The response to the jihad against America is either the left’s Stockholm Syndrome alliance with evil or the right’s hear no jihad, see no jihad, speak no jihad. Not only will the right not discuss the greatest threat to our national security, but they keep a good distance from those of us who do.
But then, inevitably, they all become “experts” when a jihadi attack befalls this great nation. The pity is that when they do so they continue to get it wrong, and they get it wrong at the only time these critical issues are being discussed. It was mildly amusing last week to see National Review’s Rich Lowry, who is a stranger to these parts, write an editorial for the New York Post, “Jailed for blasphemy — in America.”
Yes, Lowry is finally speaking about the enforcement of the blasphemy laws in America. In his column, Lowry speaks about the filmmaker who has been jailed for a silly YouTube video in the wake of the Islamic attack on our mission in Libya: “Nakoula Basseley Nakoula deserves a place in American history. He is the first person in this country jailed for violating Islamic anti-blasphemy laws.”
Nakoula has been a political prisoner for so many months. My headline on a Sept. 15, 2012, post at my website AtlasShrugs.com was “Political Prisoner: U.S. Shariah police pick up Muhammad filmmaker.” Robert Spencer wrote on Sept. 17 in PJ Media, before Nakoula was jailed: “Nakoula has a checkered past, reportedly including methamphetamine dealing and bank fraud. But if he is indeed sent back to jail because of this video, no matter what priors he has, no matter how checkered his past, make no mistake: he will be a political prisoner. He will be in prison not for the meth or the fraud or for the technicality of the probation violation, but for insulting Muhammad. His imprisonment will be a symbol of America’s capitulation to the Shariah.”
Where was Lowry while Nakoula was rotting in prison for the past eight months? What took him so long? And why does the right suppress voices that speak to this subject? I can assure you that if I or one of my colleagues had submitted such a piece to the Post or any other major publication in September 2012, it would not have run. Why must the mainstream right forever play catch-up, instead of leading?
It is because of the restrictions on discussion on this subject that so many get it so wrong. Take, for example, many of the “experts” who have lately taken to the airwaves to discuss the cover-up of the jihad in Libya. The right’s designated expert on Islam and the one they feel most comfortable with, Andrew McCarthy, gets it wrong again. Don’t misunderstand me: McCarthy is a crack prosecutor, a fine legal mind, but he is no expert on Islam and jihadic doctrine. And it shows in his latest piece, in which he describes Libyan President Al-Muqaryaf as “a liberal in the classic sense.” That’s as delusional as Obama’s depiction of the Arab Spring as a freedom movement. McCarthy means well, but he gets it wrong.
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The problem is that many on the right take their lead from his writing – since he is the sole expert that the right will sanction as an expert on Islam. He ain’t. He’s a lawyer. But it was not surprising that big voices on the right were reading McCarthy’s take on Al-Muqaryaf to millions of his listeners. Sigh. Another rare opportunity to teach the American people blown.
Robert Spencer should be on the Islam beat at NRO, but I haven’t seen a piece from him there in years. It is time that the elite right start listening to those who have been right all along, and stop going back again and again to analysts whose analyses have been proven wrong, disastrously wrong, for years now.
Reprinted with Author’s permission. This article originally appeared on WND.com
