Isn’t it wonderful that the Hollywood hipsters and other assorted loons have discovered their latest cause du jour in the kidnapped schoolgirls of Nigeria? Like a broken clock that’s correct twice a day, sometimes they do manage to be on the right side of an issue. But their lack of consistency in selecting which issue to rally around is stunning.
 
Just last month, Brandeis University was about to bestow an honorary degree on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born American author and outspoken advocate for the rights of Muslim women. Her politics would typically appeal to the Left; as Fox News describes them ~

Hirsi Ali’s story is a heroic one, and her persona – Third World woman of color, secular humanist, ardent feminist, defender of gay rights and a near martyr to her liberal Western principles – certainly resonated with the awards committee of a proudly progressive university like Brandeis. She was almost the perfect candidate for an honorary degree…

But for one little thing: the Muslim factor. Hirsi Ali is vocal about Islam’s second-class treatment of women. And when the head of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), Nihad Awad, got wind of the school’s intention he began accusing her ~

… of wrong thoughts and evil words. Giving her an award, he wrote, would be like “promoting the work of white supremacists and anti-Semites.”

 
So or course Brandeis, lost in the ever-growing murkiness of moral relativity, backed down like the cowards they are ~

President Lawrence informed Hirsi Ali that she was no longer welcome at commencement. He blamed this on “certain of her past statements,” which he said were inconsistent with the university’s “core values.” He had the audacity to invite Hirsi Ali to visit the school someday for a discussion “in the spirit of free expression that has defined Brandeis University through its history.” 😯

 
Less than a month later, Ali’s assertions about Islam’s misogynist tendencies proved tragically accurate yet again, when the Boko Haram barbarians in Nigeria kidnapped 276 schoolgirls, and subsequently slaughtered hundreds of other people (mostly Christians).

 
Leftists in Hollywood and beyond are correctly outraged. But why weren’t they standing up to Brandeis and CAIR last month?
 
When you can’t reason for yourself – outside the Progressive echo chamber – you’re no longer effectively able to differentiate between right and wrong. (Remember, “judging,” the worst sin among Lefties, so it seems they’ve devolved the ability for discernment.)
 
Hirsi Ali has no such trouble. There’s no inconsistency in her words or actions. Here’s an excerpt from her article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal ~

Far from being an aberration among Islamist terror groups, as some observers suggest, Boko Haram in its goals and methods is in fact all too representative.
 
The kidnapping of the schoolgirls throws into bold relief a central part of what the jihadists are about: the oppression of women. Boko Haram sincerely believes that girls are better off enslaved than educated. The terrorists’ mission is no different from that of the Taliban assassin who shot and nearly killed 15-year-old Pakistani Malala Yousafzai—as she rode a school bus home in 2012—because she advocated girls’ education. As I know from experience, nothing is more anathema to the jihadists than equal and educated women.
 
How to explain this phenomenon to baffled Westerners, who these days seem more eager to smear the critics of jihadism as “Islamophobes” than to stand up for women’s most basic rights? Where are the Muslim college-student organizations denouncing Boko Haram? Where is the outrage during Friday prayers? These girls’ lives deserve more than a Twitter hashtag protest.- […]
 
It is also time for Western liberals to wake up. If they choose to regard Boko Haram as an aberration, they do so at their peril. The kidnapping of these schoolgirls is not an isolated tragedy; their fate reflects a new wave of jihadism that extends far beyond Nigeria and poses a mortal threat to the rights of women and girls. If my pointing this out offends some people more than the odious acts of Boko Haram, then so be it.

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Related:
Megyn Kelly Rips CAIR Official, defends Ayaan Hirsi Ali over Honor Violence (Video)
 
Islam’s Role in Boko Haram’s Kidnapping of Schoolgirls — on The Glazov Gang ~ Interview with Dr. Mark Durie, a theologian, human rights activist and pastor of an Anglican church. There’s nothing surprising about a terrorist branch like Boko Haram emerging from the tree of Islam; their views are entirely in keeping with the Muslim faith.
 
Boko Haram’s Reign of Terror: Al Qaeda Affiliate Slaughtering Christians in Nigeria

Last week we discovered that if you’re traveling to Canada these days, the Great North version of the Thought Police can now stop you at the border for believing that homosexual sex is a sin. And now – just this past weekend – we learn that in Great Britain, if you’re convinced that you’re in danger of losing your culture/country to a massive tidal wave of Muslim immigrants, there’s a good chance they’ll just haul your butt off to jail.
 

Paul Weston, chairman of the LibertyGB party (you can watch his confessional “I am a racist” video HERE), and a candidate in the European elections next month, was arrested last Saturday for taking a stand against the Islamification of Great Britain ~

The leader of an anti-immigration pressure group has been arrested for quoting Winston Churchill. Paul Weston, chairman of LibertyGB, was taken into custody in Winchester, southern England, after delivering a speech in which he quoted an excerpt from the wartime Prime Minister’s book “The River War” […]
 
A woman came of the Guildhall and asked Weston if he had authorisation to make the speech. He replied that he did not, at which point she called him “disgusting” and called the police. At least six police officers arrived, questioned by-standers and arrested Weston and took him away.

 
Electioneering stunt or not, Mr. Weston has certainly managed to confirm his assertion; that Britain is descending into a politically correct madhouse, where common sense seems to have utterly lost its way. LibertyGB’s focus is on ~

… the long term threat of mass immigration, radical Islam and the seemingly deliberate destruction of the main institutions responsible for building and maintaining Britain as a successful nation state – namely education, the family, Christianity, morality and basic common sense.

These all sound like objectives Winston Churchill himself would approve of; Basic. Common. Sense.
 
As you can see from the selection that Mr. Weston was reading when he was arrested, Islam hasn’t changed much in the last century or so ~

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.”

~ Winston Churchill – 1899; “The River War”*

In 1939, the British finally heeded Churchill’s warnings about the Nazis and summoned enough intestinal fortitude to defend Western civilization against fascism. Alas, the former prime minister’s righteous rhetoric (and unvarnished truth!) about the Religion of Peace has now been deemed a crime against the Crown.
 
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Related:
Liberty GB’s Paul Weston, arrested for quoting Churchill, could face two years in jail
 
*From Breitbart-London ~

“The River War,” written in 1899, recounts Churchill’s experiences as a British Army Officer in the Anglo-Sudan War of 1881-1899. Churchill is still regarded in high esteem by most of the British public, with a 2002 BBC poll voting him the greatest Briton of all time.

 
The UK’s Assault on Free Speech