On September 11, 2001, Mohamed Atta told passengers on the hijacked jetliner racing toward the Twin Towers in New York: “Just stay quiet and you’ll be okay….Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”

Atta’s words are emblematic of the global effort to destroy the freedom of speech, the fundamental bulwark against tyranny and the foundation of any free society. The war against free speech has been going on for decades. In 1989, the mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran declared war on this fundamental freedom when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a death fatwa against Rushdie for his supposed blasphemy in The Satanic Verses. Rushdie went into hiding and was hailed in the West as a hero, a living martyr for the freedom of speech.

That was then. A lot has changed since 1989. When on May 3, 2015, two jihad terrorists traveled from Phoenix, Arizona to Garland, Texas in order to commit mass murder at our American Freedom Defense Initiative’s Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest, my colleague and fellow organizer of the event, Pamela Geller, was harshly criticized on both the Left and the Right (her critics included Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham). Few stood up for the freedom of speech; most took it for granted that Americans should curb their expression to avoid offending Muslims.

From Rushdie to Garland was a steep descent. Rushdie was hailed as a hero; Geller was excoriated — for doing the same thing. The victory of the foes of the freedom of speech is almost complete. Either America and the West will stand now against attempts to suppress the freedom of speech by violence, or will submit and give the violent the signal that we can be silenced by threats and murder. Right now it looks as if submission is the West’s choice.

“Copenhagen Caves In: Danes Cancel ‘Satanic Verses’ Play to Please Muslims,” Russia’s state-run Sputnik, May 26, 2016 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):