Is Sharia Enforcement Coming to America?

This article first appeared in New English Review.

The 57-member nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which constitutes the largest bloc within the UN, has for years lobbied to have the UN pass a resolution that all member nations should criminalize defamation of religions. In practice, what they mean is defamation of Islam. Given our First Amendment, most would scoff that the US would pass such a law. Yet, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, she met  at least twice with the OIC behind closed doors in Washington and Istanbul. Publicly, she danced around the issue assuring the OIC that they would shame those who spoke out against Islam and its prophet.

Meanwhile in Europe, publicly criticizing Islam can get you criminally charged and dragged into a court of law. Just ask Elisabeth Sabaditsch Wolff in Austria. Just ask Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Ask Tommy Robinson in England. Of course, Europe has no First Amendment. Though it is democratic, if you engage in what they deem hate speech, it is criminalized.

Of course, our Constitution and the First Amendment protect us if we criticize Islam. Even genuine hate speech is considered protected speech in the US unless that speech directly incites violence. Thus, Jews on American college campuses have to endure anti-semitic speech coming from pro-Palestinian students and many of the speakers they invite to speak on campus. It’s the price of having a free society where saying the wrong thing doesn’t bring the police to haul you away.

On the other hand, Mort Zuckerberg engages in censorship on Facebook when Muslims are offended. YouTube will take down videos if they are deemed offensive to Muslims. But that doesn’t involve bringing in the police.

But consider this. On March 14, I attended a public event at Golden West College, a public 2-year college in Orange County California. The event was entitled “Islam 101″, and the invited speaker was Nicole Bovey, a convert to Islam and public information officer at the Islamic Institute of Orange County in Anaheim. She is also part of the Islamic Speakers Bureau. I and a few like-minded friends decided to attend since it was a public event. Since I am linking the full report and video I took, I will just briefly summarize what happened. When we began asking pointed questions about Islam, politely and when called upon for questions, our people were told by a faculty member that the questions were inappropriate. To make matters worse, the campus police were summoned and a couple of our people were made to go outside and talk to the cops.

Now that I have set the stage, here is my own posting on the event as well as the video I took. I encourage the reader to invest the time to watch it in its entirety and decide if our questions merited calling the police.

To be sure, we have written letters to the appropriate Golden West College administrators. If you follow the Frontpage Magazine link, where my post first appeared, you will see the names and contact numbers of these individuals. (Please be respectful, of course.)

We are reaching a dangerous point here in America when merely asking polite but pointed questions about certain aspects of Islam can result in efforts to silence you and summon campus police.