Bruce Bawer has an article up at Reason about PC genuflection toward Islamofascism in Europe. (I can’t help wondering, given the way hardee-har-har humor has taken over at that place over the last few years, whether that subhead isn’t a good-natured-but-dopey allusion to Bawer’s sexuality.) Anyway, there are plenty of chilling passages to choose from, but I think this is my, uh, favorite:

For some Europeans in the expression business, government limits haven’t been necessary: they’ve opted for self-censorship. After being “warned by Muslim friends” shortly after van Gogh’s murder, Dutch movie director Albert Ter Heerdt decided to “postpone” a sequel to his “multicultural comedy” Shouf Shouf Habibi! And in January producer Gijs van de Westelaken canceled a screening of Submission at the Rotterdam Film Festival, whose theme was “censored films.” (Instead, the audience saw two pictures sympathetic to suicide bombers.)

Banning existing works is bad enough; as long as they aren’t destroyed, they have to potential to survive until they can be safely appreciated. But when art is stillborn because of political pressure, that’s an entirely different matter.

It’s not, BTW, that I think the world needs more Piss Christs. Art that challenges religious preconceptions is as important as any other kind, but there are altogether too many people who think that blasphemy is, in and of itself, somehow boldly artistic and meaningful. (I’m thinking of blasphemy as it or the equivalent concept happens to be defined by whatever religion is being used for material.) It seems to me that just stomping on things requires minimal inspiration and, in a free society, minimal risk. It’s often not even done with much technical or compositional flair. There’s a difference, however, between not creating something because you realize the idea animating it was a puerile, empty one and not creating something because you’re cowed by people playing the multi-culti card. That’s very chilling.

Added on 4 December: Rondi Adamson notes a hopeful sign from Norway. It’s not related to art, but it is related to multiculti distortions of how protections on speech should function:

Norway has an “Equality Minister,” which, normally, would be something I would mock. But at least this person is trying to do something useful: Pull state funding from mosques that encourage wife-beating. Yes, you read that correctly.

The article she links is here.

She also has a post about women Islamofascists that, I’m guessing, will resonate with the womenfolk who read here (and the men who love them):

A Belgian woman tried to detonate a bunch of explosives she had strapped to herself, in an attempt to kill American soldiers in Iraq. She failed at the latter, thank God, but did manage to kill herself. Good. One less of them.

Smarmily, CNN is reporting she was “brainwashed” by her Arab hubby. Really? Why is it when women do these hideous things we need to believe they were brainwashed by a man? Maybe she was just an awful person, with awful ideas, all on her own. Maybe that’s why she liked her husband–because his ideology mirrored hers.

It’s fine to say that women are, on average and as a component of motherhood, biologically more disposed toward being empaths and soft conflict resolution and stuff. But it robs them of their autonomy and dignity as adults to talk as if no woman could ever have a nasty thought in her head without being overmastered by some nefarious daddy/husband figure. Free moral agency implies the freedom to be an evil bitch.

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