Radical Islam’s War on Free Speech

Can’t We Talk About This? from “Can’t We Talk?” Homepage on Vimeo.

We have to note that in the majority, Muslims in the U.S. are pretty moderate, reasonable, and even patriotic. According to the Pew Center:

These are tense times for American Muslims. Majorities say that their religious group faces a lot of discrimination in the United States, that the media is unfair to Muslims and that other Americans do not view Islam as part of mainstream U.S. society. Nearly one-in-five (19%) say they have been called offensive names in the last year, and 6% say they have been physically threatened or attacked.

Yet for most American Muslims, these problems only partially define their personal experiences in the U.S. Four-in-five say they are satisfied with the way things are going in their lives, and 84% categorize Americans in general as “friendly” (55%) or “neutral” (30%) toward U.S. Muslims. About nine-in-ten (92%) say they are proud to be American.

These findings come from Pew Research Center’s new survey of 1,001 U.S. Muslim adults, conducted Jan. 23 to May 2, 2017. The poll follows earlier Pew Research Center surveys of American Muslims in 2007 and 2011.

But Islam is less benign in Europe, with a political culture inferior to that of the U.S. There, “blood and soil” nationalism (you can’t be a real German or Frenchman unless your ancestors have lived there for centuries) is mixed with political correctness (Muslims have to be pandered to as a “marginalized group”).

And there, as here, a radical minority of politically active Muslims are actively trying to suppress free speech. And doing so with the aid of politically correct secular leftists.

Islam: Europe vs. America

From Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe:

LONG BEFORE TUESDAY’S terror attacks in Brussels, it was clear that Belgium had become a breeding ground for Islamist extremists. Hundreds of Belgian Muslims — as many as 500, according to one estimate — have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for ISIS, making Belgium by far Europe’s leading supplier of foreign jihadists. Last November’s horrific slaughter in Paris was masterminded by a Belgian radical, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and at least four of the men who carried out those attacks were from the Brussels district of Molenbeek. One of them was Salah Abdeslam, who was captured in Molenbeek, after an intense manhunt, on March 19.

For Islamist imams and terrorist ringleaders, such neighborhoods — heavily Muslim, densely populated, with high unemployment and crime rates — have proved fertile territory for recruiting violent jihadists. “There is almost always a link with Molenbeek. That’s a gigantic problem, of course,” Belgium’s prime minister said after the Paris atrocities.

But it’s only recently that the country’s security officials began confronting that “gigantic problem” with an appropriate sense of urgency. The New York Times reported last fall that weeks before the Paris attacks, Molenbeek’s mayor, Françoise Schepmans, was given a list of more than 80 Islamist terror suspects living in her district. She took no action and was unapologetic even after three of the men on the list took part in the Paris massacre.

“What was I supposed to do about them?” Schepmans told the Times. “It is not my job to track possible terrorists.”

That jaw-dropping complacency helps explain how an ISIS fifth column has been able to operate with such brazenness in Western Europe. But incompetent policing doesn’t explain why Muslims living in neighborhoods like Molenbeek, or in the banlieues outside Paris that have experienced violent riots, should be susceptible to Islamist radicalization in the first place.

Muslim communities are not inherently predisposed to violence. The presence of a sizable Muslim population in a non-Muslim-majority country does not inevitably presage jihadist bloodshed or demands for the imposition of sharia. It is true that some 650,000 Muslims live in Belgium, but five times as many — 3.3 million — live in the United States. Why hasn’t America become a hotbed of Islamic extremism? Why aren’t American Muslims by the thousands flocking to fight for ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations? Why, despite the efforts of Islamist pressure groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations — a Muslim supremacist operation that masquerades as an advocate for civil rights — are most American Muslims intent on adopting America’s customs and way of life?

The United States has been far more successful at assimilating and integrating Muslim immigrants into American society and culture than has Western Europe. There are no Muslim ghettoes here like those in Molenbeek or the Paris suburbs, where authorities turn a blind eye to antisocial behavior and aggressive incitement by radicals preaching jihad. Of course there have been some heinous exceptions, such as the Tsarnaev brothers, the Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hassan, or the killers in San Bernardino. And mosques in American cities have often been built with funding from Saudi Arabia, which promotes a harsh and puritanical version of Islam.

