This is an unconscionable infringement on the freedom of speech, and an indication of the dismal state of affairs in England today: a conference on Sharia and human rights in a London university is canceled after an Islamic supremacist thug photographs and threatens the participants that he will kill them if they say anything he dislikes about Muhammad.
English authorities should have arrested this man and should be keeping him and the group he was with under close scrutiny. They should have provided police in sufficient numbers both to allow this conference to go on, and to protect the participants and their families, as well as to track down and prosecute the Muslim thug and his comrades. Yes, this would be a huge expense. It would also be a statement: that this kind of thuggery will not be tolerated, and the freedom of speech will be protected.
It was ironic that this happened at a One Law For All conference. One Law For All is the project of Maryam Namazie, who is just another kind of freedom-hating thug. Her opposition to Sharia does not stem from a commitment to genuinely free societies, for as a Marxist, although she may oppose those who behead people while shouting “Allahu akbar” and post the video to YouTube, she doesn’t oppose those who enslave people in gulags and shoot them in the back of the head for being “enemies of the people.” Her opposition to Sharia is not a fight for freedom; Hitler and Stalin fought each other, too, but that didn’t make either one of them freedom fighters.
Indeed, Namazie has targeted those who are actually working to protect the freedom of speech and the principle of equality of rights of all people against Sharia and Islamization. She has libeled me and others with outright lies, which she refuses to retract, about what we have said and what we stand for. She has retailed Palestinian jihadist propaganda about Israel, claiming that it engaged in “genocide” in Gaza -- thereby spitting in the face of all genuine victims of genocide and advancing an antisemitic lie that was crafted in aid of the jihad against Israel.
And so one gang of thugs has targeted another. The freedom of speech should in all cases be protected, but the conflict between these Muslim thugs and Maryam Namazie’s gang is not one between the enemies of freedom and its defenders. It’s just a turf war.
“Islamist stops university debate with threats of violence,” from the National Secular Society, January 17 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
Ms Waters was due to give a talk on behalf of the One Law for All Campaign on 16 January but before it started, a man entered the lecture theatre, stood at the front with a camera and filmed the audience. He then said that he knew who everyone was, where they lived and if he heard anything negative about the Prophet, he would track them down.
The man also filmed students in the foyer and threatened to murder them and their families. On leaving the building, he joined a large group of men, apparently there to support him. Students were told by security to stay in the lecture theatre for their own safety.
Jennifer Hardy, President of Queen Mary’s Atheism, Secularism and Humanism Society, who organised the event said: “This event was supposed to be an opportunity for people of different religions and perspectives to debate, at a university that is supposed to be a beacon of free speech and debate.
“Only two complaints had been made to the Union prior to the event, and the majority of the Muslim students at the event were incredibly supportive of it going ahead. These threats were an aggressive assault on freedom of speech and the fact that they led to the cancellation of our talk was severely disappointing for all of the religious and non-religious students in the room who wanted to engage in debate.”...
