when a Muslim critic of Islam is denied a platform

Provocative Muslim author Nonie Darwish had been scheduled to appear for a talk at Brown University about her book Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror.

Then she was disinvited by the same folks who invited her—Brown’s Hillel (Jewish) organization. You can read a very tendentious version of events here.

Here’s what I think: Whatever. It’s a free country. Invite or disinvite, it’s your business. But then don’t be surprised when the New Inquisition’s spotlight shines on you.

However, I’ll be eagerly awaiting a letter from dozens of American academics and public intellectuals condemning Brown’s Hillel organization for shutting down Darwish’s free speech. I’m sure I’ll see it in the New York Review of Books, just as I saw the letter they wrote when an event featuring Israel critic Tony Judt was canceled some weeks ago.

To me, it looks like the Polish consulate thought maybe it wouldn’t look so good to have a vociferous critic of Israel—the homeland of the Jews—appear on the premises of a consulate of a country that helped the Germans exterminate 3 million of them—half of all the Jews who were persecuted by their neighbors; stripped of rights, property, jobs, bank accounts, and all personal effects; rounded up; transported on cattle cars; and gassed and then cremated in ovens during World War II.

Likewise, it looks like Brown’s Hillel organization, on second thought, decided it would look bad—considering the anti-Semitism in the air—to invite an outspoken critic of Islam speak from a platform associated with Jews.

I wish the organizers of these events had thought about the implications of their actions (invitations) the first time. Maybe other organizers will learn to think ahead.

A while ago, Tina Brown, whose column I used to love to read in the Washington Post, asked of the New York Times after its Judith Miller debacle: “IS THERE ANYBODY HOME”? ***

Sadly, no. The deciders are all out to lunch. I wish they would decide to hold these events. We need to air our differences. What is the point of a fucking democracy with freedom of speech if we don’t talk to one another? Huh?

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*** Here is the full, delicious quote:

Don Van Natta’s team-reported narrative included such baffling details as Times Executive Editor Bill Keller blandly noting that, after he took her off the Iraq story because of her lead role in co-authoring the erroneous stories of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Miller “kept kind of drifting on her own back into the national security realm.” Drifting? On her own? Is the Times after Blair some sort of trackless sea, with lone castaways afloat on rafts? To whom do reporters report? IS THERE ANYBODY HOME?