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"Can't they take a joke?" That's the question that came up after the 2005 Danish cartoon controversy and now, again, after the massacre at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The suspected killers obviously reflect a tiny minority of extreme religious fanatics, but the question made us wonder: What is the role of satire in the Muslim world? First let's establish that saying "the Muslim world" is like saying "the Christian world" or Africa: We're talking one and a half billion people all over the globe — of different races, ethnicities and languages — who believe different things. That said,...

There is very dangerous legislation making its way through both the House of Representatives and Senate that will finish the United States. The sharia bill calls for Islamic blasphemy laws — the criminalization of speech that offends or insults — who, exactly? Well, that is up to the enforcer, is it not? On Wednesday, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced “The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014″ (S.2219), which seeks “to examine the prevalence of hate crime and hate speech on the Internet, television, and radio to better address such crimes.” Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) introduced a companion bill in the...

First published on FrontPage Magazine. By Enza Ferreri In British law, race and religion are increasingly becoming deliberately confused for the purpose of accusing critics of Islam of racism. A soccer fan was arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred after allegedly ripping up pages of the Quran and throwing them at a match. While on bail, he was also banned from attending any football games, visiting St Andrew's - the stadium of the incident -, and going to any city where his team Middlesbrough was playing. Insults against Islam are taken very seriously in Britain, and the world...

In British law, race and religion are increasingly becoming deliberately confused for the purpose of accusing critics of Islam of racism. A soccer fan was recently arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred after allegedly ripping up pages of the Qur’an and throwing them at a match. While on bail, he was also banned from attending any football games, visiting St Andrew’s – the stadium of the incident -, and going to any city where his team Middlesbrough was playing.Insults against Islam are taken very seriously in Britain, and the world of soccer is particularly sensitive to them. After the...

<p>At least 28 people have died in street battles between Bangladeshi police and tens of thousands of Islamists, officials said Monday, deepening the divide between the secular government and religious hardliners.</p> <p>In some of the fiercest violence to rock the capital since independence four decades ago, hundreds more people were reported to have been injured as riot police broke up a mass rally near a key commercial district.</p>

In Cairo on Wednesday, a Coptic Christian blogger named Alber Saber was convicted of blasphemy and “contempt of religion.” There’s a tragic irony: As any of the country’s Christians can tell you, contempt of religion is not merely permitted but encouraged in the new, post-Mubarak Egypt. What is criminal, what has become increasingly perilous, is any criticism of Islam.Nor is truth a defense. Another Egyptian court recently upheld the blasphemy conviction of Makarem Diab, also a Coptic Christian. Diab had gotten into a discussion with a Muslim acquaintance, Abd al-Hameed, who, in the course of mocking Diab’s faith, insisted that Jesus...

State Dept. Official to Attend OIC Meeting Today on Banning ‘Defamation of Islam’ UPDATE: OIC Scrubs Website, Screenshot Added, Cover-Up Begins byPatrick PooleBio November 18, 2012 - 11:18 pm UPDATE: Well, that didn’t last long. Earlier this morning before I posted this item the OIC press release noted that U.S. Consul General in Jeddah Anne Casper would be attending the OIC’s meeting: The Session will be attended by Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC Secretary General. It will be chaired by Ambassador Ahmad Taib , Director General of the Branch of the Saudi Foreign Ministry, Makkah Al-Mukarrammah region. It will...

“Criminalisation of ‘Islamophobia’:” the “Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s” legal jihad By ICLA Admin • on October 11, 2012 PRINTCOMMENT FEEDSTUMBLE ITDIGG ITDEL.ICIO.USFACEBOOK You will find the forum of Alexandre del Valle in this week’s Atlantico * Since the scandal surrounding the Islamophobic film “Innocence of Muslims” erupted on an Egyptian Islamist channel on the occasion of the anniversary of September 11th, much ink and blood has flowed. The fanatical Salafists resurrected a film (which previously had gone totally unnoticed) which was attributed to a US-Egyptian, who himself had attempted to gain the endorsement of “Zionist Jewish donors.” This version has naturally found...

Title: "Coming to America: OIC to Impose Sharia (Islamic) Law via UN to develop a "legally binding institutional instrument" to Kill Free Speech about Islam and jihad" Aspiring to the caliphate .............. So what can we hope to see coming out of the international Islamic supremacists conference in Chicago this week? First read Bat Ye'or, the world's leading scholar on Islam in the West and Islamic antisemitism in the American Thinker -- The OIC and the Modern Caliphate: The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is a religious and political organization. Close to the Muslim World League of the Muslim...

