The Fashionable New Cowardice

From Robert Spencer:

Without anyone really noticing, cowardice has overtaken the American public square, and is now widely retailed as if it were the sensible, proper response to violent Muslim intimidation. 

Last week Newsday ran an opinion piece about Pamela Geller’s pro-freedom American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) ad in the New York subways: “Anti-jihad ads in subway may be legal, but they lack street-smarts,” by Joseph Dolman. And how exactly did the ads lack “street smarts”? Dolman says of Geller: “As a New Yorker who was present in Manhattan on 9/11, I can promise you, I don’t like jihadists any more than she does.” Then he adds: “But is it really wise to bait them? Right now? After what has happened in Egypt, Libya and Lower Manhattan (more than once)?” 

In other words, if Muslims react violently to something, then the proper response of non-Muslims is not to stand up and condemn their bloody madness, and resist it by all possible means, but to practice self-censorship so as not to offend them. 

Dolman is, unfortunately, not singular in his cowardice. He is one of many dhimmi commentators who have recently counseled submission to violent intimidation. Has everyone in the entire country forgotten that the only one responsible for one's actions is oneself? Has the entire world lost sight of the fact that if Muslims commit violence because of this ad or over any other pretext, the fault and responsibility will be theirs and theirs alone? 

Joseph Dolman wants us to be silent, submissive slaves lest we anger our Muslim masters. What is even worse is that Newsday prints this suicidal nonsense. 

Then on Sunday, Pamela Geller appeared on ABC’s Up Close with the Leftist evangelical Christian leader, the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojournors. Wallis, after retailing the usual false charges that the AFDI ad promotes “hate,” claimed that people might get hurt because of Geller's ad, and repeatedly said to her: “Please stop talking.” 

Note how thoroughly Wallis has absorbed the dhimmi mindset: he assumes that if Muslims become violent, it is the fault of non-Muslims, who must adjust their behavior in order to placate them.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.