Free Speech: A Motorway Pile-Up of Moral Confusion

by Douglas Murray • October 2, 2014 at 5:00 am

If Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not qualified to speak about Islam, then who is? The answer is that the only figure they might accept is someone who does not make any criticisms of Islam.

Her criticisms are often raw because they are true. Able to do nothing about the truth, they try to silence the truth-teller.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaks at the St. Gallen Symposium, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, May 2012. (Image source: International Students' Committee/Wikimedia Commons)

Who has the "right" to talk about Islam? The question arose thanks to the response of a Muslim student society at an American university.

Last week saw the latest in the apparently interminable efforts to make the Somali-born human-rights activist and author Ayaan Hirsi Ali into some kind of pariah. Readers will recall the atrocious treatment of Hirsi Ali by Brandeis University earlier this year, when the "liberal arts university" invited Hirsi Ali to speak and then withdrew the invitation at the behest of certain Muslim students and anti-free-speech activists among the university's faculty staff. As said at the time, the university's dropping of Hirsi Ali was a classic case of dropping a firefighter in order to appease arsonists.

Continue Reading Article

Why the Mullah is Smiling

by Nir Boms and Shayan Arya • October 2, 2014 at 4:30 am

Acknowledging the new ISIS danger while ignoring Iran's role in fomenting sectarian conflict in Syria and Iraq is not only shortsighted but dangerous. ISIS is not about to acquire nuclear capability, at least yet. Iran is.

If ISIS, a 25,000-strong militia, poses a serious threat, how can one disregard the 550,000-strong military of the soon-to-be nuclear Iranian regime?

The International Atomic Energy Agency issued a confidential report, which states that "little progress is being made," and that the Iran has implemented only three out of five nuclear transparency steps to which it had committed to completing before August 25. Does the West actually no longer view a nuclear Iran as a pressing threat?

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani appears to be making new friends: Rouhani meets with U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron in New York, September 24, 2014. (Image source: Iran president's office)

Although physically weak from recent routine prostate surgery, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, emerged smiling from his hospital bed -- and for a good reason. He has never been stronger. From Syria to Iraq, from Tehran to Gaza and UN headquarters in New York, he feels empowered and this shows nowhere better than in Geneva.

Khamenei has many reasons to smile. The sanctions that were crippling his regime just a year ago appear to be receding. Companies from Europe to Asia are lining up to do business in Iran. His significant efforts to assist Bashar Assad in Syria and to keep Hezbollah afloat have paid off as well. Many in Washington have begun to see Assad as a potential ally against what they believe to be the real threat, namely ISIS. His disciple, President Hassan Rouhani, has just met British Prime Minister David Cameron in New York. Rouhani appears to be making new friends.

Continue Reading Article

To subscribe to the this mailing list, go to http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/list_subscribe.php

Gatestone Institute