In a recently-released book, national security expert Stephen Coughlin said that while serving as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton promised Islamic countries the U.S. government would intimidate Americans who speak out or criticize Islam, the Daily Caller reported Saturday. The 2011 closed-door meeting with Islamic countries lasted three days and, the Daily Caller said, puts Clinton’s “willingness to defend the Constitution in serious doubt.”
According to Coughlin, Clinton told representatives of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation the U.S. government would “use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to intimidate and silence those who criticize Islam or Muhammad. At the time of the conference, we reported that Traditional Values Coalition President Andrea Lafferty was identified as a “security threat” to Clinton and was even detained by her security personnel.
Lafferty was one of those attempting to monitor the meeting. It seems Lafferty had good reason to be concerned, as Coughlin notes in his book.
“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,” he told the Daily Caller. Clinton’s move is discussed in his book, “Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad.”
“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 added. Coughlin, the Daily Caller said, is an attorney, a decorated intelligence officer and an expert on Islamic law and terrorism who consulted the Joint Chiefs of Staff for about a decade following the 9/11 terror attack. The Muslim Brotherhood, Rachel Stoltzfoos said, “allegedly convinced the White House to ban him and ‘outlaw’ his briefings.”
Coughlin argues that the OIC has led efforts to bring the United States and other countries in line with speech standards of Muslim nations. Initially, the efforts would focus on first by condemning speech critical of Islam and eventually criminalizing speech such as the depictions of Muhammad that prompted two Islamist gunmen to attack a conference in Garland, Texas.
“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 said. The Clinton campaign, Stoltzfoos added, did not respond to her request for comments.
