Respect of rights is a reciprocal affair.

Sergei Bourachaga returns with a follow-up to his earlier article about the Koran’s hate speech, extending his argument to take in the legal case against Geert Wilders.just a snippet

Muslim communities in Canada, the Netherlands, and all Western Democracies in general, if they want respect of their rights and bring an end to the contempt the West has for an Allah who advocates terrorism to spread his will, should display the courage to remove any passage from the Koran that demonizes and dehumanizes Jews and Christians. Muslims must become the very change they want to see in Western liberal societies.

Respect of rights is a reciprocal affair. If you want respect from others who do not share your religious convictions, you have to extend respect first, and the first thing Muslims should respect is the freedom of expression and the freedom of the press. Like many Westerners who have said it and done it before, they should adopt the maxim: “I may not like what you said about me, but I will sacrifice my life for your right to say it”. They should stop justifying every butchery of innocent civilians by pointing fingers at the injustices imposed by the West on Muslims in Iraq, Palestine, etc. India has endured the brutality of British imperialism for centuries, yet it managed to liberate itself from the yoke of British brutality without firing a single bullet. It did so by relying on the spiritual power of a giant named Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi. Despite the presence of a huge Indian community in Britain since the early days of British colonialism in India, not a single Indian strapped explosives into his body and walked into a London subway to settle scores with the British population for all the injustices heaped on the children of India.

The same tragedy applies to the Blacks or Afro-Americans. Despite centuries of slavery, oppression, and bloody exploitation of innocent blacks by white European settlers looting North America, not a single black committed an act of suicide bombing inside a white restaurant in the Southern States where racial fanaticism was the dominant reality of the region.

The same applies to the Native Indians of North America, uprooted by European settlers, starved and massacred like animals, they never took a school hostage and butchered 300 children, like Islamist militants did in Beslan in southern Russia to settle scores with those who treated them unjustly.

The time has come for Muslims who honestly reject the violence promoted by radicals from within the ranks of Muhammad’s followers, to adopt an attitude of courage and remove the passages in the Koran advocating violence against Jews and Christians. In the Native Indian tradition, “courage is not the absence of fear. It is the dedication to do the right thing despite the presence of fear.” All supporters of freedom of expression should stand united in their fight to contain Islamic fanaticism, and systematically pressure Attorneys general, MPs, and political decision-makers in every Western government to stop the prosecution of Geert Wilders and throw in prison or deport those who use the book to justify violence against other religions simply because they don’t adhere to the same principles promoted by Islam.

Failure to do so will precipitate the ruin of Western democracies in ways beyond our knowledge.