Posted on 05/06/2015 3:42:00 AM PDT by markomalley
Below are the video and transcript to Robert Spencers speech at the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest, sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative and held in Garland, Texas.
Robert Spencer: Geert Wilders mentioned that the PEN Writers Association that was founded in order to defend the freedom of expression is giving an award to the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists Pamela spoke about this as well and that 145 of the members of PEN, including some very prominent writers Joyce Carol Oates, who you mayve heard of, and some others have pulled out. Because they say that it is manifesting cultural arrogance. They said that the French manifested cultural arrogance in drawing Muhammad and allowing Charlie Hebdo to draw Muhammad.
They dont seem concerned about the cultural arrogance of the assassins who murdered these cartoonists in the name of a blasphemy law that the cartoonists did not hold. They didnt care about that imposition of one culture over another; they only cared that the French were following their own long tradition of free expression.
Now, thats a terrible thing for an organization thats designed to defend the freedom of expression. Its a terrible dissent. And it bespeaks a dissent in our whole culture in general.
You will see around the room you probably have already noticed as you were coming in that we have some of the entries into the cartoon contest blown up. And we also have interspersed some historical images of Muhammad.
Now, its very noteworthy take a look as youre going out this evening take a look at some of these, because youll find them very interesting. Some of them are ancient Persian images made by Muslims. And nobody got killed. Nobody got death threats. Nobody was called a racist. They depict Muhammad cursing women in hell, they depict Muhammad beheading the Qurayza Jews, of which he massacred between 600 and 900, according to his earliest biographer. These are depictions by Muslims of Muhammad.
Some of them youll see, his face is covered. But in some of them, hes just depicted as he is in the cartoons that are more contemporary.
Even more important, there are some images you will find from earlier centuries in the West, when we did have more cultural confidence. Dante Alighieri, the author of The Divine Comedy its a three-part allegory, one of the greatest poems in Western civilization, the great Italian poem. And he goes into hell and then into purgatory, and then into heaven.
And in hell, he meets all these people whove been damned to hell. One of them is Muhammad. Because Dante was a Christian. And he viewed Muhammad as somebody who had tried to turn people away from the truth faith and was thus condemned.
His depiction of Muhammad in hell was made into a fresco which is on the wall of a church in Italy. Its been there for centuries. Now its under armed guard. It was never under armed guard in the 17th century, the 18th century, the 19th century. Only now.
Why is that? Because now Muslims are, in the first place, much more present in the West than they were. But theyre a much more aggressive presence in the West. And that is an aggression fueled in large part by our own cultural weakness.
(Applause)
A very good friend of mine told me right before I left for this event that youre just poking them in the eye, youre trying to provoke them. You know, why are you doing that? Youre the one thats being offensive. And this was a friend, you know, and I was kind of taken aback. And I had to stop and think well, what exactly is wrong with that?
And whats wrong with that is that this is only offensive because Muslims have made it offensive. This is only something, as Geert Wilders said, that needs armed guards because Muslims will kill you for drawing Muhammad. It would never be offensive otherwise.
Consider this the murderers of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists had an accomplice. And as they were murdering the cartoonists, the accomplice went to a kosher supermarket in Paris and murdered four Jews. What have they done? They didnt draw Muhammad. How did they offend Muslims? They offended Muslims by being Jewish.
Okay, so we have to not draw Muhammad, because thatll poke them in the eye and offend them. And then we have to not be Jewish, because that will poke them in the eye and offend them. And then what? Okay, I guess pork and alcohol are right out. Okay, and then what? Take humor, yes.
And the Islamic State the Islamic State is beheading people and taking sex slaves, and subjugating the Christians under the hegemony of the Islamic law. And theyre doing it all on the basis of Koranic directives. And so thats all Islamic. So I guess we cant say a word about that. Because that would poke them in the eye and offend Muslims.
And you see, step by step by step, were ending up going in the direction of accepting Islamic law. And every Western media outlet that refused to publish the Muhammad cartoons was accepting Islamic blasphemy law.
(Applause)
And so Id say its time for a little cultural self-assertiveness. In the 19th century, they didnt have these problems. Theres the famous story that Ill close with from the British Raj, the British colonization of India. And in India, the Hindus not the Muslims, but the Hindus had the practice of sati, where the widow, the wife of a man who had just died, would be thrown upon his funeral pyre and be burnt to death. And the British outlawed it.
And the Hindu delegation came to General Sir Charles Napier, who was the governor general of the area, and they said to him you cant outlaw this, this is our culture. And he said oh, its your culture, oh. Well then, very well. You live out your culture. But we also have a culture. And our culture is that men who force women to throw themselves on fires will be hanged by the neck until dead.
(Laughter)
So you live out your culture, and then well live out ours.
(Applause)
In the West, we should be saying exactly that. Yeah, okay, youre going to kill for people who draw Muhammad? Then we will protect people who draw Muhammad. And we will hunt you down and kill you for trying to kill people for drawing Muhammad.
(Applause)
The freedom of speech is not an end in itself. The freedom of speech was put into the Constitution as our fundamental protection against tyranny. If the governing authority or any power that rules in whatever way and as Pamela noted, you want to know who rules over you, then find out who you cannot criticize. The people who have the clout, the people who have the power if they are able to silence by the rule of law, by the force of law, those whose opinions they dont like, then a free society is dead. Then they can do whatever they wish unopposed, and dissent is impossible.
And thats what this is all about. This is not about insulting Muslims or offending Muslims or poking them in the eye, or even about drawing Muhammad, ultimately. Its just that thats where theyre making the line, and thats where were going to stand. And were going to stand against tyranny and for freedom.
(Applause)
And so thank you so much for coming. And I will turn the proceedings over to Pamela to close the nights event.
Mark
Excellent speech.
I love how the liberals are always creating new crimes to accuse us of in order to justify their own insanity.
So now it’s “cultural arrogance” that we are guilty of.
Well, Spencer hints at it in his speech but I don’t think he hit on it directly so I’ll help him out here and finish his speech for him:
What the West is really guilty of — in the eyes of the left and their new attack-dog ally islam — our real crime: Cultural Existence.
Why are leftists and muslims such close allies? Because they both want all Free Westerners dead.
Imagine a child walks onto a playground and announces that, unlike all other children, he must not be made fun of. He alone must be respected to a degree that no one can so much as criticize him. That kid would be lucky to get off the playground without getting his face rubbed in the dirt
islam insists that we respect their repulsive prophet. We don’t and won’t. I won’t salute a foreign flag and I won’t respect a drunken, murderous pedophile responsible for the enslavement of billions of people throughout history
Liberalism, Socialism and Islam must be destroyed.
Ditto!
“Cultural arrogance”! Amazing.
So it was OK to depict Muhammad in Persia, but it’s not OK to do it today? Somehow, NOW it violates their religion or something?
Joyce Carol Oates. Another cowardly enemy islamist facilitator identified.
As if we couldn’t have guessed.
What you said.
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