"Koran Abuse" vs. Free Speech

In today's TIA Daily, Robert Tracinski makes some interesting observations and follows them with what he hopes is a rhetorical question.

The blockbuster facts unveiled in [the] article ["Inmates Alleged Koran Abuse"] include a dozen allegations that the Koran was kicked, thrown to the floor, or withheld as punishment." But as with the original Newsweek story, the most important issue is not whether this reporting is accurate or whether interrogators are actually employing these tactics. The first question that should pop into your mind when you read this piece is: "Koran abuse"?!?

Since when did it become a crime to mistreat a book?

Good point, but if John Conyers gets his way, it just might soon be a crime to mistreat a book! (HT: American Thinker)

Now, for the eye-popper of the week: U.S. Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) has submitted a House resolution to protect religion, most specifically Islam, from "disrespect."

From the resolution:

Whereas the Quran is the holy book for Muslims who recite passages from it in prayer and learn valuable lessons about peace, humanity and spirituality;

Whereas it should never be official policy of the United States Government to disparage the Quran, Islam, or any religion in any way, shape, or form;

Whereas mistreatment of prisoners and disrespect toward the holy book of any religion is unacceptable and against civilized humanity;

...

[The House of Representatives] recognizes that the Quran, the holy book of Islam, as any other holy book of any religion, should be treated with dignity and respect[.]

Read it all. This is just the tip of the P.C. iceberg. While this is just a resolution, the very fact that something like this is being brought up in Congress at all is alarming.

Just as Tracinski observes later, the allegedly secular left, with its creed of sacrificing Western culture to any and all others, is in some respects a greater danger of placing us on the fast track to theocracy than the religious right.

The chief demand of Islamists--a reflection of their own spiritual inferiority complex--is to have dominance over others, to enforce "respect" for Islam, tolerating Christians and Jews only in the second-class status of "dhimmitude," in which they must constantly show their deference to Islam. Combine this new hysteria over "Koran abuse" with the Italian court case seeking to prosecute Oriana Fallaci for "defaming" Islam ... and what is the pattern that emerges? The doctrines of the left are attempting to deliver us into dhimmitude without a fight, through our own self-imposed obedience to Islamic "sensitivities."

This is how the left's altruism trumps its secularism. They don't mind delivering the West over to theocracy--so long as it is not our own theocracy, but the theocracy of others.

I would add that, at least with the open attempts at achieving theocracy on the part of the religious right, ordinary people will oppose them. However, with the leftist news media in a tizzy over "Koran abuse" and loony lefties like Conyers attempting to place a higher priority on reverence for the Koran than on freedom of speech, we stand more likely to be hoodwinked into taking the critical first steps down the road to theocracy, goaded by our own sense of goodwill.

-- CAV

Crossposted to the Egosphere