Nevertheless, at the grass-roots level, Muslims in the United States, like other cultural and religious minorities, have had no problem acclimating to mainstream norms. In a detailed 2011 survey, the Pew Research Center found that Muslim Americans are “highly assimilated into American society and . . . largely content with their lives.” More than 80 percent of US Muslims expressed satisfaction with life in America, and 63 percent said they felt no conflict “between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.” The rates at which they participate in various everyday American activities — from following local sports teams to watching entertainment TV — are similar to those of the American public generally. Half of all Muslim immigrants display the US flag at home, in the office, or on their car.

Given America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the bloody battles with Islamic regimes and insurgents, and the threat to homeland security from “lone wolf” terror attacks, it might seem surprising that Muslims in Detroit or Brooklyn aren’t at least as alienated as those in Molenbeek. But they aren’t. For despite the rise of identity politics and the balkanizing pressures of multicultural correctness, America’s melting pot still works. Generations of Muslim immigrants have come to America to escape repression, poverty, or war in their homelands. The life they have made for themselves here has been freer, safer, more prosperous, and more embracing than the existence they left behind. There are tensions, but not enough to keep most Muslims from fitting themselves comfortably into the American mosaic.

At a time when populist demagogues are doing so much damage to our social fabric, it is well to remember why Molenbeek is a European phenomenon, and not an American one. At the core of the American experience is a conviction that immigrants who come to America can and should become Americans. Patriotic assimilation turns profoundly dissimilar foreigners into proud and happy Americans. “Muslims in the United States,” Pew found, “reject extremism by much larger margins than most Muslim publics” around the world.

Americanization — E Pluribus Unum — is not only a key ingredient in the American Dream. It also keeps us safe.

Bottom line: American culture, with its emphasis on individualism and personal freedom, is more benign than the culture of Europe.

But America has its enclaves of cultural pathology: colleges and universities. Under the tutelage of leftist faculty and campus bureaucrats, Muslim and Arab students are encouraged to nurse a sense of grievance, and especially to hate the state of Israel. Thus we have things like “Israeli Apartheid Week” week at Marquette.

In this, as in other things, academia is an island a cultural pathology in a generally benign national culture.

Self-Criticism in the Muslim World

An organization called MEMRI (Middle Eastern Media Research Institute) records and translates TV broadcasts in the Middle East. Their specialty has been chilling videos of fanatical Muslims (and even Muslim children) discussing the need to kill Jews.

However, that’s not the whole story. In some parts of the region self-criticism of Islam is seen on TV, and real intellectual debate happens. Here are a few examples.



OK, this one is an entertainer, so one might be inclined to claim this is a lot like (say) Kim Kardashian offering a critique of U.S. society. But (1) people like this may have more effect on the culture than intellectuals, and (2) her observations are sensible.

Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan

From Fox News Watters’ World:


Let’s try an experiment. How about readers of this blog look at the video and post their reactions as comments.

Eventually, we will post our own reaction as an update.

Terrorism: Being Honest About the Enemy

From liberal New York Times columnist (not a Fox News pundit) Thomas Friedman, thoughts on the inability of the Obama White House to honestly discuss the nature of the terrorist threat.

I’ve never been a fan of global conferences to solve problems, but when I read that the Obama administration is organizing a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism for Feb. 18, in response to the Paris killings, I had a visceral reaction: Is there a box on my tax returns that I can check so my tax dollars won’t go to pay for this?

When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. And this administration, so fearful of being accused of Islamophobia, is refusing to make any link to radical Islam from the recent explosions of violence against civilians (most of them Muslims) by Boko Haram in Nigeria, by the Taliban in Pakistan, by Al Qaeda in Paris and by jihadists in Yemen and Iraq. We’ve entered the theater of the absurd.

Last week the conservative columnist Rich Lowry wrote an essay in Politico Magazine that contained quotes from White House spokesman Josh Earnest that I could not believe. I was sure they were made up. But I checked the transcript: 100 percent correct. I can’t say it better than Lowry did:

“The administration has lapsed into unselfconscious ridiculousness. Asked why the administration won’t say [after the Paris attacks] we are at war with radical Islam, Earnest on Tuesday explained the administration’s first concern ‘is accuracy. We want to describe exactly what happened. These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism, and they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam and their own deviant view of it.’

