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Another Attack on Free Speech
Apparently, things have been too quiet for Rep. Ilhan Omar. And we’ve been free of Islamist attacks for a long time. So, it’s time to stir things up on behalf of Muslims. Omar has decided to stand up for Muslims by creating a position in the Department of State (without consulting the department) to protect beleaguered Muslims everywhere. She submitted a bill that passed in the House to establish the Office to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia. According to CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, there have been 500 documented complaints of “anti-Muslim hate and bias” this past year in the U.S. Given that CAIR is an outgrowth of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, I tend to be skeptical of this data. The bill passed in the House on a party-line vote on Dec. 14.
So why do I care? This bill isn’t intended to protect Muslims worldwide from acts of violence. Instead, I believe Omar plans to further destroy our already debilitated commitment to freedom of speech.
The incentive for this bill was probably a response to the “rude and ill-advised” reference to the “jihad squad” made by Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado. But the implications of this bill are much more far-reaching. Essentially, the bill targets those people who use “hate speech”; these statements are elevated into the category of “hate crimes”:
‘Hate speech’: this means that trivial incidents in which someone who is rude to a Muslim gets counted in as a hate crime, inflating the numbers of those crimes and contributing to the false impression that Muslims are victims of widespread discrimination and harassment in America today. With that low a bar, it’s no surprise that the press release at Omar’s site goes on to note that ‘in March, the United Nations Human Rights Council cited discrimination and hatred towards Muslims has risen to ‘epidemic proportions.’
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a practicing Muslim and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, has been sounding the alarm about radical Islam for many years and states the following:
The freest nation on earth is now unbelievably on the verge of creating a position in our State Department charged not with protecting inalienable human rights, but with protecting a faith ideology. This will be celebrated by our theocratic Islamist enemies across the world. The U.S. government will have a sanctioned ‘American Grand Mufti’ who will determine what is, and what is not, Islam. Every American Muslim, especially anti-Islamist (anti-theocratic) Muslims, will be marginalized by the new US government arbiter on Islam.
Any critic of radical Islam will potentially be accused of Islamophobia. Ironically, loyal Muslim Americans who attack Islamism are considered the worst Islamophobes. We have already experienced Americans accused of being racists and bigots, while the political left refuses to criticize (or comments lamely about) racist comments from Muslims in government positions. We have watched too many government agencies weaponized in the past five years: the departments of Justice (including the FBI and CIA), Education, Energy, Defense, and Health and Human Services. It’s the state’s turn.
* * * *
The Senate bill was presented on the same day, Dec. 14, by Sen. Cory Booker, ending with the following amendments:
(viii) wherever applicable, an assessment and description of the nature and extent of acts of Islamophobia and Islamophobic incitement that occurred in that country during the preceding the year, including—
(I) acts of physical violence against, or harassment of, members of the Muslim community, acts of violence against, or vandalism of, Muslim community institutions, instances of propaganda in government and nongovernment media that incite such acts, and statements and actions relating thereto; and
(II) the actions taken by the government of that country to respond to such violence and attacks or to eliminate such propaganda or incitement, to enact and enforce laws relating to the protection of the right to religious freedom of members of the Muslim community, and to promote anti-bias and tolerance education.
Of course, no one has described “hate speech,” “harassment,” “propaganda,” “incitement,” or even “Islamophobia.” We needn’t worry in the U.S. about the inappropriate or unlawful use of this bill because it is directed internationally.
Right?
Let’s hope the Senate sees through this malignant effort to further infringe on our rights to free speech.
Published in Foreign Policy
You missed the point about how the left is anti-semitic but pro-islam?
We are seeing many things coming out of our government that we would have never believed would happen. I think that people like Omar and her ilk have enough influence that they want to shut down anyone who even blinks at a Muslim. This isn’t 2004; this is 2021, where there are innumerable bad actors in government. The Left’s support of the Islamist positions have grown and become more hateful. That’s why. Can I prove that will happen? No.
But, as with many other things, if you wait until it’s already happened, you’re too late.
We both know (I think) that violence of that kind always begins with words. I’m not arguing for hate speech laws in the US – in fact I’m doubtful of their efficacy anywhere wrt actually stopping hate or hateful acts – but I’m conscious of how bigotry is first expressed and becomes normalised.
Will just recognising that there are parts of the world where people are targeted and suffer because they are from a Muslim ethnic group really move the Overton Window so unacceptably? We can agree to disagree.
It’s bad enough trying to be the world’s policeman, but I draw the line at being the world’s thought-policeman.
