Washington Free Beacon Review: Flemming Rose’s ‘Tyranny of Silence’

“Free speech does not enjoy such popular support elsewhere, a hard reality underscored by the hail of bullets directed at French satire publication Charlie Hebdo last week. The bullets were intended to silence outspoken critics of Islam. They served their grisly purpose in 12 cases and counting. But terrorists have not yet managed to silence Danish journalist Flemming Rose, although they would sorely like to. Rose’s vigorous defense of free speech, The Tyranny of Silence, has recently been translated into English from the original Danish.
The translation could not have come at a better time.
When reached for comment on the Paris attacks, Rose told the Washington Free Beacon that “Charlie Hebdo was the only European paper that hadn’t internalized the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Since 2008 it has been the only paper that continued to insist on their right to do religious satire. Frankly, my book and its thesis has become more urgent than ever. The people behind the mass murder in Paris want to impose a global blasphemy law to protect their religion against criticism, the want to establish a tyranny of silence…”
“The lesson for us: if you give in to intimidation, you will not get less but more of it because you show the perpetrators that it works.”
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