This is fine news indeed, especially since he says he is giving up in the face of immovable opposition from the U.S. and Europe. But with so many recent calls for the imposition of Islamic blasphemy laws in the West under the guise of "hate speech" laws, and with many of them coming from Western journalists, we're not quite out of the woods yet in regard to Islamic supremacist assaults upon the freedom of speech. "West's free speech stand bars blasphemy ban - OIC," by Tom Heneghan for Reuters, October 15 (thanks to David): (Reuters) - Western opposition has made...

The U.N. General Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution condemning the stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion, and urging countries to take effective steps “to address and combat such incidents"

The statement Tuesday from the U.S. embassy in Cairo apologizing to Muslims and condemning “the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims”—even as an angry, threatening mob was gathering outside the embassy compound—was no aberration. Though subsequently denounced by both the White House and the State Department, it has to be seen as part and parcel of Obama Administration policy, and it is not surprising at all that it would be the first reaction of the embassy’s communication staff. As recently as December 19, 2011, the U.S. voted for and was instrumental in passing “U.N....

No word yet on what the violation was, but I assume it must be far more serious than using an alias or a computer. Given the insanity of the past two weeks, replete with the White House nudging Google to pull the video off of YouTube and the State Department running ads on Pakistani TV to apologize for a movie they had nothing to do with, I can’t quite believe the DOJ would risk the perception that they’re punishing this guy for a thoughtcrime unless something serious was involved. There has to be a real crime underlying this. Right? The...

But a recent news report from the region suggests a more direct connection between the violence in Benghazi and the video that sparked the protests, and sources at the State Department and in the Pentagon, speaking to Fox News on the condition of anonymity, say investigators are still determining if there is a legitimate link. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/16/state-department-hasnt-ruled-out-role-anti-islam-video-in-libya-strike-sources/#ixzz29bCvQKzR

Sounding less like a supposed foreign policy expert and more like someone who's been listening to way too much late, late night left-wing radio, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed to see the outlines of a "conspiracy" in the making of the anti-Mohammed movie trailer. Saying "it's not an issue of freedom of speech entirely," Jimmy Carter's former National Security Adviser suggested on Morning Joe today that the makers of the movie could be held "liable" for the deaths of the US Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. He recommended that the United States should "investigate and crack down" on "evil forces"...

Over two centuries ago a group of British colonists huddling amid the forests and rivers of a new continent decided what they could and could not say by killing enough soldiers and mercenaries that the people who had been in charge of their speech decided they should try their luck somewhere where the regulating was easier. This state of affairs in which the country that those colonists formed became and remains one of the very few places in the world, even among Western democracies, where freedom of speech is absolute, came about through stirring speeches, deeply felt debates, classical ideas...

MICHIGAN MUSLIMS RALLY AGAINST FIRST AMENDMENT Commentary The Detroit News by: Henry Payne Friday, September 28, 2012 From the event's website: "The gathering will be attended by over 1,000 community members, clergy, community leaders and public officials of all persuasions who continue to reject the messages of hate and Islamaphobia that have escalated in recent months and years, most recently with the production of the infamous film 'Innocence of Muslims.' " Photo Credit:Facebook Led by a newspaper publisher, Muslim activists will call for putting limits on American free speech at a Dearborn rally this evening. You can't make this stuff...

The New York Post reported Egyptian-American columnist Mona Eltahawy has been arrested for defacing an anti-Muslim ad in the New York subway system. The video shows her spraying pink paint on the ad while a supporter of the ad tries to block her. She's a journalist for censorship. Eltahawy, a former Reuters correspondent, has been a recent favorite of CNN and MSNBC’s weekend morning shows to discuss Egypt, and she often smears together the Islamist “right wing” and the American right wing, as she did on Melissa Harris-Perry just 11 days ago [video and transcript below]: Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2012/09/26/cnn-and-msnbc-pundit-arrested-vandalizing-anti-muslim-ad-ny-subway-syste#ixzz27cSJt84l

Mideast Protests Foreshadowing More Blasphemy Laws? CBNNews.com Tuesday, September 18, 2012 Egypt has ordered the arrest of seven U.S.-based Coptic Christians for their alleged involvement in the making of the anti-Islam film that has sparked protests from Muslims worldwide. Demands like this, as well as the violent attacks on U.S. missions in the Middle East, have created a foreign relations crisis. Now, many are wondering if more needs to be done by the Obama administration as well as the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol. Blasphemy laws restricting any negativity towards the Islamic faith are in place throughout the...

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomes Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu to Washington this week, it is critical that Americans pay attention to what these two leaders intend to do. From 12 to 14 December 2011, working teams from the Department of State (DoS) and the OIC are going to discuss implementation mechanisms that could impose limits on freedom of speech and expression. The OIC's purpose, as stated explicitly in its April 2011 4th Annual Report on Islamophobia, is to criminalize "incitement to hatred and violence on religious grounds." Incitement is to be...