Giving them the freedoms to curb our own

More bemoaning of our gradual loss of freedom in Europe comes from Clifford D May, writing in Europe News. Free speech, he says, may end not with a bang, not even a whimper, "but with lawyerly assist".

"It was three years ago this month that the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, published twelve editorial cartoons satirizing Islamist terrorism," he writes. "Some Muslim organizations objected. Protests were organized. Danish embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran were set ablaze. Dozens of people were killed. The cartoonists and their editors received death threats from such characters as Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza."

He goes on to analyse the Motoons affair, which most readers will be familiar with by now, no doubt, and then tells us that the United Nations General Assembly is

considering a resolution sponsored by the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The ostensible purpose of "Combating Defamation of Religion" [. . .] is to stamp out "incitement to religious hatred, against Islam and Muslims in particular".

Read more on my regular blog here, plus a post on the latest chapter in the story of the novel The Jewel of Medina, the book about Aisha that Random House gutlessly pulled, to their eternal shame, and the obscenity of the obscenity police (Islamic obscenity police, of course!)