Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the massacre of the staff of Charlie Hebdo are well-known instances of Islamist use of violence, or threats of violence, to punish blasphemy. Less violent, but more insidious, have been other attempts to silence critics of Islam, including the separate convictions of two Austrian politicians for insulting Muhammad. Denis MacEoin comments on these and other incidents, and their implications:

The chief threat to free speech today comes from a combination of radical Islamic censorship and Western political correctness.

Over the past century and more, Western societies have built up a consensus on the centrality of freedom of expression. . . . [But] many Muslim bodies—notably the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)—have been working hard for years to render Islam the only religion, political system, and ideology in the world that may not be questioned with impunity. They have tried—and are in many respects succeeding—to ring-fence Islam as a creed beyond criticism, while reserving for themselves the right to condemn Christians, Jews, Hindus, democrats, liberals, women, gays, or anyone else in often vile, even violent language. Should anyone say anything that seems to them disrespectful of their faith, he or she will at once be declared an “Islamophobe.” . . .

The OIC has succeeded in winning a UN Human Rights Council resolution that makes “defamation of religion” (read: blasphemy in the eyes of its followers) a crime. But the OIC knows full well that only Muslims are likely to use Western laws to deny free speech about their own faith. . . .

The greatest defense of our democracy, our freedom, our openness to political and religious debate, and our longing to live in an open society without hindrance—namely freedom of expression—is now under serious threat. . . . Since the edict against Salman Rushdie, there is no way of calculating how many books have been shelved, how many television documentaries have never been aired, how many film scripts have been tossed in the waste bin, how many conferences have been canceled—or how many killers are waiting in the wings for the next book, or poem, or song, or sport that will transgress the strictures of Islamic law and doctrine.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.