The case of Robert Redeker, a French high school teacher, marks a serious contrast. For having written a passionate op-ed in a French paper criticizing the tradition of violence modeled by Muhammad and inherent to Islam -- the threat that fulfills sharia's promise -- Redeker received death threats from Muslims that forced him into hiding under police protection. It's not that he didn't receive a visa to visit another country; he's no longer safe in his own.
So let's get this straight. The U.S. government has determined (mirabile dictu) that we, the people, can get along without Ramadan, which is not at all to say that anybody is blocking his lousy "ideas." The would-be assassins of Robert Redeker plot to kill the teacher for his "ideas" critical of Islam and Muhammad, thereby trying to deter him or anyone else from repeating them. So where is the crime against free speech? Where, to go back to Thomas Jefferson, is the real "human interposition" disarming truth of her "natural weapons" -- free argument and debate?
It is in this nightmarish climate of public intimidation that the intrepid scholar Robert Spencer has come out with his latest book, "The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion," (Regnery, 2006). Relying exclusively on Muslim sources, Spencer crafts a portrait of Muhammad that, for about the first time since political correctness gave Muhammad a pacifist makeover, places his violent, misogynist and supremacist example and teachings under an analytical light. Why? "The question of Muhammad -- of who he was, what he did, and what he believed -- is key to understanding today's global conflict with the jihadists, and what we must do about it," Spencer writes.
Sounds like an important topic for "free argument and debate" -- maybe as important as Mark Foley's IM's, or, for that matter, Ramadan's visa. Will our media martyrs initiate free argument and debate about it? Let's hope. Without her "natural weapons," it is truth who becomes the martyr.