Time Immortal

Ezra Levant was apparently invited to speak at a human rights caucus meeting at the U.S. Congress yesterday. That’s pretty cool, and certainly a much-deserved honour for one of the men who has been at the forefront of the human rights/freedom of expression debate in Canada, and who has himself been made to appear before one of the many HRCs that operate within this once-proud country.

In particular, it is interesting to read his interpretations of the words of the Second Secretary of the Embassy of Pakistan, one Asma Fatima by name, on the nature of the thrust by Islamic elements world-wide to see criminalized any form of “defamation of Islam”…which, as Mr. Levant goes on to explain, basically amounts to an effort to criminalize blasphemy against Islam.

But the single most revealing comment I heard all day about this matter was from a State Department lawyer on the panel (whose name I wish to confirm before publishing it.) She has done meticulous research on the Muslim campaign to ban criticism of Islam, and has helped develop the U.S. response to the idea in international legal forums.

She went deep into the issue: she looked at the Arabic word used by Muslim diplomats when describing the “defamation of Islam” that they sought to illegalize. She consulted scholars of Arabic who confirmed for her that the particular legal phrase had been coined very recently, especially for the international diplomatic campaign — and that, when discussed domestically, Muslim countries used the real Arabic words they mean: the traditional words for blasphemy.

So, I suppose, Fatima was following the old diplomat’s dictum after all. She was very honest about her goals — stopping people (especially other, moderate, Muslims) from criticizing Islam. But her dark art was to re-classify her censorship in the Western legal term of “defamation”, instead of the more honest classification of “blasphemy“.

If Muslim diplomats the world over were to lobby for international and Western laws against blasphemy, that would likely trigger a reaction — not just from those who believe in Christianity, Judaism, etc., but from atheists, too, who might not go quietly into a merger of mosque and state. But calling blasphemy by the word “defamation” (and making up a special new word to mislead the proposed law’s targets), makes sure that fewer alarm bells in the West will ring. It transforms an attempt to Islamicize our entire legal system into merely another lawsuit amongst countless others. That’s the diplomatic sleight-of-hand that Fatima was peddling.

Which is basically what most of us freespeechers have been observing all along: the thrust of e.g. the human rights complaints against Maclean’s, and against Mr. Levant, as well as silly contrivances such as the enterprising individual who claims to hold the copyright on any and all graphical depictions of the (false) prophet Muhammad, are all part of a larger scheme. And that scheme, methinks, is to work within the legal frameworks of Western nations — nations that in the past have resisted the spread of the Ummah — to make any and all criticism of Islam, or of the actions of Muslims, criminal.