Prominent Critic of Islam and Iran Murdered at Home in Sweden
Shot While Streaming on Social Media: A prominent free speech activist and critic of Islam known for staging public burnings of the Islamic holy book, the Quran, was murdered inside...
Theo van Gogh
The Case For Heresy
By now, you should be familiar with the name Ayaan Hirsi Ali. You should know at least this much about her: She is brilliant, beautiful, black and she has been banned near Boston. You mi...
Op-eds
Reacting to the Massacre in Paris
What’s the proper response? What should we be reflecting on? Some ideas.
Op-eds
The War on Free Speech
Last Friday, in his end-of-the-year press conference, President Obama scolded Sony Pictures. Cancelling the theatrical release of “The Interview” following cyber-attacks from North Ko...
Op-eds
Academic Dishonors
Remember when colleges prided themselves on the diligence and depth of their research? Frederick Lawrence, president of Brandeis University, apparently does not. He offered an honorary degr...
Op-eds
Read Me If You Can: Censorship Today
You Can’t Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom Nick Cohen (London: Fourth Estate, 2012) If I complacently accept the idea that...
Op-eds
“Islamophobia” and the Silencing of Dissent
In recent years, much has been written on and discussed about “Islamophobia,” that contrived prejudice that is said to attach to those who question, however sincerely, prevailing unde...
Op-eds
Muslims Attacked!
It’s funny, in an Orwellian way, that in Europe there are now militant groups with such cutesy names as Sharia4Belgium and Sharia4Holland. Less funny, but perhaps more Orwellian, is this: L...
Op-eds
Charlie Hebdo Attack: No More Excuses
There exists an unspoken rule in the Republic of Letters — that land where novelists, poets, mere ink-stained wretches like myself, think tank scholars who churn out dry policy reports&hell...
Op-eds
In Defense of Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Afshin Ellian
Paul Berman's book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, which was neglected or dismissed by many in the liberal press without its reviewers seriously engaging with its arguments, deals es...
Op-eds
New report: ‘Domestic Intelligence: New Powers, New Risks’
Today I was a panelist at the rollout event for a new report published by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, Emily Berman's Domestic Int...
Op-eds
Obstructed “View”
An African-American woman who affects a Jewish-sounding surname as a running joke storms off the stage in response to what she regards as the slander of Muslims. Only in America. But let me back...
Op-eds
Prominent European Islamic Terrorist Renounces Extremism
A key figure in one of Europe's most infamous Islamic extremist networks has written a public letter renouncing whole swathes of the ideology that led him to try to murder non-believers. On...
Op-eds
Submission
What do Comedy Central and Yale University Press have in common? In the Islamist war against free speech, both have been on the front lines. And both have surrendered. Last week, Comedy Central c...
Op-eds
Western Civilization on Trial
I used to think of the Netherlands as a land of tulips, windmills, Anne Frank, and a little boy with his finger in the dike. Increasingly, I think of it as the place where Theo van Gogh was murde...
Op-eds
A New French Resistance
The electoral victory by Nicolas Sarkozy is the product of the French public's rejection of a decay eroding the foundations of the Fifth Republic since its inception in 1958. The country...
Op-eds
A Dangerous Woman
Theo van Gogh was a modern Western man, a believer in reason, tolerance and multiculturalism. And so it is perhaps fitting that his last words were: “Can’t we talk about this?”...
Op-eds
An Unveiling
Muslim women veiling has become the subject of intense controversy in Britain in recent days, with Prime Minister Tony Blair calling the veil a “mark of separation.” National Revi...
Op-eds
Offers We Can’t Refuse?
An Iraqi acquaintance served as a member of a city council. She is Shia and religious. She had formed an alliance with other Iraqi women – Shia, Sunni and Christian; Arab and Kurd; religiou...
Op-eds
Where Are the Muslim Moderates?
In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev addressed a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. For nearly four hours, he spoke about the unspeakable: the crimes of his predecessor, Sov...