be oppressed or under attack. But once they wiped the sugar from their mouths and stood up to speak, they assured the audience that they were, in fact, victims in an “age of permanent warfare.”

(more…)

Join the Boycott, a watchdog and protest website addressing anti-Israel bias in the Los Angeles Times and the rest of the media, and hosted by Yahoo Geocities, is calling for a high level investigation of Yahoo’s practices, following Yahoo’s repeated interruption of its website service.

In early March, Yahoo took Join the Boycott offline and has kept it offline since. When surfers click on the Join the Boycott website

http://www.geocities.com/truthmasters/jointheboycott.htm

they receive the message “this page is not available”.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

LiveLeak has re-posted Geert Wilders’ film “Fitna,” after having pulled the video off its site due to death threats. LiveLeak is the British video/media sharing service which first released Wilders’ movie. Following suspension of “Fitna,” LiveLeak issued a statement alluding to several British newspapers’ complicity in the death threats. According to the Daily Kos, “various British newspapers actually printed the names and addresses of Liveleak staffers. Needless to say, lots of very pointed death threats followed.” Whatever the details, LiveLeak has refused to succumb to Islamist intimidation and has stated (with admirable attitude):

On the 28th of March LiveLeak.com was left with no other choice but to remove the film “fitna” from our servers following serious threats to our staff and their families. Since that time we have worked constantly on upgrading all security measures thus offering better protection for our staff and families. With these measures in place we have decided to once more make this video live on our site. We will not be pressured into censoring material which is legal and within our rules. We apologise for the removal and the delay in getting it back, but when you run a website you don’t consider that some people would be insecure enough to threaten our lives simply because they do not like the content of a video we neither produced nor endorsed but merely hosted.

You can watch “Fitna” at LiveLeak by clicking here. Note that “Fitna” has been continuously available on sites like Google and here at netwmd.com.

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

This month, Denmark’s police foiled a terrorist plot to murder Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who drew the strongest of the Muhammad pictures, prompting most of the country’s newspapers to reprint his cartoon as an act of solidarity and a signal to Islamists that their threats and violence will not succeed.

(more…)

by R. John Matthies*

Not long ago a list of “unique issues affecting Muslim Americans” was posted at the Muslim Americans for Obama ‘08 website. This describes a number of “recommendations” drafted to advance the discussion of lawful Islamism and exceptional accommodation in the United States. These suggest both that “Islamic” comportment is beyond reproach, and that one is always correct to press the case for inviolable “Muslim” space.

(more…)

by Cinnamon Stillwell*

The proliferation of dubious conferences on “academic freedom” continues unabated. And, in each case, biased and politicized Middle East studies academics are a major component.

In October, 2007, the University of Chicago hosted, “In Defense of Academic Freedom,” an event whose unifying theme was “the notion that Jewish groups have degraded the quality and breadth of discussion in the media and in Washington.” Hardly the stuff of self-described progressives, but such is the state of discourse in the corridors of academia today.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

I so admire these Danish newspapers for standing up to Islamist intimidation (terrorism):

Denmark’s five major daily newspapers republished on Wednesday one of the 12 drawings of the Prophet Muhammad which angered Muslims around the world, as a protest against a plot to murder one of the cartoonists.

A Danish citizen of Moroccan descent and two Tunisians were arrested on Tuesday in western Denmark for planning to murder 73-year-old Kurt Westergaard, a cartoonist at Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that originally published the drawings in September 2005. …

(more…)

By Andrew Whitehead

On January 31, 2008, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted a press release from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/01/30-0

In the press release, CAIR Legal Counsel Hadhira Al-Khalili stated: “Michael Savage’s frivolous and baseless lawsuit is a direct attack on First Amendment freedoms and on any citizen’s right to comment on public issues…his suit is an abuse of the judicial system and a transparent attempt to punish those who challenge his hate-filled rhetoric.”

(more…)

By Phyllis Chesler

My headscarf is giving me a headache! What I mean, is that the issue of the Islamic headscarf is a tricky, thorny one with no hard-and-fast solution in sight precisely when one is required. Just yesterday, a dear friend challenged me on this very subject.

She said: “How can you favor the state forbidding women from doing something that they want to do for religious reasons?”

A fair enough question.

(more…)

by Brooke M. Goldstein*

Award-winning author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian Human Rights Commissions on vague allegations of “subject[ing] Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt” and being “flagrantly Islamophobic” after Maclean’s magazine published an excerpt from his book, America Alone.

The public inquisition of Steyn has triggered outrage among Canadians and Americans who value free speech, but it should not come as a surprise. Steyn’s predicament is just the latest salvo in a campaign of legal actions designed to punish and silence the voices of anyone who speaks out against Islamism, Islamic terrorism, or its sources of financing.

(more…)

by David J. Rusin*

“Art is not what you see,” noted Edgar Degas, “but what you make others see.” Ninety years after his death, a new maxim applies to Europe: The art that you do not see reflects what everyone already sees. And what we see is the preemptive surrender of public freedoms in the name of appeasing the continent’s restive Muslim underclass.

Grayson Perry serves as the ideal poster boy — or perhaps poster girl — for this discomfiting trend. A Turner Prize recipient and England’s most famous cross-dressing potter, Perry has been heralded for his controversial explorations of religious imagery, which include a vase entitled “Transvestite Brides of Christ” and a portrayal of the Virgin Mary that is best left to the imagination. Yet apparently there are some boundaries that even groundbreaking artists dare not cross.

(more…)

By Phyllis Chesler

“The Saudis are Coming, the Saudis are Coming”—and this time they mean to tax and silence us via lawsuit, not via military action. Paul Revere’s pre-revolutionary alarm about “The British are Coming” might still apply since British law is now actively aiding and abetting the Saudi crusade against freedom of speech in the West.

Where are all the First Amendment fanatics when we need them? Actually—they are all here. (See below for the incredible line-up of organizations that submitted an amicus curiae brief).

(more…)

By Phyllis Chesler

Yesterday, the indomitable Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld had her day in court. This time, the New York State Court of Appeals heard her case. Ehrenfeld was sued by the ever-litigious billionaire, Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz, who sued her in London for writing a book (Funding Evil) which was published in America where Ehrenfeld, an Israeli-American citizen, resides.

Ehrenfeld chose not to appear in the London courtroom and Mahfouz won a default judgment. Instead, she counter-sued Mahfouz here. Ehrenfeld is arguing that New York should have jurisdiction to decide whether such a judgment is enforceable in New York State where, after all, authors enjoy a First Amendment right to publish their views.

(more…)

By Phyllis Chesler

I am working on my remarks for tomorrow night at Columbia University as part of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week on the American campus.

I will speak in solidarity with Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents in the Islamic world and in the West. I am especially mindful today of the student activists in Iran who were tortured and who have now just been given prison sentences. Iranian Muslim and perhaps ex-Muslim students are protesting this.

Incredibly, in America, some campus “activists” are not protesting these harsh sentences but are, instead, protesting our right to hassle-free “free speech” on campus if we dare expose such obvious facts about Islam.

(more…)