May 1, 2015 – By Robert Spencer – Jihad Watch

Mona Walter grew up a Muslim in Somalia. When she moved to Sweden, she started studying Islam, and found that she did not like what she was learning. Now she has left Islam and is called an “Islamophobe” and worse.

What should she have done? Stayed in a religion she disliked and believed to be false so as to avoid threats and opprobrium? What should she do now? Stay silent for fear of charges of “Islamophobia” that inevitably come to everyone who dares utter a critical word about Islam and jihad?

In the West today one must like Islam, or is considered to have some kind of moral defect. One need not like Christianity or Judaism, or socialism or capitalism or democracy or communism, but one must like and respect Islam, or you will be considered to be “hateful,” “bigoted,” and “racist,” as well as “Islamophobic.”

This is one reason why AFDI and Jihad Watch are co-sponsoring the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in the Dallas area Sunday. The point is not mockery of Islam. The point is not poking religious people in the eye. The point is defending the principles of free speech and free inquiry, without which society and human beings are not free, but are slaves to the people in power. Those who wield the real power are not necessarily those who hold office. Those who wield the real power are those whom one dares not criticize, to say nothing of mocking, on pain of violent reprisal: if they’re allowed to frighten people into silence, then essentially they can do whatever they wish, knowing that no one will dare to cross them.

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