Our fundamental rights are under attack.
By Andrew C. M Carthy
In Cairo on Wednesday, a Coptic Christian blogger named Alber Saber was convicted of blasphemy and “contempt of religion.” There’s a tragic irony: As any of the country’s Christians can tell you, contempt of religion
is not merely permitted but encouraged in the new, post-Mubarak Egypt.
What is criminal, what has become increasingly perilous, is any
criticism of Islam.
Nor is truth a defense. Another Egyptian court recently upheld the
blasphemy conviction of Makarem Diab, also a Coptic Christian. Diab had
gotten into a discussion with a Muslim acquaintance, Abd al-Hameed,
who, in the course of mocking Diab’s faith, insisted that Jesus was a
serial fornicator. Diab countered Hameed’s baseless taunt with an
assertion most Islamic scholars regard as accurate: namely, that
Mohammed had more than four wives. Yet, because the context of Diab’s
assertion evinced an intention to cast Islam’s prophet in an unfavorable
light, Diab was prosecuted for “insulting the prophet” and “provoking
students.” He was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.
This is now everyday life in Egypt. It is also certain to be the
future of Egypt. The overwhelmingly Islamist population, having first
elected Islamic supremacists led by the Muslim Brotherhood to top
leadership positions, is now poised to adopt a constitution that is
founded on sharia, Islam’s totalitarian legal framework, and that
expressly enshrines these blasphemy standards. But the problem is not
just sharia in Egypt. Sharia is here.
About three weeks ago, another Egyptian court sentenced seven people to death after
convicting them in absentia on blasphemy charges. Most of the seven are
in the United States. Most of them are Coptic Christians; one is a
Florida-based pastor who is a blistering critic of Islamic scripture.
The charges relate to the defendants’ alleged involvement in “Innocence
of Muslims,” an obscure amateur video that Islamists have frivolously
cited as a pretext for their latest round of international mayhem — and
that the Obama administration has fraudulently portrayed as the catalyst
of a massacre in Benghazi in which jihadists killed four Americans,
including our ambassador to Libya.
So how has President Obama responded to the Egyptian government’s
human-rights violations, its failure to protect the Copts from
persecution (indeed, its willing participation in that persecution), and
its provocations against Americans — which now include ordering their
killing, through a kangaroo-court process that flouts our due-process
standards, over their engagement in activity that is expressly protected
by our Constitution?
Well . . . the president has announced that not only will he continue
funding Egypt’s Islamist government, but he intends to include in that
U.S. aid the provision of
20 F-16 fighter jets. Moreover, Obama is continuing his
administration’s collaboration with the 57-government Organization of
Islamic Cooperation on the “Istanbul Process.” That is the OIC’s
campaign to impose sharia’s repressive blasphemy standards.
The most recent aggression in this blasphemy enterprise —
a years-long, carefully plotted OIC campaign to snuff out American
free-speech rights under the guise of “defamation of religion” — is U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18.
It calls on Western governments to outlaw “any advocacy of religious
hatred against individuals that constitutes incitement to
discrimination, hostility or violence.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has zealously colluded with the
OIC in seeking the implementation of 16/18. Notwithstanding her
contortions, it is a gross violation of the First Amendment. Our law
permits the criminalization of incitement to violence only when an
agitator willfully calls for violence. Our Constitution does not abide
what the resolution is designed to achieve: the heckler’s veto and,
worse, the suppression of speech predicated on mob intimidation — the
legitimation of barbaric lawlessness.
Nor does the Constitution’s guarantee of free expression tolerate the
outlawing of speech that prompts discrimination, much less hostility.
And contrary to administration hairsplitting, it makes no difference
that the resolution would not “criminalize” expression that prompts
discrimination or hostility. To quote the First Amendment, “Congress
shall make no law” suppressing protected speech. It does not say
“Congress shall make no criminal law.” No law means no law — no civil law, rule, regulation, guideline, etc.
As the framers understood, virtually everything we actually need a
government for can be handled — more responsively and thus more
responsibly — at the local and state level. There is one essential
reason for having a federal government, and one principal reason for the
creation of the office of President of the United States: to protect
our citizens in the exercise of their fundamental rights from hostile
foreign forces.
Our fundamental rights are now under attack. As far as that is
concerned, it is of little moment that the Egyptian government, joined
by its Islamist confederates, threatens our lives and our liberties
through court orders and resolutions — through lawfare rather than
violent jihad. We are every bit as much under siege.
What is of great moment is that the president has joined the hostile
forces against us, against Americans whose protection is the sole reason
for the federal government’s existence.
If that is to be Washington’s posture, what do we need it for? It is
bad enough when Leviathan cannot tell America’s friends from America’s
enemies. But what is the point of a federal government that cannot tell
America’s enemies from America? Or that can tell perfectly well, but chooses to fight for the wrong side?
— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the Philadelphia Freedom Center. He is the author, most recently, of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, which was published by Encounter Books.
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