Because the novel I was promoting concerns terrorism, the topic of the ongoing ruckus over that goofball film The Innocence of Muslims arose often in the question-and-answer sessions at my events. I'm one of those Americans who believes neo-Nazis have the right to march down Main Street, and pulled no punches as to what I thought about murdering, marauding, and burning down embassies just because your feelings are hurt — just because you're glorying in your hurt feelings.
One evening I asked Anika what she thought of the riots. She exploded. She was outraged that rabid, illiberal fanatics were giving 1.6 billion Muslims a bad name. Islam isn't an evangelical religion, she said, and most of its adherents are live-and-let-live: peaceable, reasonable, and moderate. Riots over some silly video made people like me think they're all hot-headed, brainwashed lunatics.
I wouldn't claim naively, "Oh, I met this one really nice Muslim, so now I realise they're all really nice." Nevertheless, I'm personally relieved not to be accosted by UK feminists, indignant that I believe women in cases of "legitimate rape" can't get pregnant — just because one headlining senatorial candidate who lacks a first-former's command of biology is also American. So I'm newly sympathetic to sane, smart, broadminded Muslims like Anika who have lately been lumped in with the kooks getting all the press.
But why do we not hear from the Anikas more often? From sensible, articulate, intelligent Muslims who even — imagine — have a sense of humour? Assuming that tolerance and rationality really do prevail among the majority of Islamic peoples, why do their representatives not speak up more forcefully for free speech, even in the West? Why during this grotesque video nonsense did we instead hear the usual gormless bromide that "there's no right to give offence" — when the right to give offence is the very cornerstone of free speech, and without it there is no free speech? I yearn for level-headed Muslims to commend to their fellows on the evening news: "Don't fancy that video? Then don't watch it."
