Free Speech Leads to Death Threats

For some reason, every article in the Sunday Times News Review section irritated me this week. Melvyn Bragg has an article on "Twelve Books that Changed the World" and it never caught fire, even though I agree with his list and his thinking - including Magna Carta and the William Willberforce speech on the abolition of slavery. Books DO cause explosions in the mind. Maybe it was the big photo of 1867 football players looking like prisoners in their striped gear that put me off.

Or maybe the article above it, about some blind British guy who lived with his internet sweetheart in America and is shocked, shocked that he would be accused of breaking her 14 month old baby's bones, so he left the country and had to be extradited. Isn't life just so unfair?

Or the fawning article about Kate Winslet, just a regular mom living on the beach in LA. I actually like Kate Winslet a lot. She doesn't understand American fish fingers but that's no reason to feel irritation.

Big photo of frizzy haired Anita Roddick above an article about her selling Body Shop to L'Oreal, like that's a bad thing. I haven't bought a Body Shop product in years. Their hair care is rubbish and I'm very particular about my skin care regime. The only good thing about Body Shop is the scents they use but L'occitane is just a block away and their scented products are heavenly.

Then an article by Andrew Sullivan blaming Bush and his administration for the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Jeez, this is such old misrepresentation. I thought we were over this and it had finally been acknowledged by even very stupid people that American States are run by elected officials like their governor, say, or mayor of the city. Let me make this easy for you - Bush doesn't run Louisiana, it's illegal. The article goes on to talk about how hard working and tired everyone in the administration is and even describes Donald Rumsfeld as incompetent. Old old old. Didn't we hear all this with Ronald Reagan. Wasn't Churchill supposed to be napping all the time. Slow news day clearly.

But hey, not quite, they've managed to squeeze in, on page 9, a tidy little article about the brave little women speaking out against the mean old forces of evil in the world. Good on you dears, here's a nice pat on the head.

But wait! This article doesn't suck.

True, it sets the scene by showing how fearful Dr. Sultan's husband is, after all his wife has been receiving death threats since speaking her mind on television. Speaking her mind? Pointing out the obvious more like, too bad she's in LA, some admissions staff at Yale could have done with hearing her message before accepting a male Taliban official onto the student body.

I love what she said:

"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilisations. It is a clash between civilisation and backwardness, between the civilised and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between human rights on the one hand and the violation of these rights on the other, between those who treat women like beasts and those who treat them like human beings."

Typing that felt good. I like the beats too, the triads, the use of the word between to set the scale, the spectrum, here high, here low. Very simple to understand. Hey Andrew, hey Fukuyima (boy you have to be careful typing that!), check out this lady. What, it doesn't fit with your world view or agenda, sorry, sorry I mentioned it.

The Sunday Times calls her "controversial" and says some have denounced her as a "heretic" who deserves to die. Who ever thinks that doesn't believe in free speech for a start, I mean, that's easy to comprehend, right?

Well, maybe not. I'm constantly amazed a people who have swallowed what the biased media have fed them, just gobbled it up without a moment's reflection. But those people won't be reading my blog.

The way to win the propaganda war we've got on our hands here is to highlight, laud and magnify the brave, intelligent, passionate, revolutionary souls who take their life in their hands to try and change the course of the world.

Dr. Sultan says stupendously shocking things like:

"We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."

"Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

Doesn't she rock!

After she witnessed the murder of her university teacher she experienced a turning point, "I began to question every single teaching."

From the article:

"Sultan has no intention of stopping her attacks on Islam even though she and her family in Syria have been threatened. Two of her brothers have been interrogated by the Syrian secret police."

Forget movies about Joe McCarthy and nefarious deeds of 50 years ago, here's a up to the minute movie idea that really does have the power to show us what can happen in our world when the forces of darkness run out of control.

But movie makers are a sensible lot. They see the restricted life of Ayaan Hirsi Ali who has spoken out against Islamic attitudes and practices like female circumcision and they note the horrific murder of her friend, film director Theo van Gogh and they stick with Cia conspiracy stories. Very wise, very safe, no death threats there.