EUROPEAN CENSORSHIP OF FREE SPEECH HAS BECOME HORRIFIC

Lars Hedegaard had some very sad things to tell The Heritage Foundation:

At yesterday’s debut showing of Silent Conquest: The End of Freedom of Expression in the West at The Heritage Foundation, one of the most shocking moments was a comment by Lars Hedegaard, a Danish historian and chairman of the Danish Free Press Society.

Hedegaard was asked: Could the screening of this movie and the free intellectual discussion of the advance of Islamic Sharia law in the West have taken place at a European—say British—think tank? “No, I don’t think so” was his chilling answer.

The subjects of Islam and Sharia have simply become taboo in many European countries. Free speech advocates, among them moderate Muslim voices, are deeply concerned.

As shown in Silent Conquest, throughout Europe, in Canada, and even in the United States, judicial systems in countries with large Muslim minorities are under pressure to adopt Sharia free speech restrictions. As a result, in many places, including Denmark, it is now a crime to say anything negative about Islam or the prophet Mohammed, regardless of whether such statements are factual or not. The concept that even offensive speech is protected—so fundamental to the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment—is collapsing.

Yes, and it's very grave. The MSM is complicit in all this, and I feel compelled to blame US and even Israeli politicians who do nothing to help countries facing serious danger from Islamofascism. They could do this by speaking out against harmful policies publicly, paying solidarity visits to communities in peril helping recommend what they can do on their part, and calling for foreign governments to amend laws to something that would both protect free speech and enforce better security and self-defense rights. But they're not doing that, and it makes me feel disgusted.