Critical thinking and the free exchange of ideas is fundamental to our Western society. We shouldn’t give it up because someone might be offended.

It kind of snuck up on me. I didn’t even know this until about a week ago, but it’s Islamofascism Awareness Week again. From April 7 to April 11 students from campuses all over America are doing their part to raise consciousness about Islamofascism: the extremist ideology of violence that seeks to hijack the Muslim faith. Not to be left out I decided to do my part. This week I decided to raise awareness about a particular notion of Islamofascist ideology known as “dhimmitude,” and what it means for Western civilization.

Dhimmitude is the idea that in a society those who have not converted to Islam should not have a legal status on par with those who are Muslims. The term is derived from the term Dhimmi, an Arabic word used as a label for a protected class of non-Muslim individuals. Sounds good right? Well look a little closer.

As it turns out Dhimmis are protected but are kept as second-class citizens. They are forced to live under sharia law and must pay a poll tax known as the jizya because they are non-Muslim. This notion of forcing others into second-class citizenship is something that no civil Muslim would agree with. It is clearly an example of Islamofascist extremism.

Every schoolchild knows Islamofascism is dangerous. However, this fact is being ignored to some degree in Europe. Multiculturalism is to blame here. Multiculturalism sometimes takes tolerance to the extreme and attacks people for criticizing things no matter what those things are or whether the criticism is valid or not.

I read an article about this by Christopher Hitchens a while back. He argued that multiculturalism was inhibiting criticisms of Islamofascism in Britain. He pointed out that people who would criticize something they deemed to be Islamofascist would be labeled “Islamophobes” and their criticisms would go ignored.

Because their opposition is being silenced, extremists are now able to push for special laws to accommodate Muslims, and restrict the rights of others. The result of this is that there is now a creeping dhimmitude in some places in Europe, and even places like Canada. For example, last year in Canada, some magazine publishers were hauled before “human rights commissions” because they published an article that about Islamic extremism’s threat to freedom in Western societies.

Critical thinking and the free exchange of ideas are fundamental to our Western society. We shouldn’t give it up because someone might be offended. Another instance of this was last August when Scottish doctors were banned from eating lunch at their desks during Ramadan for fear that it might offend Muslim coworkers.

In order to fight the enemy we need to first understand the enemy. We can’t do that if any attempt to do so is branded as “Islamophobic.” This problem has not yet become as serious in America. We have a chance to learn from what happens when extremists abuse multiculturalism from what is going on around us. We should take that chance.

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