I don’t think the bill commits America to actually doing anything specific about what’s reported to Congress each year re: overseas Islamophobia. (Which the bill’s amendments seem to define reasonably well.) Frankly it may be a ‘statement’ for domestic consumption, but it would likely to end up a(nother) tool of statecraft, applied when useful and not when not.
Then it is empty virtue signalling and a total waste of time. Don’t get me wrong – I am in favor of wasting Congress’ time. It keeps them off the streets and out of trouble. So by all means, go right ahead. Goo-goo good government types can waste their time and breath too. Just don’t provide a mechanism for enforcement, funds for such enforcement, or anything else.
Feel better?
And they’re not phobias. The term is used to falsify the facts, to misdirect, to misinform, and to wrongly stigmatize those who hold to unauthorized facts.
I was kind of hoping that one of the users of the phobia suffixes would help make that point.
Well, depending on the country it’s a great excuse to interfere if you want to. What a great reason to sanction China, right? But India is part of The Quad (not to be confused with The Squad) so….
You’re always very soothing, it’s clearly a gift. I do feel better now, thank you.
It’s like nit picking that the Arabs are semites too. Does it add substantively to the conversation?
The nit picking about Arabs being semites does not add substantively. Nit picking about the phobia suffix helps to clarify things.
I’m still trying to figure out what trans-phobia is. Is it a bridge between two phobias in opposition?
And is transfat-phobia a thing yet?
I’m not sure that it does. People use it to mean the equivalent of antisemitism. Getting into a semantic discussion
missesevades that.Anti-semitism isn’t a great term, but at least it’s better than Semite-phobia in that the prefix “anti” is 1000x more accurate than the suffix “phobia.” Islamophobia is not Islamophobia. If people mean anti-Islam they should say so.
Antisemitism doesn’t mean hatred of Judaism, it means hatred and dislike of Jews. Islamophobia means hatred and dislike of Muslims, it doesn’t mean hatred of Islam. It’s not a semantically great term, agreed, but it’s the one we have.
Usefully, from the amendment to the bill:
It says nothing about ideology, it’s all about how members of a particular group (Muslims) are treated, using treatment of their institutions as a (imho reasonable) proxy.
Considering what a lot of muslim institutions – and muslims themselves – want to accomplish, being against them seems quite reasonable. At least for a supposedly still free people.
The Uighurs are the example, and it is horrible. I have no problem recognizing that Muslims suffer worldwide. I just don’t think the authrity of the new position will end there.
They will feast on the Judeo-Christian carcass until the marrow is consumed. They gnaw and tear away with one eye on the other knowing one day they will be at each other’s throats.
I don’t think the Left is self-aware enough to know that. By the time they realize what is happening, they will be “dead.”
I’ve puzzled at this (likewise leftist Jews but I think there are different reasons there). Muslims tend to be so extremely and excessively Conservative on matters of sex and woman’s rights how they fit in with the “shout my abortion” crowd.
There was a book series with the premise of a split America because Washington D.C. had been nuked. I forget who really did it, but it was blamed on the Jews. The western part was a Muslim caliphate. One part was that homosexuals were hung from the Golden Gate Bridge. An interesting symbology for that town.
I’m old enough to remember when people were allowed to have opinions, such as hating.
Remember I’m speaking about radical Islam. I do feel there’s a difference. In ideology the radicals are very conservatie, obviously.
True and I admit to conflating the two. It just triggered the question where people of faith – Muslim, Jews, Christians both Catholics and non-Catholics – embrace the Left’s who teaches the very opposite of their faith. Different topic than yours.
Excellent point, somewhat along the lines of “hate the sin and love the sinner.” The term should often be anti-Muslim rather than anti-Islam, except in cases where Islam itself is the object of disapproval.
All the more reason to get to the point and abolish the use of the term Islamophobia.
But it is an extremely important topic. It’s amazing that so many people don’t experience cognitive dissonance, trying to embrace essentially two faiths. I really exasperated a Buddhist scholar once on this discussion: I said, and he agreed, that the Buddha was conservative. But then it got messy. Something about the pendulum swinging both ways. Right.
People tend to go where they feel welcome.
You may have gotten to the crux of the matter. Feeling welcome is a draw and so is deriving my morals from, say, the Torah and seeking to associate with those who help uphold them. I’m sure I would feel very welcome in a Swinger’s group but I would have to go against some strongly held beliefs.
I once was hired to give a talk to a group of swingers, but their brochures were not very clear. I found out their mission when I arrived. Yikes! I gave them a good one-hour talk on communication, but it was very awkward.