The new copy of the magazine entitled The New Individualist has on its cover, seen to the right, one of the 12 Danish cartoons of Mohammed that caused mass riots and protests. The cartoon the magazine chose to adorn the cover is supposedly one of the more inflamatory cartoons of the original 12.

Based upon the description on the cover, I am led to believe the magazine will discuss self-censorship and how first amendment rights have been thrown out the window over some stupid cartoons. Coincidentally this is exactly what the editor of Jyllands-Posten claims was the reasoning for publishing the cartoons in the first place, so maybe after all the fires, kidnappings, threats, boycotts, draggings of Ronald McDonald down the streets of Lahore and of course the bounties for the ‘head of the cartoonist’ we will finally discuss if the cartoons are a legitimate freedom of speech and freedom of expression issue. You all know where I am on that issue.

Don’t tell any of this to Borders though. They have decided not to carry the magazine because of the cover, a magazine the store normally carries. Why? Here’s their statement summed down to one line.

“For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority,” Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.

Translated that means they are afraid they might upset some Muslim hooligans who would turn their vengeance upon Borders for selling a magazine with one of the cartoons of Mohammed on its cover. Ironically this is exactly what the article in The New Individualist is likely over. Waldenbooks has also said they will not carry the magazine and I have yet to see the Waldenbooks statement as to why. But there’s more to the story concerning Borders in San Francisco.

I work for Borders Books and after reading the article you posted on Wed. 3/29 about our company not carrying the magazine due to it showing the dreaded cartoons of blasphemy, I thought I should write with another tidbit of information I learned about my company the other week.

I was shifting rows of books in our religion section and it happened to be that all of our Koran books (a section on its own) ended up on the bottom shelf. The next day I was informed by my General Manager that it is Borders policy as a whole (not my particular store) that due to complaints in the past from Muslim customers, we are not allowed to put our copies of the Koran on any shelf other than the top.

When I heard of this I became so infuriated that the company I work for (and I do love working for it) has caved in to Islamic pressure and is still continuing to do so. I love my job and my company but it does deeply disturb me to see what is happening to it.

So not only is Borders applying the same self-censorship the cartoons were supposed to combat, they also make sure copies of the Koran are on the top shelf due to consumer complaints. What else is Borders caving into?

Where Borders wants to place copies of the Koran and whether or not they choose to sell The New Individualist is entirely up to the company. I have absolutely no qualms with that. What I do have a problem with is the reasoning why Borders has chosen to go the way of the dhimmi while paying the symbollic jizya.

It is out of fear that Borders is changing their rules and pulling copies of magazines, not due to a marketing strategy to enhance sales or make more popular items easier for consumers to find. The latter is basic economics 101 at the retail level. Borders, in essense, has decided it is better to throw away the basic ecnomic model that this country was built upon and duck their heads and allow self-censorship due to fear to dictate the store’s policies.

New York University has caved into pressure to censor a student-run discussion over the cartoons. The discussion was to show the cartoons and discuss the reactions to the cartoons and why or why not the cartoons had a right to run. This is a discussion we should be having and an informed commentator on these issues would at least have to have seen the cartoons.

Not so at NYU. The discussion can continue but they cannot show the cartoons.

However, on Monday afternoon, NYU Director of Student Activities Robert Butler sent an e-mail requesting a meeting with the leaders of the Objectivist Club the next day. He also informed them that NYU would now “require that this event be open only to members of the NYU community.” Butler cited “the campus climate and controversy surrounding the cartoons,” ordering the students to inform the “non-NYU people” who had already registered that they “should not plan on attending.” He concluded, “This is not negotiable.”

Following the meeting, Butler sent another e-mail clarifying that the students have two choices: they must either not display the cartoons, or not allow anyone from off campus to attend the event. Approximately 150 off-campus guests are currently registered to attend.

Once again, a company caves into thoughts of violence and against the possibility of offending. If we were to censor everything that people are offended over, there would be nothing left to discuss. Butler though feels it is right to self-censor, which again is exactly why the cartoons were published in the first place.

In a letter sent to Muslim groups at NYU, the president of the Islamic Center at NYU, Maheen H Farooqi, calls the cartoons racist. Yes, even as I have pointed out several times over a religion is not a race, this is the call for those who oppose the cartoons. Farooqi also states “the pictures themselves are just hatred and there is no justification in preaching something that breeds that kind of hate.”  The cartoons, not pictures, were published partially out of hate, but hate towards self-censorship.  If no one knows what Mohammed looked like, how can the cartoons actually be of Mohammed as so many people protesting the cartoons have claimed?

This is preciesely what we are fighting against and I certainly feel it is important to fight. In the case of Waldenbooks and Borders, the jihadists have already won through their intimidation tactics.

Dummocrats.com linked with How Borders and Waldenbooks cave to radical Muslim demands...

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