This makes it sound as if the Charlie Hebdo terrorists set out to commit a random act of violent extremism and only subsequently, when they realized that they needed some justification, did they reach for Islam.

The day before, Earnest had conceded that there are lists of recent ‘examples of individuals who have cited Islam as they’ve carried out acts of violence.’ Cited Islam? According to the Earnest theory ... purposeless violent extremists rummage through the scriptures of great faiths, looking for some verses to cite to support their mayhem and often happen to settle on the holy texts of Islam.”

President Obama knows better. I am all for restraint on the issue, and would never hold every Muslim accountable for the acts of a few. But it is not good for us or the Muslim world to pretend that this spreading jihadist violence isn’t coming out of their faith community. It is coming mostly, but not exclusively, from angry young men and preachers on the fringe of the Sunni Arab and Pakistani communities in the Middle East and Europe.

Friedman then goes on to make an important distinction among Muslim communities.

Something else is also at work, and it needs to be discussed. It is the struggle within Arab and Pakistani Sunni Islam over whether and how to embrace modernity, pluralism and women’s rights. That struggle drives, and is driven by, the dysfunctionality of so many Arab states and Pakistan. It has left these societies with too many young men who have never held a job or a girl’s hand, who then seek to overcome their humiliation at being left behind, and to find identity, by “purifying” their worlds of other Muslims who are not sufficiently pious and of Westerners whom they perceive to be putting Muslims down. But you don’t see this in the two giant Muslim communities in Indonesia or India.

Friedman, in other words, is not keen to blame all of Islam for terrorism, but neither is he unwilling to honestly voice the problem.

New York Times Prints Anti-Catholic Ad, Rejects Virtually Identical Anti-Islam Ad

From The Blaze:

The New York Times has rejected a full-page anti-Islam advertisement that mirrored a scathing anti-Catholic advertisement the newspaper published on March 9.

According to The Daily Caller, a March 13 letter sent by the Times to the parody’s sponsor, activist Pamela Geller, said the $39,000 anti-Islam ad was rejected because “the fallout from running this ad now could put U.S. troops and/or civilians in the [Afghan] region in danger.”

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, accused the Times of having a double standard and told DC that The Time’s was based on “either [anti-Catholic] bigotry or fear [of Islamic violence], and they’ve painted themselves into that corner.”

Here is the anti-Catholic ad:



And here is the anti-Islam ad:



It’s tempting to say that the Times is guilty of cowardice. It’s tempting to suggest they would show more respect for Catholics if Catholics might bomb the New York Times building.

In fact, we think cowardice has very little to do with it, and ideological bias is everything. The liberals at the Times, like liberals generally, hate social conservatives. But are’t Muslims social conservatives too?

The simple fact is that it’s Christians, and not Muslims that liberals have to fight for control of American culture and American politics. Muslims are hardly fans of gay marriage, but it’s Christians who turn out in large numbers to vote down same-sex unions.

Indeed, Muslims vote Democratic.

Muslims also serve as yet another victim group to whom liberals can show solicitude, and they are thus every bit as useful as blacks, “women” and gays. Further, Muslims tend to oppose U.S. intervention in the Middle East, and thus have the same views (but for rather different reasons) as liberals, who instinctively tend to sympathize with America’s enemies.

Obama’s Pandering to the Muslim World Has Done No Good

The idea that if we just are more “sympathetic to Arab concerns” and more “balanced in our approach to the Middle East” Arabs (and presumably, Muslims generally) will be more favorable to the U.S. has been shot to hell by a pollster of Arab heritage.

From the Arab American Institute:

With the 2008 election of Barack Obama, favorable attitudes toward the U.S. more than doubled in many Arab countries. But in the two years since his famous “Cairo speech,” ratings for both the U.S. and the President have spiraled downwards. The President is seen overwhelmingly as failing to meet the expectations set during his speech, and the vast majority of those surveyed disagree with U.S policies.

In five out of the six countries surveyed, the U.S. was viewed less favorably than Turkey, China, France—or Iran. Far from seeing the U.S. as a leader in the post-Arab Spring environment, the countries surveyed viewed “U.S. interference in the Arab world” as the greatest obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East, second only to the continued Palestinian occupation.

