Robert Spencer took to In The Market with Janet Parshall yesterday to decry the purported adoption of Islamic law in America as proved by a hotel’s decision to cancel a conference featuring Spencer, Pamela Geller and other anti-Muslim activists. Spencer again accused progressive groups, namely the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, of promoting “smears and defamation,” arguing that “far-left groups” are “enemies of free speech and are in league with Islamic supremacists to curtail our freedom of speech and to demonize and to marginalize anybody that dares to speak the truth about jihad and Islam.” Spencer, who frequently rails against the civil rights of Muslims, went on to say that Americans have become victims of the “self-enforcement of Islamic law and the internalization of Islamic norms.”
Steve Eckley, who is some sort of functionary in Amerimar Enterprises, which is the corporation which owns the Hutton Hotel in Nashville, and he told reporters that he was cancelling the conference because my colleague Pamela Geller and I were speaking, he singled us out. Even though there was a large roster of speakers, lots of people speaking, he picked us out and mentioned us both by name, nobody else, and said that the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League had complained about us and that that was another reason he was dropping the conference. This is actually even more disturbing because not only is he caving into threats but he is accepting, uncritically, these simply smears and defamation by far-left groups that are enemies of free speech and are in league with Islamic supremacists to curtail our freedom of speech and to demonize and to marginalize anybody that dares to speak the truth about jihad and Islam. So he is just furthering their narrative and abetting its spread by banning the conference, but that was what he said.
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It’s the self-enforcement of Islamic law and the internalization of Islamic norms of what’s acceptable to speak about and what isn’t. And American authorities like this sap at the hotel are willingly and unwittingly obeying and toeing the line, and not realizing that once we start down that road, pretty soon quite a few more of our freedoms are going to be eroded away than he probably expects.
