Step Forward, Liberals

A comprehensive piece on the PBS censorship of a film, "Islam vs. Islamists" on the intimidation of moderate Muslims by radical practitioners of the faith. Previous post, The Disgrace that is PBS. At RedState. One excerpt of particular interest to Chicagoans:

An important point I want to make here is that in the Burke film, Saudi Arabia and their Wahhabi sect within Islam do not fare well for their influences and their monies poured in to the US over the years to American Muslim groups to help fund, among other things, the construction of many many mosques around the country.

As the film would tell you (were you allowed to see it), one of the first communities targeted by the Saudis was Chicago, and the Nation of Islam; the so-called "Black Muslims." It is theorized that this "investment" in American Muslims was inspired in part by "an almost forgotten event in Saudi Arabia back in November 1979, when heavily armed Wahhabi extremists stormed the Grand Mosque in Mecca seizing the holiest place in all of Islam."

These extremists proclaimed the Royal Family was too "corrupt, decadent, and Westernized" and they were dislodged ONLY when French commandos were called in, ending a 2 week bloody siege. The event terrified the ruling classes, and "their solution was in effect to buy their way out of further problems by pouring billions of dollars into whatever the fundamentalists...the Wahhabis...wished to do as long as these activities occurred outside of Saudi Arabia." This, it is asserted, was the beginning of a building boom of Saudi Mosques across America.

Op-ed in the Washington Times by Frank Gaffney, a producer of the film, which is still being suppressed. Gaffney notes:

It is bad enough that the public airwaves were used to disseminate only one rendering of the state of Islam in the West -- and a highly misleading one, at that. The process whereby the voices of anti-Islamist Muslims were silenced by PBS and WETA was also characterized by egregious behavior, some of which would typically evoke howls of outrage from American liberals.

These included: attempts to blacklist producers on political grounds; outlandish conflicts of interest (notably, Mr. MacNeil's self-dealing and his film's featuring of two Islamist-sympathizing Muslim "advisers" recruited by WETA to help determine which documentaries were aired); and one of those advisers' unauthorized preview of a "rough-cut" version for representatives the Nation of Islam, a subject of the film -- in clear violation of the most basic tenets of journalistic ethics.

The question occurs: Where are the liberal non-Muslims in the controversy over "Islam vs. Islamists"? They have at least as much on the line as the rest of us in the outcome of this struggle for the soul and future character of Islam.

After all, the anti-Islamist Muslims and conservatives are not the only ones in the Islamofascists' cross hairs. Homosexuals, women and Jews are among those whose lives will be made miserable, or simply be prematurely terminated, in the new world order the Islamists have in mind. Blacks are still being sold into slavery in Islamist nations. And, to date, the Islamists have been responsible for killing more of their fellow Muslims than any other population, not just in Darfur but around the world.

Is there anything left of the classical liberal ideals in the Western liberalism of today? Now would be the time to step forward, liberals.