Salim Mansur on Shariah acquiesence

He writes:

At the top of the Islamist demands is to make defamation of religion a punishable offence. Since Judaism and Christianity are open to criticism, even ridicule in free and secular societies of the West, such a demand is to make an exception for Islam.

The trial of Geert Wilders in Amsterdam for offending Muslims indicates the extent to which Holland, one of the most open European countries, has tilted in the direction of becoming a “Shariah-compliant” society.

Holland is not alone in this effort to appease the Islamists. Across the West, a chill has fallen over the fundamental right to think and speak freely about Islam like any other subject of public interest.

The not-so-curious fact that the mainstream media remains silent by not exposing the travesty in bringing Wilders to court for expressing his thoughts on Islam — it also remained silent by not publishing the Danish cartoons that incited a large number of Muslims around the world to rage and commit acts of violence — is proof of how great is the peril of western societies conceding de facto or de jure to Islamist demands for Shariah-based rulings.

There is terrible irony in this. Muslims remain the first victims of a Shariah-governed society, and the imposition of Shariah is the primary cause of the contemporary retardation of Muslim countries.

But the Islamists have succeeded in making the argument that the faith in, and the practice of, Islam is confined by the Shariah, and anything outside of it is non-Islam.

I don't particularly like it when things that are sacred to Christians are mocked, blasphemed, and desecrated in the name of freedom of expression, but a state-imposed solution to prevent it is far worse. And even worse than that is a state-solution that enables the mullahs or the priests or the commissars of any faith--religious or non--to use the levers of state power to punish anyone who disagrees. We're drifting into that now in Canada, with the Jennifer Lynches and Barbara Hallses of this world using state power to enforce their wonky, unpredictable brand of multiculturalism, which is really a form of secular fundamentalism. And that's to say nothing about the either strange denial or tacit awe that some folks on the left have for radical Islam.