The Far Left’s Misguided Contempt For Morrissey (and for the truth about Islam)

The police are kicking their way into my house. And haunting me, taunting me. Wanting me to break their laws — Ganglords, Morrissey 2006

It’s almost like Morrissey had a psychic sense the thought police would be coming for him in 2017. If so, he was right on the money because they’re after him alright. They’re cracking down hard on all dissenters. Got any wrong opinions? You might be better off keeping them to yourself.

And by wrong opinions, we’re talking literally any ideas that deviate from the group think of the Far Left, particularly on the subject of Islam. So if, for example, you’re one of those troublemakers that thinks it’s odd that cartoonists living in the free world must refrain from mocking one religion for fear of death…you’re on their list.

These people really don’t want to hear a critical word said against Islam. Ever. Ever. Ever.

Just after the jihadist attack on his hometown of Manchester, Britrock icon Morrissey broke their sacred law. He spoke out on social media, expressing his frustration with politicians’ obfuscation over the obvious role Islam plays in the never-ending stream of violent attacks against Europe from the Islamic state.

The statement was met with a swift and fierce response. Morrissey was branded a racist, a far-right zealot, a bitter man seething with hatred for all minorities. After all, in the hive mind of the Far Left, that’s the only explanation for why a person wouldn’t embrace an open-borders immigration policy in the middle of a jihadist insurgence.

Journalist Suzanne Moore wrote a piece for The Guardian, decrying dissenters like Morrissey as “hate figures”. Moore has a far more hive mind-compliant theory as to what drove 22-year old Salman Abedi to massacre twenty-three concertgoers. According to her, his actions have nothing at all to do with scripture-sanctioned violence against infidels and everything to do with — drumroll — toxic masculinity.

As usual, Islam played no role in the attack. Moore even insists on putting quotation marks around the word radicalized. These troubled men, she reminds us, are often from broken homes. Some even visit sex workers and use drugs, so it’s not like they’re devout Muslims anyway, right?

Martin Rossiter — frontman of the britpop band Gene — also wrote an op-ed, in which he clamps down even harder on Morrissey’s nay-saying. He begins with the assertion that Morrissey is a coward for not using the word “muslims” in his Facebook post. Rossiter’s speculation, that he sees as fact, is that Morrissey was giving himself room to backpedal away from his comment later.

Mourning his former idol’s transition into an “alt right poster boy”, Rossiter accuses Morrissey of “dogwhistle Islamophobia”. Yes, we’re still talking about Morrissey. The sexually ambiguous, often contrarian, vegan music legendwho’s got nothing nice to say about either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton — that Morrissey.

The most cringe-making paragraph is the one where Rossiter self-flaggelates over having basically been a mafia wife to Morrissey’s alleged racism. He apologizes for the crime of having continued to buy his bygone hero’s albums all the way through 2009. He then scans the lyrics of Bengali in Pumps and National Front Disco for potential social justice infractions, and yes, he finds some.

Rossiter and Moore have a shared mission to paint Morrissey as a bigot, but just what is the evidence for his bigotry exactly? His frustration over politicians refusal to speak candidly about Islam? On that matter, he’s alligned with liberal Muslims such as Asra Nomani, Raheel Raza and Maajid Nawaz and many many others fighting to reform their culture. Are they all “bigots” as well? Are they all “Islamophobic”? The trouble is that actual peaceful Muslims like them are so completely invisible to the Far Left they might as well be ghosts.

The article in Spin magazine from Winston Cook Wilson decries how selfish Morrissey was to focus on his own anger after the attack instead of on the victims’ families. Apparently, it didn’t occur to Wilson that anger and sympathy could be felt simultaneously in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy in Manchester.

These examples of smear journalism are a microcosm of the Far Left’s larger strategy to shame critics of Islam into silence.

Here’s a few others:

• Muslim “civil rights” activist Linda Sarsour teaming up with the Islam advocacy group CAIR to censor screenings of the documentary film Honor Diaries, which focuses on Islamist violence against women
• University student groups seeking to have critics of Islam disinvited from their scheduled campus speaking events and creating a dangerous riotous atmosphere when the event happens as scheduled
• The Southern Poverty Law Center labeling Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz as “anti-Muslim extremists” for the crime of having the courage to speak about problems in Islamic culture.
• The Canadian parliament passing Motion 103 which aims to discourage criticism of Islam, in effect pre-shaming anyone who might be getting any funny ideas about being too vocal with their reflections on, say, the violent homophobia in Muslim society or the horrendous mistreatment of women.
• News site Mother Jones smearing talk show host Dave Rubin with the bogus claim that he’s a member of the “far right”, undoubtedly because of his candid conversations about illiberal ideas in Islamic culture.

In the interim since Morrissey’s allegedly problematic comments, Europe and the United States, unsurprisingly, have been attacked by more jihadists.

This is no time to make truth-telling haram. If we are free to speak honestly about bad ideas, we can give Muslim reformers the support they need to effectively reform the way Islam is taught and practiced. It’s worth a shot and there’s nothing liberal about standing in the way of that goal. Nothing liberal at all.