While the vehemence of Arab reaction to the U.S. was startling, the general sentiment echoed points made in AAI President James Zogby’s 2010 book Arab Voices, in which he reflected on Arab opinions of both the U.S. and our foreign policies. “American democracy [seems] a lot like damaged goods to many Arabs… U.S. policy in the region has increasingly undermined Arab attitudes toward America as a global model.”

Executive Summary

• After improving with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, U.S. favorable ratings across the Arab world have plummeted. In most countries they are lower than at the end of the Bush Administration, and lower than Iran’s favorable ratings (except in Saudi Arabia).

• The continuing occupation of Palestinian lands and U.S. interference in the Arab world are held to be the greatest obstacles to peace and stability in the Middle East.

• While many Arabs were hopeful that the election of Barack Obama would improve U.S.-Arab relations, that hope has evaporated. Today, President Obama’s favorable ratings across the Arab world are 10% or less.

• Obama’s performance ratings are lowest on the two issues to which he has devoted the most energy: Palestine and engagement with the Muslim world.

• The U.S. role in establishing a no-fly zone over Libya receives a positive rating only in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, but, as an issue, it is the lowest priority.

• The killing of bin Laden only worsened attitudes toward the U.S.

• A plurality says it is too early to tell whether the Arab Spring will have a positive impact on the region. In Egypt, the mood is mixed. Only in the Gulf States are optimism and satisfaction levels high.

You can read the full poll here.

And the following graphic makes the failure of the policy clear:


Obama, of course, it a standard liberal, and standard liberals believe that if people dislike the U.S., it must be our fault.

But sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s their fault. Those Muslims who sympathize with terrorism are at fault. Those Muslims who want Israel wiped off the map are at fault. Those Arabs who blame the failure of nations in the Middle East to create free and democratic governments on the West are at fault. Those who blame the U.S. for their economic backwardness are at fault.

Sometimes, it’s best to take to heart Machiavelli’s famous dictim that “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

Thus we have trouble believing that killing Bin Laden really harmed attitudes toward the U.S. If it didn’t engender the warm fuzzies, it probably engendered attitudes a lot more beneficial to us.

Sometimes, of course, it doesn’t matter much whether a country is feared or hated. If you are big enough and powerful enough, they have to deal with you.

The bottom line of this issue is that America should be America: a friend of Israel, and an enemy of terrorism. Willing to intervene when vital national security interests are at stake -- and being a democracy, there will always be a vigorous debate about whether they are.

As for Arabs: if you insist on disliking us, so be it.

Liberals, Conservatives and Those Airport Screenings

Drudge has been after this for months, and now not only cable news but the mainstream media have noticed the very intrusive searches that the Transportation Security Agency has been doing at airports.

But what about liberal and conservative reactions?

Conservatives have been up in arms, while the reaction of liberals has been much more muted, if not downright supportive.

Here’s the irony: liberals were apoplectic about security measures early in the Bush Administration. The Patriot Act, warrant-less wiretapping of foreign phone numbers associated with terrorism, searches of computers of suspected terrorists — all these were condemned as invasions of privacy.

And of course conservatives supported Bush.

So what is going on here? Is it as simple as whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat? That’s part of it.

But the key factor is that conservatives are protective of ordinary, law-abiding U.S. citizens. And liberals are protective of politically correct victim groups.

On 9/11, Muslims ceased to be evil fundamentalist oppressors of women, and became victims of American imperialism.

So we get 75 year-old grandmothers sexually molested in airports.

Gaza Conflict Spills Into Europe, Jews Attacked

From the Associated Press:

PARIS (AP) - Signs are mounting that the conflict in Gaza is starting to spill over into violence in Europe’s towns and cities, with assaults against Jews and arson attacks on Jewish congregations in France, Sweden and Britain.

Assailants rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue in Toulouse, in southwest France, on Monday night. A Jewish congregation in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, also was attacked Monday night by someone who “broke a window and threw in something that was burning,” said police spokesman Leif Nilsson. Neighbors alerted rescue services before the fire took hold.

Someone also started a blaze outside the premises last week. And on Sunday slogans including “murderers . . . You broke the cease-fire” and “don’t subject Palestine to ethnic cleansing” were daubed on Israel’s embassy in Stockholm.

In Denmark, a 27-year-old Dane born in Lebanon of Palestinian parents is alleged to have injured two young Israelis last week, opening fire with a handgun in a shooting that police suspect could be linked to the Gaza crisis.

