By WILLIAM MAYER

September 9, 2010 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Glancing at abstracts of the top news stories over the last few days one might get the impression that Western Civilization might end this weekend if a few misguided nabobs in Florida put the match to a Qur'an as a show of protest over the Muslim terror attack which took place 9 years ago this Saturday.

The level of outrage is so over-the-top as to be ridiculous even within the multicultural philosophical wasteland that the West has become.

The desire of the media to present America as a bigoted country is all over this non-controversy as it has been over previous events of a similar nature.

Can one forget Newsweek's breathlessly spreading the fable [written by Michael Isikoff] that Qur'ans were being flushed down the toilet at the Guantanamo detention center, a story [totally fallacious] which directly led to multiple deaths resulting from the Muslim outrage engendered by the piece?

"Protesters took to the streets in several Afghan cities last week after Newsweek published its report. American flags were burned, relief organizations were attacked and at least 16 people were killed and scores injured in clashes with police." [source, Jane Roh, Newsweek Retracts Qur'an Desecration Story, Newsweek May 17, 2005, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,156612,00.html]

Less well know but just as troubling was the 2007 case of a Pace University student being prosecuted for a "hate" crime because he flushed a few pages of the Qur'an down one of the facility's toilets.

"Police yesterday arrested a Pace University student...and charged him with a hate crime for allegedly clogging toilets with the Koran on two occasions last year...Stanislav was charged with two counts of criminal mischief as a hate crime, officials said." [source, Philip Messing and Hasani Gittens, College Koran Flusher Collared, New York Post August 28, 2007, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regional/item_uzHD8qp0B1vvC13RGFICrM;jsessionid=F101E2BD7655F893A3C99C2BA990D570#ixzz0yyEphTyQ]

So great has fear of possible Muslim violence over real or perceived "insults" to Islam that, for example, the U.S. military in Afghanistan has actually burned Bibles written in the country's two major dialects rather than risking whatever wrath might ensue from their dissemination.

"Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans." [source, Military Burns Unsolicited Bibles Sent to Afghanistan, CNN May 22, 2009, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/20/us.military.bibles.burned/index.html]

A newspaper publishes some cartoons poking fun at Islam...people die. A publisher refuses to go forward with a book that might be construed as being critical of Islam...because...people might die. A fringe pastor ceases to proceed with torching a Qur'an as a protest...because...people might die. And now, imam Rauf, the duplicitous, apparently Hamas/Hezbollah friendly lead man behind the 911 mosque threatens [mentioning the Danish cartoons] that if the mosque is not built that...you guessed it...people might die.

The question looms, "How long will jihadist Muslims be given the right to determine what constitutes legitimate freedom of expression by citizens in Western nations?"

This is a preposterous state of affairs, one which is in line with the logic of using foreign legal principles in determining U.S. Constitutional questions and allowing supra-national bodies like the United Nations or the World Court to pass judgment on what Americans do.

With a haggard Secretary of State Clinton yesterday intoning the words "Holy Qur'an" serving as an unintended clarion, it should be clear that when the wishes of the jihadists become enforceable as custom, the result of U.S. legal rulings or some other method of overt/covert behavior control, then we have lost the war for this culture.

Conservatives should think long and hard about this before parroting the talking points advanced by our enemies.

© 2010 PipeLineNews.org LLC, William Mayer. All rights reserved.