The last conference on Shariah’s threat to free speech? The Muslim Brotherhood hopes so

The beautiful new auditorium in Washington’s Capitol Visitors Center was the site October 27-28 of an impressive two-day conference that sounded the alarm on our increasingly endangered liberties: freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  If the Muslim Brotherhood and its associates like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) have their way, however, there will be far less of such freedoms and no such conferences in the future.  CAIR would have  open discussions, of freedom of speech and of religion, prohibited and even criminalized.

Incredibly, that would appear to be the aspiration of the U.S. government, as well.  After all, as participants of the International Legal Conference on Freedom of Speech and Religion discussed, the Obama administration recently joined the Organization of the Islamic Conference in sponsoring a resolution that would require UN member nations to act to bar and penalize speech that offends Muslims or can be claimed to encourage discrimination, hatred or violence against them.  Worse yet, with yesterday’s signature by President Obama of so-called "hate crime" legislation, a vehicle has been established for just such sanctions to be imposed in the United States, the First Amendment’s guarantees to the contrary notwithstanding.

In two days of addresses by U.S. Congressmen, members of the European Parliament and the U.K. House of Lords, prominent First Amendment experts in academia and the legal profession, investigative journalists, best-selling authors and nationally-known talk radio hosts, a compelling record was amassed showing that foundational liberties in the West are indeed imperiled.  Specifically, the speakers reported the cumulative effect of Islamist "lawfare" – by which Muslim Brotherhood and other adherents to the theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls "Shariah" seek preferential treatment for their co-religionists.   Lawsuits and political lobbying by Shariah proponents promote a virulent ideology masquerading as a faith, and suppress the practice of Christianity, Judaism and other faiths, both abroad and increasingly in the United States.

Most Americans would quite understandably be shocked at the evidence presented by the International Legal Conference.  Speaker after speaker documented a rising tide of infringements on free speech and freedom of religion and warned that more were in prospect – particularly as a result of the U.S. co-sponsored "hate speech" resolution in the U.N. Human Rights Council, concisely critiqued here by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh in the liberal online magazine The Huffington Post. The reporting and analysis presented at the conference is more needed today than ever.   Efforts by the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk to keep it from being widely disseminated must be strenuously resisted.

The Center for Security Policy, which was proud to join the International Free Press Society and the Liberty Legal Project International in presenting the International Legal Conference, is determined to keep America "Shariah-free."  The Center for Security Policy looks forward to the fruits of this important symposium being made available at the earliest possible time and to working with the participants to use such information to support and protect our freedoms.