France has Western Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities and a history of anti-Semitic violence flaring when tensions in the Middle East are high. In 2002, some 2,300 Jews left France for Israel because they felt unsafe.

In Britain, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish defense group, said it had seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents since the start of Israel’s offensive against Gaza. The group said it had recorded 20-25 incidents across the country in the past week that it believed were connected with Gaza, including an arson attempt on a synagogue in north London on Sunday.

London police are investigating the attack, in which suspects splashed flammable liquid on the door and set it on fire.

The government in Belgium on Tuesday ordered police in Antwerp and Brussels to be on increased alert after recent pro-Palestinian protests ended in violence and dozens of arrests. Police said burning rags were shoved through the mailbox of a Jewish home in Antwerp last weekend. Damage was limited and no arrests were made.

In the Danish shooting, one Israeli man was shot in the arm and another in the leg as they were selling hair care products in a shopping mall. Eli Ruvio, who owns the company that operated the stands, said his employees have been harassed by Muslim youths since they set up three kiosks in the shopping center in August.

“They kept cursing and shouting at us,” Ruvio told The Associated Press. He added that the Muslim youths also threw mud and firecrackers at the employees and spat at them.

Ruvio recalled an episode Dec. 27 when some of the youths shouted “slaughter all the Jews.”

“I told my employees not to speak in Hebrew and lie about where they come from, they should say there were from Spain or somewhere else. If people ask you where you are from, never say you’re from Israel,” he said.

Muslims vs. Homosexuals: Comparative Victimology

Via the Dave Casper Experience:

From the Daily Mail:

Muslims’ fury forces schools to shelve anti-homophobia storybooks for 5-year-olds

By LAURA CLARK

Two primary schools have withdrawn storybooks about same-sex relationships after objections from Muslim parents.

Up to 90 gathered at the schools to complain about the books which are aimed at pupils as young as five.

One story, titled King & King, is a fairytale about a prince who turns down three princesses before marrying one of their brothers.

Another named And Tango Makes Three features two male penguins who fall in love at a New York zoo.

Bristol City Council said the two schools had been using the books to ensure they complied with gay rights laws which came into force last April.

They were intended to help prevent homophobic bullying, it said.

The “homophobic bullying” business is a very transparent pretext, of course. Students get bullied for all kinds of reasons: because they are fat, because they have glasses, because the are Christians (we’ve known of this happening) and because they are perceived as homosexual.

While an anti-bullying campaign to reduce all bullying sounds like a dandy idea (assuming it actually has any effect), what we have here is a campaign to teach that homosexuality is perfectly normal and healthy, and further than anybody who has any reservations about that is a “homophobe.”

But the council has since removed the books from Easton Primary School and Bannerman Road Community School, both in Bristol.

A book and DVD titled That’s a Family!, which teaches children about different family set-ups including gay or lesbian parents, has also been withdrawn.

The decision was made to enable the schools to “operate safely” after parents voiced their concerns at meetings.

Members of the Bristol Muslim Cultural Society said parents were upset at the lack of consultation over the use of the materials.

Farooq Siddique, community development officer for the society and a governor at Bannerman Road, said there were also concerns about whether the stories were appropriate for young children.

“The main issue was there was a total lack of consultation with parents,” he said.

“The schools refused to deal with the parents, and were completely authoritarian.

“The agenda was to reduce homophobic bullying and all the parents said they were not against that side of it, but families were saying to us ‘our child is coming home and talking about same-sex relationships, when we haven’t even talked about heterosexual relationships with them yet’.

“They don’t do sex education until Year Six and at least there you have got the option of withdrawing the children.

“But here you don’t have that option apparently. You can’t withdraw because it is no particular lesson they are used in.”

He added: “In Islam homosexual relationships are not acceptable, as they are not in Christianity and many other religions but the main issue is that they didn’t bother to consult with parents.”

As John C. Wright put it:

The internal logical contradictions of the Left on display. Apparently, when Christians object to books aimed at teaching preschoolers to idolize a sexual malfunction, we are blackhearted villains, but when Muslims object to sodomy, they must be heeded with grave deliberation. I am not sure how the pious totem pole of victimology goes, but apparently multi-culturalism trumps gay tolerance.

