The Southern Poverty Law Center had already named me a one-man hate group (alongside a bar sign) as I chronicled some years ago.
My first response on finding out that I was now a hate group was to look around to see where everyone else was.
Still the Southern Poverty Law Center had listed, "Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield" as one of their "Active Anti-Muslim Hate Groups," alongside such other vast organizations as "Faith Freedom," a website for ex-Muslims, and "Casa D'Ice Signs," the signs on a bar located on K-Mart Plaza located in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
My first thought was to wonder whether some mistake had been made in my own case, but the Southern Poverty Law Center people are experts on hate groups, even if they don't seem to know what the definitions of "hate" or "groups" or "hate groups" might be.
Now the SPLC decided to jump to the defense of anti-Semitic bigot Linda Sarsour by attacking a bunch of her critics. Including me.
Daniel Greenfield, another man with a long history of anti-Muslim hate speech, wrote a piece for FrontPageMag, claiming, ”Sarsour was speaking in the typical language of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its notion of political change embraces a spectrum that includes both violent and non-violent action. Its primary allegiance is Islamic Supremacism.”
In a follow-up piece, Greenfield attacked the Prophet Mohammad, writing, “[Sarsour's] beloved prophet was a psychotic mass murderer who ordered the rape and killing of non-Muslims. ISIS' crimes were based on Mohammed's atrocities.”
Notably the SPLC didn't try to argue or disprove any of that. It can't. But also on the left, having politically incorrect views is its own condemnation. There's no need to prove anything.
And yet there is a revealing aspect to all this.
The SPLC jumps into the fight to defend Linda Sarsour, an Islamist activist aligned with the left, and then suddenly decides to defend Mohammed. Traditional defenses of religious freedom focused on the freedom to practice religion, not on defenses of its merits.
That's where Islam tends to be different.
Leftists don't just defend its right to practice or believe, but the legitimacy of what is believed. And thus criticism of Islam must be censored. Cartoons have to be banned and the character of Mohammed, a monster, rapist and mass murderer must be defended. And so instead of defending religious freedom, the left comes to defend theocracy.