From Theordore Dalrymple of National Review, February 2015....
"But surveillance will never be enough: criticism of Islam itself must be free and unconstrained and relentless. For example, in the very small town in France near which I live some of the time, there was a demonstration against terrorism in the wake of the attack on Charlie Hebdo. The small and generally well-integrated population of Maghrebis there was conspicuous by its absence from the demonstration. Of course citizens are free to demonstrate or not demonstrate as they wish; but it is at least possible that some of the young Maghrebis did not demonstrate because of fear of denunciation, of accusations of apostasy. Muslims live in fear of one another more than in fear of others, at least in the modern world, and this is because of a fundamental incompatibility of Islam with the modern world."
"The accusation of apostasy in Islam is a serious one, potentially fatal to the accused. I hardly need prove this since it is admitted on all hands, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. So long as this is so, so long as muslims fear to adopt another religion or publicly proclaim their athiesm or detestation of Mohammed and Islam, intellectually justified or not, the religion is incompatible with our notions of what our polity should be, even if our polity sometimes betrays its own principles and ideals - as all principles and ideals are sometimes betrayed, man being an imperfect creature."
"In other words, the ideological gloves should come off. There should be no insincere (and cowardly) homage to Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance. No religion that makes apostasy a punishable crime is tolerant."
"On the contrary, it more resembles a criminal conspiracy, at least when the punishment is severe. And this is so no matter what proportion of Muslims are decent people (the people of Egypt, for example, have often struck me as among the most charming and hospitable in the world, as did the Syrians in the good old days of uncontested secular dictatorship), or how troubling or hurtful they find the thought. What is so is so."
