Time Immortal

James Gregoire writes in regarding the formal document complied by the 4 Osgoode Hall law students currently embroiled in the Mark Steyn/Maclean’s-HRC fracas. That document bears the title A Case Study of Media-Propagated Islamophobia, and serves as a handy catch-all reference of pretty much every time anybody in Maclean’s magazine in the last six or seven years has said anything about Islam which is not fawning praise.

I just read the complaint submitted to the various Human Rights Commissions (I agree that they should go by the way) regarding the Maclean’s articles.

I also took the time to review the complete articles at macleans.ca.

Everytime I find myself beginning to sympathize with adherents to Islam because of perceived slights, after reading a little further, I inevitably find that the body of the complaint contains skewed and inacurate information.

Sad to say, this tends to remove what sympathy I may feel and replace it with dislike and disbelief.

If the majority of Muslims are pro-peace and anti-terror, (And I do believe most are) why don’t they make more noise against the radicals? Why are they a silent majority? The only time we hear from them is about some slight they feel they have suffered.

The four who submitted the above complaint are typical examples. They misrepresent the information to the point where one must consider them stupid or deliberately obtuse.

This colours the perception of all non-Muslims and gives every Muslim a bad rap.

The Islamophobia is bing created by the silent majority of Muslims!

This raises an interesting question, of course.

On one hand, one wants to believe that a majority of Muslims are indeed opposed to terrorism committed in the name of Islam, and that most Muslims are of a non-radical bent (and therefore are not chomping at the bit to see the Sharia — disgusting and misogynistic as it is — become the law of every land). And indeed, one may know any number of reasonable Muslim folk who would seem, on the surface of it at least, to prove the belief in this silent majority correct.

But on the other hand, there is the silence, and that is a major stumbling block towards accepting the conclusion that a majority of Muslims are reasonable. Because if there is a majority that is not speaking out, then the only reason they are not speaking out is that they are fearful of being ostracized from their communities, or else persecuted somehow.

But it’s kind of misleading to say that, because if the reasonable sort are in the majority, it should be they who have no trouble driving out troublesome imams and/or community leaders/members. That they do not is puzzling, and also seems somehow contradictory — it casts a doubt on the idea that a large majority of Muslims are reasonable (although, to be fair, it could mean that only the narrowest majority of Muslims are).

Far more likely, then, is the possibility that a majority of Muslims agree, at minimum, with the aims and goals of the radicals, if not with their methods per sé. That is to say, the silent majority tends not to speak out in denunciation of the Islamist radicals because that same majority approves of any (or all) of the following causes:

• the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state
• the implementation of Sharia as the law of the land
• the responsibility of the government to censor any and all criticism or mockery of Islam or its supposed prophet, Muhammad
• the responsibility of the government to jail and punish any transgressors who engage in the aforementioned mockery and/or criticism
• the partial/complete integration of mosque and state

(Some of those categories overlap, which should come as no surprise.)

Unfortunately, this interpretation of the lack of a response to idiots like the Osgoode 4 and the Canadian Islamic Congress (and its leader, Mohammed Elmasry) fits the available evidence a bit better. Again, one wants to believe that this silent majority is not speaking up for some easily-excusable reason…but it makes more sense to conclude that the real reason so many Muslims are silent about these issues is that, to one degree or another, many Muslims agree with the goals of the radicals.

The HRCs have been a huge issue in the blogosphere, but most of the commentary is coming from non-Muslim sources. Some Muslims have indeed added their own commentary in support of the downfall of the CHRC and its provincial equivalents, but I note that a number of these — Tarek Fatah is an easy example, though not the only one — are do not hold orthodox Islamic beliefs (and so are open to the charge of apostasy), or have parted ways with the formal practice of the Islamic faith (and so are open to the charge of apostasy).

Very few orthodox Muslims that I have read have come down as being opposed to the censorship that the CHRC is attempting to impose on Steyn and Maclean’s. Taking that and coupling it with the apparent silence of the larger Islamic community in Canada, one is left with the impression that the possibility exists that the number of truly reasonable Muslims in Canada is smaller than one might be hoping for.

Although, to be fair, I’d be happy to be proven wrong about that conclusion.

At any rate, I think Mr. Gregoire is quite right to note that it is becoming increasingly difficult to sympathize with Islam in general, especially given the rather bald-faced falsehood of this latest attempt to silence anyone who has the temerity to ask some pertinent questions about the aims and goals of the Islamists. Still, one possible benefit of such issues as these is that it will force Western society to consider more carefully whether or not Islam is compatible with Western ideals and values.

One can only hope that, in the case of Western society realizing that several key incompatibilities exist between the tenets of Islam and the values of the West, Western society will have the guts to take a stand against the slow (and, at times, not nearly slow enough) creep of Sharia into once-civilized parts of the map.

Update: Welcome, Steynians, to what Blazing Cat Fur calls a “really cool” blog!