Politics

National Security Expert Slams Hillary’s ‘Assault’ On Free Speech

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Rachel Stoltzfoos Staff Reporter
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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton put her willingness to defend the Constitution in serious doubt when she promised Islamic countries the United States government would intimidate Americans who violate their free speech code, national security expert Stephen Coughlin told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

As Secretary of State, Clinton promised an international Islamic organization in 2011 that the United States government would “use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to intimidate Americans who improperly criticize Islam or Muhammad.

“An official of the United States, in an official communiqué, went to a foreign land to commit to a foreign leader that the United States Government would engage in the extra-legal practice of intimidating American citizens in the exercise of what is otherwise their protected free speech rights under the First Amendment,” Coughlin told TheDCNF.

Coughlin discusses the move in his recently published book, “Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad,” and told TheDCNF it casts a pall on her record as secretary of state. (RELATED: Hillary Clinton Suggests Islamic Governments Fear Religious Debate)

“If her willingness to sell out Americans First Amendment rights to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation by categorizing as ‘hate speech’ anything that is deemed offensive to Islam is any indication, she may be the least qualified candidate to support and defend the Constitution,” he said.

Coughlin’s an attorney, decorated intelligence officer and expert on Islamic law and terrorism who consulted the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff for about a decade following 9/11, before the Muslim Brotherhood allegedly convinced the White House to ban him and “outlaw” his briefings.

He cites Clinton’s 2011 visit to Turkey and her cooperation with the OIC in his book as one example of how muslim ideologists wield influence in the “highest reaches” of the U.S. government.

The Clinton campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

The OIC is the second-largest intergovernmental organization after the U.N., consisting of 57 states that identify as “the collective voice of the Muslim world.”

After she helped the OIC secure passage of U.N. resolution 16/18, “Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief,” Clinton promised the U.S. would take what steps it could to curb speech critical of Islam.

“And together we have begun to overcome the false divide that pits religious sensitivities against freedom of expression, and we are pursuing a new approach based on concrete steps to fight intolerance wherever it occurs,” she said in an address following the resolution’s passage.

“We also understand that, for 235 years, freedom of expression has been a universal right at the core of our democracy,” she added. “So we are focused on promoting interfaith education and collaboration, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, protecting the rights of all people to worship as they choose, and to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel they have the support to do what we abhor.”

The resolution condemns “any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, whether it involves the use of print, audio-visual or electronic media.”

Coughlin argues in his book it’s part of a deliberate OIC-led effort to bring the U.S. and other countries in line with Muslim speech standards, first by condemning and eventually criminalizing unwanted speech such as depictions of Muhammad.

“Over the last few years, major left wing and Islamists organizations have been working diligently to reframe free speech in an oppositional narrative that distinguishes sanctioned speech, designated free speech, from hate speech in a long term campaign to brand nonconforming speech as hate speech that is at first to be ridiculed and then criminalized,” he told TheDCNF.

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