Is Protecting Freedom the Ultimate Cause for our War Against Islam

In my previous post on Lars Hedegaard's ordeal in Denmark, I referred to the video of the interview which caused all the commotion. The video is worth watching, as Hedegaard presents a lucid account of Islam, based on his new book The 1400-year war.

But, I neglected to pursue the final part of the interview where the interviewer asks "how should we fight this war?" Hedegaard talks about internal measures, such as shutting down mosques which preach jihad, reducing the power of Imams, and making sure that political and violent messages aren't preached or passed on to Muslims. He doesn't once mention immigration restrictions.

As I wrote in this blog post, Denmark had reduced its immigration levels in 2004 to 20% of its 2001 levels. So, probably, immigration isn't such a big issue as it is in Canada or the US.

But, another issue I've always had with free speech and freedom of expression advocates is that they base much of Western civilization around these concepts, as does Hedegaard, when he says: "Basically our civilization is based on the notion of freedom, personal choice, free speech…"

It is interesting that the most vocal free speech/freedom of expression advocates, including Ezra Levant, reached their public position these days because of their interaction with Islam. Even the Danish Free Press Society calls Islam: "the most dangerous threat at the moment."

Islam, of course, want to silence the press and speech in general because it doesn’t want its intentions uncovered, which is that it is fighting a civilizational war against the West, and not just a war against free speech.

I will be elaborating on this narrowing down of the war against Islam based only on free speech and freedom of the press and expression, which this specialized and active group is fronting, as I come up with more coherent thoughts on the idea. But, my premise is that it is not enough to have free speech (and freedoms in general) as our main cause for which to fight against Islam. The issues are bigger, more complex and more intertwined. Freedom is important, but it isn’t the only factor.