{"id":7868,"date":"2014-09-17T08:32:04","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T15:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7868"},"modified":"2014-09-17T08:32:04","modified_gmt":"2014-09-17T15:32:04","slug":"the-buckley-program-stands-up-for-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-buckley-program-stands-up-for-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"The Buckley Program Stands Up for Free Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo vai FrontPage Magazine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The William F. Buckley Program at Yale University lately showed bravery unusual for an academic institution.\u00a0It has refused to be bullied by the Muslim Students Association and its demand that the Buckley Program rescind an invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak on campus September 15. Hirsi Ali is the vocal Somalian critic of Islamic doctrine whose life has been endangered for condemning the theologically sanctioned oppression of women in Islamic culture. Unlike Brandeis University, which recently rescinded an honorary degree to be given to Hirsi Ali after complaints from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Buckley Program rejected both the MSA\u2019s initial demand, and a follow up one that Hirsi Ali share the stage with one of her critics.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Buckley Program is a rare instance of an academic organization staying true to the ideals of free speech, academic freedom, and the \u201cfree play of the mind on all subjects,\u201d as Matthew Arnold defined liberal education. Most of our best universities have sacrificed these ideals on the altar of political correctness and identity politics. Anything that displeases or discomforts campus special interest groups\u2013\u2013mainly those predicated on being the alleged victims of American oppression\u2013\u2013 must be proscribed as \u201cslurs\u201d or \u201chateful,\u201d even if what\u2019s said is factually true. No matter that these groups are ideologically driven and use their power to silence critics and limit speech to their own self-serving and duplicitous views, the modus operandi of every illiberal totalitarian regime in history. The spineless university caves in to their demands, incoherently camouflaging their craven betrayal of the First Amendment and academic freedom as \u201ctolerance\u201d and \u201crespect for diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the case of Islam, however, this betrayal is particularly dangerous. For we are confronting across the world a jihadist movement that grounds its violence in traditional Islamic theology, jurisprudence, and history. Ignoring those motives and their sanction by Islamic doctrine compromises our strategy and tactics in defeating the jihadists, for we cripple ourselves in the war of ideas. Worse yet, Islamic triumphalism and chauvinism\u2013\u2013 embodied in the Koranic verse that calls Muslims \u201cthe best of nations raised up for the benefit of men\u201d because they \u201cenjoin the right and forbid the wrong and believe in Allah\u201d\u2013\u2013 is confirmed and strengthened by the\u00a0way our elite institutions like universities and the federal government quickly capitulate to special interest groups who demand that we endorse only their sanitized and often false picture of Islam. Such surrender confirms the jihadist estimation of the West as the \u201cweak horse,\u201d as bin Laden said, a civilization with \u201cfoundations of straw\u201d whose wealth and military power are undermined by a collective failure of nerve and loss of morale.<\/p>\n

This process of exploiting the moral degeneration of the West has been going on now for 25 years. It begins, as does the rise of modern jihadism, with the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Islamic revolution. The key event took place in February 1989, when Khomeini issued a fatwa, based on Koran 9.61, against Indian novelist Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses<\/i>, which was deemed \u201cagainst Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran,\u201d as Khomeini said. Across the world enraged Muslims rioted and bombed bookstores, leaving over 20 people dead. More significant in the long run was the despicable reaction of many in the West to this outrage against freedom of speech and the rule of law, perpetrated by the most important and revered political and religious leader of a major Islamic nation.<\/p>\n

