Petra Marquardt-Bigman
Last week, opponents of free speech had a great time in New York City.
During the annual UN General Assembly meeting, some Arab and Muslim
leaders, including the head of the Arab League, Nabil Elaraby, took
advantage of recent Muslim riots against a hyped YouTube clip
denigrating Islam’s Prophet Muhammad to revive longstanding efforts to impose a global ban on anything deemed offensive to religion. According to the secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), it was now time for the international community to “come out of hiding from behind the excuse of freedom of expression.”
While the representatives of OIC member states took to the UN podium
to demand restrictions on freedom of expression, one of the
organization’s member states had the great satisfaction to see one of
its nationals demonstrating right there in New York that there was
always something to offend Islam.
Incensed by an ad in the New York subway that denounced violent jihad
as “savage” and called for supporting Israel, the prominent Egyptian-American writer Mona Eltahawy
decided to register her objections to the ad. She did so, however, not –
as one might have expected – by writing an article explaining her
objections and her apparent identification with violent jihadis, but by
seeking out one of the ten posted ads and defacing it with spray paint. A
brawl ensued when Eltahawy encountered a woman who tried to stop her
from defacing the ad, and Eltahawy was arrested and held overnight to
face a criminal mischief charge in court on the following day.
Given that she has a large following on Twitter, it was hardly
surprising that, as soon as the news of her arrest spread, her
supporters started a campaign with the hashtag #FreeMona. It was then
that it first became clear that Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood was
pleased with Eltahawy’s actions: Ikhwanweb, which represents the
“official opinions of the Muslim Brotherhood,” posted a tweet in support of the #FreeMona campaign.
1 comment:
She was violated by the Arab Spring Revolutionary Guards, only to come back to rape our First Amendment...
Her punishment, one year labor on a swine farm...
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