The freedom of speech and expression is one of our most important and cherished American principles. Yet it is everywhere under attack. On college campuses, by students and administrators alike. In the media, by journalists and pundits who are its beneficiaries. And elected officials and a government bureaucracy, in cooperation with Big Tech corporations have become increasingly censorious.
In Islamophobia and the Threat to Free Speech, the newest book from the Center for Security Policy, best-selling author Robert Spencer looks at how in the midst of the War on Terror, America began to adopt the very same positions on free speech —regarding defamation, incitement, and criticism— held by its jihadist enemies.
Spencer traces this troubling transformation from the 1989 death fatwa against Salman Rushdie, through the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s campaign to ban defamation of Islam, to the “Cartoon Wars” over displaying images of Mohammad, and all the way to Big Tech’s censorship of a sitting president.
