Free Speech, Jihad and the Future of Western Civilization

On September 22, 2008, leading experts, writers and journalists gathered in London for a conference entitled, Free Speech, Jihad and the Future of Western Civilization. The conference– organized by the Center for Security Policy together with The New Criterion, the Hudson Institute, the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, and the UK’s Centre for Social Cohesion– was to provide an anatomy of those efforts to suppress free speech, to examine the way such actions aid and abet the spread of radical Islam and further the aim of instituting Shariah law in the West, and to consider some possible responses, legal as well as journalistic, to the threats they pose. 

The Center for Security Policy has published a small book to commemorate the event, containing the following three transcripts of speeches delivered at the conference:

• Roger Kimball: "The Soft Jihad on Free Speech"
• Douglas Murray: "Great Britain and Cultural Jihad: It’s Not Over, Over Here"
• Mark Steyn: "Shariah Appeasement and the End of the West"

Read Free Speech, Jihad and the Future of Western Civilization (PDF).

Print copies are available by contacting [email protected]

Forward by Frank Gaffney

This booklet captures the essence of an enormously informative conference convened in London in September 2008 by the U.S.-based Center for Security Policy, the Hudson Institute, the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal and the New Criterion Magazine and by the U.K.-based Centre for Social Cohesion. A distinguished roster of speakers illuminated the danger posed by the theocratic legal program authoritative Islam calls "Shariah" and the necessity for the Free World to prevent its further insinuation into Western societies.

Shariah obliges its adherents to work for the installation of a global theocracy. That end-state requires that all other governments-and most especially secular, democratic ones-be destroyed. Toward this end, the Shariah agenda requires the faithful to engage in jihad, using violence where possible and, where that would be impractical or counter-productive, employing stealthy techniques.

The immediate object of the latter is to establish "parallel societies" for Muslims whereby they would be governed, not by the laws and regulations of the Western nation in which they reside, but by Shariah. As with other forms of totalitarianism, the ultimate goal is to compel over time the non-Muslim population not simply to accommodate the Shariah agenda but to submit to it.

The London conference offered myriad examples of ways in which this stealth jihad is being advanced in Britain and the United States. These include operations mounted by the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and/or the Muslim Brotherhood via its various front and affiliated organizations aimed at: influencing the media, public opinion and campuses; penetration of government, corporations, prisons and military chaplain corps; the takeover and domination of mosques; the infiltration of Western capital markets through Shariah-Compliant Finance, affording unprecedented opportunities for freedom’s enemies to exercise non-transparent control over capital and credit flows; and the insinuation of Shariah legal codes and practices into Free World societies.  

Preeminent among the last of these examples is the effort to impose Shariah blasphemy, slander and libel laws in the West. According to Shariah, it is impermissible to engage in speech or writings that "defame" Islam or otherwise offend its followers. Mark Steyn, whose marvelous keynote address was one of the high points of the London conference and is reprinted in the pages that follow, has been a top target of this campaign led by the Organization of the Islamic Conference and now being enforced by the European Union and Human Rights Councils in Canada. Another victim, Rachel Ehrenfeld, was unable to attend the conference lest she be subjected to legal action in British courts pursuant to a Shariah-based "libel tourism" judgment against her. 

The insights contained in this brief compendium, like the conference from which they are drawn, are powerful warnings to complacent Western societies:  Shariah is a seditious ideology bent on the destruction of the freedoms, values and representative form of government we hold dear. If we wish not to submit to this brutally repressive program, we must awaken the public to the danger it represents, empower them to oppose its further assault-whether violent or stealthy-and engage them in doing so. The sponsors of the London conference hope that its proceedings and findings summarized herein will be a powerful catalyst to the taking of such steps.