http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/berkeleys-jihad-against-bill-maher/

October 29, 2014 by Robert Spencer 18 Comments

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We're In, is now available.

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This whole Bill Maher controversy is as illuminating as it is entertaining. Bill Maher was a darling of the Left when he was criticizing Christianity, but now that he has turned his gimlet eye to Islamic supremacism, the foes of free speech have turned against him with venom. Maher is scheduled to give the fall commencement address at the University of California-Berkeley, but Muslim students there have begun a petition drive to get him canceled.

The Daily Californian reported Sunday that

the Change.org petition was authored by ASUC Senator Marium Navid, who is backed by the Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian Coalition, or MEMSA, and Khwaja Ahmed, an active MEMSA member. The petition, which urges students to boycott the decision and asks the campus to stop him from speaking, has already gathered more than 1,400 signatures as of Sunday.

Anticipating that this petition would be outed as the fascist endeavor it is, Navid explained:

“It’s not an issue of freedom of speech, it’s a matter of campus climate. The First Amendment gives him the right to speak his mind, but it doesn’t give him the right to speak at such an elevated platform as the commencement. That’s a privilege his racist and bigoted remarks don’t give him.”

The campaign against Maher is called “Free Speech, Not Hate Speech.”

“Free Speech, Not Hate Speech”: this is the mechanism that today’s Leftist and Islamic supremacist authoritarians are using to shut down any free and open discussion of how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and oppression. This slogan was thrown at me last May when I spoke at Cal Poly; I responded (as you can see toward the end of this video) by pointing out that “hate speech” is in the eye of the beholder, and the one who is granted the power to determine what is or isn’t “hate speech” has been given extraordinary control over the public discourse, such that any opinions disliked by the ruling elite can be stigmatized and ruled out of bounds by means of this label.

Anyway, this was predictable: now that Bill Maher, despite his impeccable Leftist credentials, has dared to criticize Islam, he is “racist and bigoted,” and must be denied a platform. The reality is that anyone and everyone, no matter who they are and what they have done, is targeted in exactly the same way by Islamic supremacists and Leftists. They are determined that there be no genuine public debate about Islam and violence (and Islamic violence). They are determined to tar those who deviate from the “Islam is a religion of peace” line with smear labels that will make the broadly uninformed majority shun them and be intimidated into thinking that it is wrong to question the mainstream line.
There is no free speech, no free debate, no honest discussion about these issues in American academia today, or in the mainstream media. Maher is so prominent that he has shaken the Left’s stranglehold preventing public discussion of these issues, but they are circling the wagons now, and either Maher will be driven out of the circles of the enlightened elites, or will stop talking about this altogether. My money is on the latter.

There is, however, just a small chance that this targeting of Maher will bring mainstream attention to this neo-fascist effort to destroy the freedom of speech altogether and stifle public debate about jihad and Islamic supremacism.

Certainly the controversy itself has drawn mainstream attention: MSNBC had Ibrahim Hooper of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations on to discuss whether Berkeley should cancel Maher, and Hooper promptly likened Maher to “the grand dragon of the KKK.”

The way that Leftists and Islamic supremacists operate in order to demonize and destroy anyone who dares speak the truth about Islam and jihad is on full display during Hooper’s MSNBC appearance: first, they claim that someone who points out that Islam has doctrines encouraging violence and supremacism is “calling all Muslims terrorists” and charge him or her with racism and bigotry. Then they proceed as if those charges are already established as true, and demand that the truth-teller be denied a platform, canceled from speaking engagements, etc., because of this racism and bigotry.

The next step, if the Islamic supremacist campaign to get Maher disinvited from Berkeley succeeds, will be to use their victory as evidence of the correctness of their claims, when in fact it is only evidence that many event organizers and public officials don’t like controversy and will make whatever concessions they need to make so as to avoid it. If the campaign succeeds, then a few months from now, when Hamas-linked CAIR is trying to get Maher canceled from some other event, “Honest Ibe” Hooper will say, “The University of California at Berkeley was so disgusted with Maher’s bigotry that they canceled his planned appearance as their fall commencement speaker…”
Then a few more cancellations, and it will look as if all decent folk are shunning Maher out of disgust with his “hatred,” when all that is really going on is the victory of Hamas-linked CAIR’s intimidation and smear tactics.

Now what is needed is a public discussion of how Hamas-linked CAIR and other Islamic supremacists are trying to stifle free discussion of the jihad threat, and smear and destroy everyone who dares discuss that threat honestly. How about it, MSNBC?
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