What the Saudi Prince's Visit Really Means

by Ahmed Charai • March 21, 2018 at 5:00 am

Perhaps the most dramatic Saudi reform is the one that has received virtually no attention in America. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has led an effort to sweep out the Muslim Brotherhood from teaching and leadership positions in elementary, middle and high schools as well as colleges and universities.
MBS is kicking a dragon and he knows it.
The stakes of his fight with the Brotherhood could not be higher. If MBS succeeds, Saudi Arabia returns to pre-1979 roots, with movie theaters, women in the workplace, and features of a modern developing country. If MBS fails, he will be killed by the Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia will become more repressive than ever.
The global stakes of MBS's internal fight with the Brotherhood are large, too. If the crown price wins, nearly all Saudi funding for violent Islamic radicals ends — and if he dies, it grows to new heights.
His "Vision 2030" is the biggest planned change in any country since Turkey's Ataturk or Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew. With America's encouragement, Saudi Arabia could lead a regional transformation that would be truly historic.

President Donald Trump (right) shakes hands with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House on March 20, 2018, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)

Saudi Arabia, with the visit of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the United States this week, opens a new front in its war with Iran.

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France: Free Speech on Trial - Again

by Robbie Travers • March 21, 2018 at 4:00 am

Is the real, secret, goal of the French state to have no one who disagrees with it speak out?
Marine Le Pen did not suggest that all Muslims are terrorists. She did not suggest that anyone should use violence against Muslims. She did not even suggest that French people should take action against Islam.
Marine Le Pen should not be prosecuted for alerting the French to the dangers of an organisation that still threatens to invade their capital and murder their children.

Marine Le Pen. (Photo by Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images)

"Free speech can't just apply to those you agree with," the editor of Spiked Online, Brendan O'Neill, once said. Politically correct speech does not need protecting. The United States' First Amendment exists precisely to protect the minority from the majority and to protect unpopular opinions from those who would silence them.

On March 2, French prosecutors decided that Marine Le Pen should be prosecuted for drawing attention on Twitter to the atrocities committed by Islamic State. They apparently decided that Le Pen's message, even if factually correct, should not be heard.

Le Pen's "crime," the prosecutors allege, is that in a series of tweets, she posted disturbing images of victims of Islamic State, thereby exposing the crimes against humanity that group have been committing in the Levant.

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