The Age of Blasphemy

With all the focus on Newt Gingrich’s race-baiting and “big ideas,” one thing that hasn’t gotten much notice yet: his outrageous anti-Muslim statements.

There’s a reason why Newt was scheduled to speak at hate group leader Pamela Geller’s “Ground Zero Mosque” demonstration in New York, and there’s a reason why she endorses him for President. On this subject, Gingrich sounds exactly like Geller.

Here’s Gingrich today on The Janet Mefferd Show, explaining that the Obama administration, the Justice Department, secular judges, “religious bigots who want to drive Christianity out of public life,” and “elites” are conspiring with the “Organization of Islamic Countries” to advance the cause of radical Islam.

Newt Gingrich with hate group leader Pamela GellerGingrich: Well, I think that we have to really, from my perspective you don’t have an issue of religious tolerance you have an elite which favors radical Islam over Christianity and Judaism. You have constant pressure by secular judges and by religious bigots to drive Christianity out of public life and to establish a secular state except when it comes to radical Islam, where all of the sudden they start making excuses for Sharia, they start making excuses that we really shouldn’t use certain language. Remember, the Organization of Islamic Countries is dedicated to preventing anyone, anywhere in the world from commenting negatively about Islam, so they would literally eliminate our free speech and there were clearly conversations held that implied that the US Justice Department would begin to enforce censorship against American citizens to protect radical Islam, I think that’s just an amazing concept frankly.

Here are a couple of facts to counteract this bizarre fear-mongering conspiracy theory that Newt’s parroting directly from Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer:

First, Gingrich has the name of the organization wrong; it’s the Organization of the Islamic Conference (which shows the depth of Gingrich’s knowledge). (Update: recently changed to “Organization of Islamic Cooperation.”)

Second, the Obama administration has come out strongly against OIC-sponsored UN resolutions barring the defamation of religion. The idea that the Justice Department is going to start “enforcing censorship” against people who criticize Islam is just … stupid.

Newt is spouting a cartoon-like version of the reality, with Muslims as the boogeymen, and the right wing eats this stuff up.