Islamic Discussion Board

We get, via e-mail, a fair amount of material about how Islam is an evil and oppressive religion.

And doubtless, some places in the hands of some people it is.

Of course, on a university campus, Muslim students get treated by campus bureaucrats as a politically correct victim group. Indeed, they with some frequency get their sensibilities protected by campus censorship.

But the reality for most Muslims is a bit different. We just got, via e-mail, an announcement of a new operation called Guided Message Board. The subhead reads “Share & Discuss Islamic news, thoughts & ideas.”

We suggest checking the “Public Message Board,” where one can find messages with the heading Help Prevent Child Labor in Egypt, Gelatin from non halaal animals and Quran Word for Word for Mobiles.

Then check out the Islamic Discussion and the thread New Reverts/Converts.

There is nothing here very exciting. It’s actually pretty banal.

And that’s the point.

The people on the board are neither agents of Osama, nor are the victims of Western Capitalist imperialism.

If you have any Muslim friends, you know this already. But maybe you don’t.

Note, the board is brand new, and has few messages. Will it take off? Who knows, but it bears watching.

BBC: Anti-Christian Double Standard on Religiously Offensive Posts

From the Daily Mail:

The BBC has been forced to remove statements from its website referring to Jesus as a “bastard.”

It is the latest in a string of offensive comments that BBC editors have allowed members of the public to post.

The remarks have been allowed to remain for weeks, despite complaints from religious groups.

It has led to claims that the BBC is allowing its output to be hijacked by extremists while censoring anti-Muslim sentiment.

The remarks about Jesus were left as part of a discussion of the death of the Archbishop of Paris.

The debate had descended into an argument about the merits of Christians, Jews and Muslims when a writer, known as “colonelartist,” posted: “Are you a christian? You do know that jesus had to hide all his short life he lived in those promised land because his tribesmen used to call him fatherless, ridiculed him for being a B-A-S-T-A-R-D. . . .”

He added: “Jesus . . . was also persecuted because the jews would never accept as their Messiah a person whose father was missing . . . .”

The comments were allowed to remain for a week despite complaints. But after The Mail on Sunday contacted senior BBC officials, they were deleted.

Colonelartist is a regular contributor to the BBC site.

He has also written: “The jews in much remembered concentration camps had even better qualitity [sic] of freedom that these palestinians have . . .”

One website user wanted to see if BBC editors were allowing these offensive remarks to remain while blocking others. He wrote: “No one can surpass the Muslims for denial of their role in Terrorism and Suicide bombing.” The remarks were almost immediately deleted.

The BBC has also been criticised for allowing allegedly anti-Semitic posts from a contributor called “Iron Naz.”

In a message left on the site for more than a month, Iron Naz says: “Zionism is a racist ideology where jews are given supremacy over all other races and faiths. This is found in the Talmud . . . which allows jews to lie as long as its to non-jews.”

The remarks brought complaints from the Board of Deputies, the organisation that represents Britain’s Jews and its Community Security Trust. They say the post draws on a discredited 19th Century text, the Talmud Unmasked, which is still distributed by neo-Nazi booksellers.

However, the BBC said the remarks did not merit removal.

A spokesman said posts were taken down if they were considered likely to “disrupt, provoke attack or offend others or are considered racist, homophobic, sexually explicit or otherwise objectionable.”

The Board of Deputies intends to pursue its complaints. Mark Gardiner, of the Community Security Trust, said: “The BBC obviously no longer recognises anti-Semitism. The BBC is a public body, funded by the British taxpayer. It has legal obligations.”

A spokesman said: “Discussion - including robustly critical discussion - of any faith’s doctrines and practices is an important feature of civilised discourse.

“But deliberately or recklessly offensive denigration of those doctrines and practices is unacceptable.”

This, of course, is what always happens when somebody sets out to censor “offensive” speech.

Certain politically correct groups get protection. Other politically incorrect groups inhabit a free-fire zone.

In the world of the politically correct left, gays and Muslims are to be protected from slurs. But Christians -- and now apparently Jews -- have to tolerate attacks.

Of course, free speech allows private individuals to set up any kind of discussion board they want, including one where attacks on Christianity are rife.

But the BBC is owned by the British government, and supported by a tax on all broadcast consumers. So Christians and Jews are being forced to subsidize hate speech directed at them.