A MANIFESTO AGAINST ISLAMISM

UPDATED with dissenting view.

from: http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004683.htm

Danish reader P.H.N. sends an important document published today in the Jyllands-Posten from 12 brave intellectuals:

MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a
new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious
totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular
values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of
Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for
these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the
ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West
and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats
and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations.
The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to
impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state:
nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism
and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and
secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of
domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the
others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or
discriminated people.

We reject cultural relativism, which consists in accepting that men and women
of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and
secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to
renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an
unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with
stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical
spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all
dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century
should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri
Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima
Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

Danish blogger Agora reports: The manifesto "will be brought in the
French weekly Charlie Hebdo tomorrow, Wednesday. Charlie Hebdo has urged other
papers to print it, as a show of solidarity."

Show Sammenhold! Spread
the word far and wide.

From Brussels Journal

I cannot state this any better than Dr. Jos Verhulst, in his contribution to our Dutch-language section yesterday:
The great public secret behind the whole issue of the Danish cartoons is the following. Nowhere does the core text of the New Testament argue for censorship. There is not a single instance where the New Testament states that a non-Christian should be persecuted for his convictions or statements. With regard to those with whom it is not possible for Christians to co-exist, Christ simply preached secession: “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.” (Matthew, 10:14). On the other hand, Christ did not allow himself to be censored: He said what He had to say, He “insulted” and “offended” the pharisees, and for this He was persecuted and finally murdered. The core text of Islam is different. It explicitly calls for the persecution and submission through violence of all who hold other beliefs.It is true that throughout history there have been Christians and Christian churches who, in contradiction with the Christian core text, have engaged in persecution and censorship, and that there have been Muslims who have pleaded for freedom of expression and thought. Even today there are instances where the Vatican calls for censorship (see the Osservatore Romano of 5 February) while Dyab Abu Jahjah calls for freedom. But the dynamics of the core texts that have shaped both civilisations through the centuries, are diametrically opposed. Freedom lovers had the support of the one core text but not of the other.In the West the general development, against all the authorities, through all the turmoil and in spite of all the regressions, has continued to be towards increasing individualism, freedom of thought, development of science, abolition of slavery and the blossoming of the ideals of equal rights, democracy and radically free speech. The world of Islam, on the contrary, developed into a “close society” where the individual submits to the community.And now he stands at the dawn of the 21st century: the maligned individual, unsteady on his own feet after executing the inner breach with every form of imposed authority, uncertain, blinking in the brightness of the only god he is willing to recognise – Truth itself, stretching out before him unfathomably deep – full of doubt but aware that he, called to non-submission, must seek the road to the transcendent, carrying as his only property, his most valuable heirloom from his turbulent past, that one gold piece that means the utmost to him, his precious ideal of complete freedom of thought, of speech and of scientific inquiry. That is the unique advance that he received to help him in his long and difficult quest.Meanwhile he is being beleaguered and threatened on all sides; from out of the darkness voices call him to submit and retreat; they shout that the gold in his hands is worthless, while the brightness ahead of him still makes it almost impossible for him te see what lies in store. In short: what this contemporary individual needs most of all is courage, great courage. And the will to be free and to see, which is tantamount to the will to live.
This, in our humble opinion, is a far more appropriate “manifesto” than the one published in Charlie Hebdo today. The battle that is being waged today is a battle between those who defend the right of individuals against the right of collectivities.
The Islamists and the secularists (including the priests and bishops among them) have more in common than the Islamists and the Christians (including the agnostics among them), because the latter acknowledge that at the heart of Christianity is the individual with his individual responsibility before God. Without Christianity, individual responsibility would not have become the centre of European civilization. It was the French Revolution that jeopardized this tradition and that became the root of collectivism, with its socialist, fascist, national-socialist and communist excesses. From this perspective even Jihadism is more a child of secularism than of religion.