One Law for All is calling for a rally in defence of free expression and the right to criticise religion on 11 February 2012 in central London from 2-4pm.
We are also calling for simultaneous events and acts in defence of free expression on 11 February in countries world-wide.
The call follows an increased number of attacks on free expression in the UK, including a 17 year old being forced to remove a Jesus and Mo cartoon or face expulsion from his Sixth Form College and demands by the UCL Union that the Atheist society remove a Jesus and Mo cartoon from its Facebook page. It also follows threats of violence, police being called, and the cancellation of a meeting at Queen Mary College where One Law for All spokesperson Anne Marie Waters was to deliver a speech on Sharia. Saying ‘Who gave these kuffar the right to speak?’, an Islamist website called for the disruption of the meeting. Two days later at the same college, though, the Islamic Society held a meeting on traditional Islam with a speaker who has called for the death of apostates, those who mock Islam, and secularist Muslims.
This whole thing is very important, and defence of free speech cannot simply be left to politicians and the police. What is being defended has to be there for all to see and hear. And above all, defend. Use it or (slowly) lose it.
Intimidation and threats of violence are the tactics of the Islamists, and using such, they are trying to rally as many co-thinkers as possible into action: specifically to disrupt meetings they don’t approve of. If history is any guide, success at that stage will simply lead them to try for greater success still.
In the West, Muslims are a minority, and Islamists are a minority of that minority. But those Islamists are claiming to speak for Islam, and on behalf of all Muslims. As long as they are not opposed and denounced by other Muslims, liberal non-Muslims will have to do the defending on their own. That is, if a situation with the same odour as Germany in the 1930s is to be avoided.