When writing truth is a crime – Los Angeles Times. Arab journalists and their counterparts throughout the Muslim world willing to speak up at all deserve the full measure of their Western colleagues’ support not only because they are defending one of the fundamental principles that make a civil society possible, but also — and most important — because they are agents of transformative hope.

The jihadis, who have more to fear from hope than they do from all our weapons, know this, and so they kill independent Muslim journalists. The corrupt and sclerotic regimes in power across the Middle East who fear change more than hell know this, so they throw independent editors and reporters into prison.

Western journalism’s institutional silence in the face of these outrages is neither wise nor prudent. It is cowardly and, ultimately, self-destructive.