Abandoning their principles, bookstores refused to stock the novel, and publishers delayed or canceled editions. Muslims in Western countries publicly burned copies of Rushdie\u2019s novel and encouraged his murder with impunity. Eminent British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper suggested Rushdie deserved such treatment. Thirteen British Muslim barristers filed a formal complaint against the author. In their initial reactions, Western government officials\u00a0were hesitant and timorous. The U.S. embassy in Pakistan eagerly assured Muslims that \u201cthe U.S. government in no way supports or associates itself with any activity that is in any sense offensive or insulting to Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khomeini\u2019s fatwa and the subsequent violent reaction created what Daniel Pipes calls the \u201cRushdie rules,\u201d a speech code that privileges Islam over revered Western traditions of free speech that still are operative in the case of all other religions. Muslims now will determine what counts as an \u201cinsult\u201d or a \u201cslur,\u201d and their displeasure, threats, and violence will police those definitions and punish offenders. Even reporting simple facts of history or Islamic doctrine can be deemed an offense and bring down retribution on violators. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for example, earned the wrath of Muslims in part for her contribution to Theo van Gogh\u2019s film Submission<\/i>, which projected Koranic verses regarding women on the bodies of abused women. Van Gogh, of course, was brutally murdered in the streets of Amsterdam. And this is the most important dimension of the \u201cRushdie rules\u201d: violence will follow any violation of whatever some Muslims deem to be \u201cinsulting\u201d to Islam, even facts. In effect, Western law has been trumped by the shari\u2019a ban on blaspheming Islam, a crime punishable by death.<\/p>\n

The result is the sorry spectacle of groveling and apology we see almost daily from our government, the entertainment industry, and worse yet, universities. Trivial slights and offenses that civilized nations leave to the market place of ideas to sort out are elevated into \u201cslurs\u201d and \u201chate speech\u201d if some Muslim organization deems them so. A reflexive self-censorship has arisen in American society, one based on fear of violent retribution or bad publicity harmful to profits and careers.<\/p>\n

Thus the government officially proscribes words like \u201cjihad\u201d or \u201cMuslim terrorist\u201d from its documents and training materials\u00a0in order to avoid offending Muslims. Similarly the Muslim terrorist, a fixture in recent history since the PLO started highjacking airliners in the 60s, has nearly disappeared from television and movies, replaced by Russians, white supremacists, and brainwashed Americans. And when a Muslim terrorist does appear, his motivations and violence are rationalized as the understandable response to the grievous offenses against his faith and people committed by the U.S. and Israel. Islam is airbrushed from the plot, as in the recent series Tyrant<\/i>, a dramatization of a fictional Arab Muslim state that somehow manages to ignore\u00a0Islam as a political force. More seriously, universities disinvite speakers at the faintest hint of protest from Muslim organizations, even as they accept Gulf-state petrodollars to create \u201cMiddle East Studies\u201d programs that frequently function as apologists and enablers of terrorist violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cFree men have free tongues,\u201d as the Athenian tragedian Sophocles said. One of the pillars of political freedom is free speech. When the ability to speak freely in the public square is extended beyond an elite to a large variety of people with clashing views and ideals, speech necessarily becomes rough and uncivil. Feelings get hurt, passions are aroused, and language becomes coarse and abusive. That\u2019s the price we pay for letting a lot of people speak their minds, and for creating a process in which truth and good ideas can emerge from all this rambunctious, divisive conversation. But when we carve out a special niche for one group, provide it with its own rules, and protect it even from statements of uncomfortable facts, then we compromise that foundational right to have our say without any retribution other than a counterargument. So three cheers for the Buckley Program. It has stood up against intimidation and defended one of our most important and precious freedoms.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2014 FrontPage Magazine. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine The William F. Buckley Program at Yale University lately showed bravery unusual for an academic institution.\u00a0It has refused to be bullied by the Muslim Students Association and its demand that the Buckley Program rescind an invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak on campus September 15. Hirsi Ali […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[28,225,59,33,842,22,120,145,11,216,230],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-22U","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3479,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-few-good-people\/","url_meta":{"origin":7868,"position":0},"title":"A Few Good People","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In the last few years, it has become popular to say that history is determined largely by sweeping inanimate forces of technology, the environment, gender, class or race. We play down the role of individuals \u2014 as if the notion that one person\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2007"","block_context":{"text":"December 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/december-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5811,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/margaret-thatcher-and-the-death-of-feminism\/","url_meta":{"origin":7868,"position":1},"title":"Margaret Thatcher and the Death of Feminism","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 20, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage\u00a0 The death of Margaret Thatcher will no doubt generate much deserved recognition and discussion of her historical significance. 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