Diana West is a nationally syndicated writer whose weekly column appears every Sunday in The Washington Examiner. She is also among the most passionate voices in the journalism community on behalf of the First Amendment and freedom of the press.
West has written often and with great insight and courage about the growing threat to freedom of expression here in the U.S. and across the Western world from the spread of Islamic political influences, including especially demands that secular societies be forced to observe sharia law.
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Sharia is the legal code of the Islamic religious state and includes multiple restrictions on all expression concerning the established Muslim religion. The penalties for violating these restrictions can include prison and even death where sharia law is systematically enforced.
West fears that U.S. and western political, religious, cultural and intellectual leaders fail to appreciate to extistential threat to freedom of expression represented by, for example, demands that Muslims living here and in Europe be allowed to substitute sharia for secular laws.
She points to the failure of the West to stand up for Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, creator of the drawing of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban that sparked riots across the Muslim world and the deaths of hundreds of people in 2005.
She spoke about these issues on a panel recently at the Ayn Rand Center here in Washington. The following video of her remarks is courtesy of the Media Research Center:
