Religious Terrorism vs. Free Speech

Muslim death threats against Danish cartoonists echo Khomeini's 1989 fatwa on Salman Rushdie--a death threat renewed this month by Iran's mullahs. Combating such religious terrorism is a moral necessity.

The Ayn Rand Institute is releasing this 1989 editorial--originally published as an advertisement in the New York Times--because the same essential issues underlie the Rushdie debacle and the current uproar over cartoons of Mohammad. In both cases, the ultimate target is not “blasphemy” but man’s faculty of reason and the principle of free speech--values our leaders are too gutless to defend as absolutes. In both cases, Islamic leaders have incited violence and issued death threats against Westerners--but have met with a pathetically appeasing response (Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie still stands, and has just been reaffirmed). And today as in 1989, the West’s craven response is motivated by the same fundamental cause. Failure to combat such self-righteous barbarism invites further aggression--a lesson history continually teaches, but which Western leaders refuse to learn.

Click on the following link to read the full article:

Religious Terrorism vs. Free Speech: Leonard Peikoff. Friday, February 24, 2006