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The decisions by Dutch prosecutors to dismiss the charges against parliamentarian Geert Wilders can be seen as a battle won in a war the West is losing – the war for freedom of speech, the freedom without which no other freedoms can be defended.

As I argue in my latest column, influential people are not just avoiding criticism of all things Islamic, they also are legitimizing vile practices — e.g. gender apartheid — where these practices are rooted in Islamic practice.

Women’s rights groups are silent. Most elite journalists are at least complicit.

The Washington Post recently refused to run a cartoon not of Mohammed but merely containing the words “Where’s Mohammed?” (a parody on “Where’s Waldo?”). Editors said they were being “prudent.” The more accurate word, I think, would be craven. As Andy McCarthy has noted, such political correctness “betrays the core values of a free society” and can only be seen as a form “societal surrender.”

Barton Hinkle at the Richmond Times Dispatch observed:

Once upon a time, members of the media could be counted upon to champion free expression even when nobody else would. Where the First Amendment was implicated, newspapers were willing to go to bat for everyone from neo-Nazis to Hustler magazine, and to take on powerful institutions from the Vatican to the Pentagon, often while patting themselves on the back for “speaking truth to power.” Yet when it comes to the Islamic question, many in the media will not even stick up for themselves.

Meanwhile, this new development: Norwegian journalist Halvor Tjønn, recently finished a biography of Muhammad only to have his Oslo publisher, decline to publish it. Islamist Watch reports:

“It’s an internal matter,” said Kagge’s director, denying that any threats had been received. Tjønn remarked, “If the publisher had objections to the book’s quality, that would have come up much earlier in the process, and not after a year and a half”; he declined to get more specific. Naturally the tight lips bolster suspicion of fear-based self-censorship at work yet again. This case certainly fits the history of books about Islam disappearing as anxiety over violence grows:

And Andy has written about the intellectual surrender in the Fort Hood case. Even the Wall Street Journal, in a news column (the editorial page has not yet waved a white flag), pretends that the massacre has “raised questions” about “mounting stress among soldiers who have been on multiple tours.” Really? Oh, is that what this is about? The story contains exactly one mention, near the very end, of Maj. Nidal Hassan’s “fervent Islamic beliefs.”