Time Immortal

This is a damn hopeful sign:

Peshawar, Pakistan - Fed up with violence and broken promises, voters in Pakistan’s conservative northwest have thrown out the Islamist parties that ruled the province for five years - a sign that Pakistanis rejected religious extremism in a region where al-Qaeda and the Taliban have sought refuge.

Instead, voters in North West Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan, gave their support in Monday’s national election to secular parties that promised to pave the streets, create jobs and bring peace to the turbulent province through dialogue and economic incentives to the extremists.

“They didn’t do anything for the people,” Bokhari Shah, 65, said of the religious parties. “They have done nothing to help the people, and we are afraid to even come out from our homes because of all these bomb blasts.”

…

Vast areas of the northwest were transformed into a war zone, where more than 80,000 Pakistani soldiers sought to crush a burgeoning Islamic insurgency. U.S. officials say al-Qaida has regrouped in the lawless area and extended its reach into the rest of the province and beyond.

Much of the trouble occurred in the autonomous tribal areas, which are administered from Islamabad rather than by the provincial government.

But the religious parties headquartered elsewhere in the northwest wield considerable influence in the tribal region, in part through funding religious schools linked to extremist groups.

Powerless to stop the militants, local police stood by as tribal leaders opposed to the Taliban were assassinated and owners of video and music stores received threats to close their businesses or face death.

“They made false promises. They said they would give us education, food and jobs, but they didn’t give us anything. They were all lies,” said retired soldier Mohammed Akram Shah. “I am from a village of more than 30 homes and we don’t have any electricity even after five years.”

On election day, voters showed they had had enough.

Pakistan was shaping up to be a major flashpoint in the global war against terrorism. Weakened by assassinations and the mistakes of its rulers, it became a place where Islamist parties and jihadists had almost free reign, where bombings, honour killings, and Taliban-strict sharia were becoming the norm. It looked very much like Pakistan might well and truly be headed for the dubious and dangerous distinction of being the first truly nuclear-armed Islamist state, especially in the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

And to be fair, Pakistan is not out of the woods yet. The Islamists will not take kindly to this defeat, and there will likely be many more acts of terrible violence perpetrated against the people and politicians of northern Pakistan. But it is still a step — a major step — in the right direction, and deserves nothing less than the full and enthusiastic support of Western nations and the people thereof.

The appointment of her corrupt hubby and teenage son as “co-leaders” of her party tends to confirm David Warren’s point. These Bhuttos are made for walkin’, and one of these days these Bhuttos gonna walk all over you.

That said, if half the rumors running round are true, her murder nevertheless marks another bumpy descent. When Benazir’s unlovely dad was deemed too problematic to allow to live, General Zia had him tried and executed. If, as is widely believed, elements of the Pakistani Army, the ISI, and even General Musharraf’s cabinet had reached the same conclusion about Benazir herself, they didn’t waste time with show trials but simply signed up the nearest suicide bomber. The respective fates of Bhutto /pere et fille/ are themselves a mark of Pakistan’s decline.

Remember: Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation. It is about the last place on Earth that any sane member of civilized society wants to see fall into the hands of the Islamists. But that seems to be exactly the fate it is headed for at present.

Time was when “human rights” was a truly large and noble idea. I associate the concept with, and its birth out of, some of the great horrors of the past century: the bestial depredations of the Nazis, their ‘race science’ and death camps, the horrors of unbridled totalitarianism - under which, the whim of the rulers was sufficient to mutilate, torture and destroy lives, collectively or individually - send millions to arctic slave camps - the debasement of internal exile and psychiatric rehabilitation.

More currently, I associate real human rights advocacy with the case of a young Saudi woman, who very recently was repeatedly gang-raped - and then she � the victim - charged and sentenced by a Saudi court to 200 lashes and six months in jail for being in a car with a male not her relative. The sentence, after international protest, was voided — but that young woman�s case represents a real example of the violation of basic human rights.

What I do not associate with this deep and noble concept is getting ticked off by something you read in a magazine - or for that matter hear on television - and then scampering off to a handful - well, three - of Canada’s proliferate human rights commissions - seeking to score off the magazine: this is what four Osgoode Hall law students and graduates — a very definition of the ‘marginalized’ — under the banner of the Canadian Islamic Congress have done after reading an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s America Alone in . The complainants read the article as �flagrantly islamophobic�.

Maclean�s magazine? Well, we all know what a hotbed of radical bigotry and vile prejudice Maclean�s magazine has been. Go away � for what seems like a century Maclean�s was no more “offensive” (that is the can�t term of choice these days) than a down comforter on a cold day and if Mark Steyn’s article offended them: so what? Not every article in every magazine of newspaper is meant to be a valentine card addressed to every reader’s self-esteem. Maclean�s published a bushel of letters following the article’s appearance: some praised it: others scorned it. That’s freedom of speech: that’s democracy: that’s the messy business we call the exchange of ideas and opinions.

But where does the BC Human Rights Commission, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the Canadian Human Rights Commission come into this picture? Has anyone been publicly whipped? Has someone or some group been hauled off to a gulag? Is there a race frenzy sweeping the land?

Why is any human rights commission inserting itself between a magazine, a television show, a newspaper and the readers or viewers? Is every touchy, or agenda-driven sensibility now free to call upon the offices of the state and free of charge - to them - not their targets - to embroil them in “justifying” their right to write and broadcast as they see fit? The Western Standard magazine, during the so-called Danish cartoon crisis got hauled before the Alberta Human Rights Commission for publishing the cartoons that all the world was talking about. The action drained the magazine�s resources - but it was free to the complainant.

Meantime real human rights violations - threats of death against Salman Rushdie, riots after the cartoons, death threats against the artists, the persecution of Hirsi Ali, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, neither inspire nor receive human rights investigations.

Maclean�s and its columnists - especially of late - are an ornament to Canada’s civic space. They should not have to defend themselves for doing what a good magazine does: start debate, express opinion, and stir thought. And most certainly they should not have to abide the threatened censorship of any of Canada’s increasingly interfering, state appointed and paradoxically labeled human rights commissions.

Relatedly:

Update: Kathy Shaidle has this linked as well, and her added commentary is well worth repeating:

PS: the site accepts comments, and some are quite good. However, note the number of Muslims — who still can’t spell — calling for a less “one sided” approach to the story yet again.

Once again: why don’t you people just start your own damn magazine, first of all, instead of acting like parasites. (Professional tip: when you do, hire a proofreader for whom English is his first language…)

If you want to be treated respectfully, start by having the self-respect to quit all this crying and begging.

Second, there is no such creature as the “rights of communities to participate in media discussions” (??) except in your fevered, brainwashed minds.

Their complete refusal or inability to comprehend elementary Western concepts like “freedom of the press” and “private property” is truly sad. They wallow in hysterical victimhood, tossing around left-liberal platitudes and charges of “Islamophobia.”

That people like them are the cause of so-called “Islamophobia” escapes them completely.

God save us from these pathetic whiners. Alas in these and other ways, they are perfectly assimilated little Canadians.

And at one “revival” rally, women were asked to enter by the back staircase. One wants to believe that there is a something in Islam that not only can be salvaged and fashioned into something that truly gives glory to the will of God and benefits the world. Unfortunately, there seems to be a dwindling body of evidence that any such thing exists.

On Friday, congregations at some of Canada’s mosques made their contribution to remembering Ms. Bhutto. At one Mississauga mosque where supporters of Ms. Bhutto had requested a prayer for their departed leader, the imam refused to utter her name from the pulpit. After the prayer, he was asked why he had not mentioned Ms. Bhutto by name. He responded in a nonchalant manner, “It was not necessary.” When pressed to clarify, he said, “I did not wish to name a specific person.” He was reminded that in his sermon he had mentioned the name of a man, why not Benazir. This time, Imam Mohammed Moutaz Chara, a Syrian-American, touched the questioner’s chin in a condescending manner and gave him a huge smile as he walked away.

A few kilometres away in one of Canada’s largest mosques run by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Skeikh Ala ElSayed refused to utter the words “Benazir Bhutto” from the pulpit, as if it was a profanity.

….

At other mosques, the story was the same. Not a word about Benazir Bhutto. Reporters at one mosque seemed bewildered and asked why her name was not being mentioned. What no one was willing to tell them is that perhaps the imams consider the words “Benazir Bhutto” unclean and unIslamic. After all, she had vowed to take on the Islamic extremists and hence she was an adversary; the mere mention of her name may pollute the sanctity of the mosque.

And if there was any doubt about the agenda of the Islamist enterprise, it was on full display at the so called “Revival of the Islamic Spirit” conference held in Toronto this weekend. Among the dozens of Islamic speakers, there were only two women and they too were assigned the role of addressing issues such as pornography. There was barely any mention of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, other than the rhetorical praying for victims of violence. While men commanded the podiums, young women manned the clerical work as receptionists. There were no Benazir Bhuttos at the conference; only those who had not noticed her death.

It’s shameful that memorials of this woman — and while there isn’t much doubt that a Bhutto government would have been as corrupt as any that Pakistan has seen, hers was a voice set against the Islamists, and thus important — have been polluted by partisam pettiness and radicalism…but I suppose such phenomena are becoming more prevalent in Canadian mosques.

Related note: Canadian feminists seem eerily quiet on the open sexism of said mosques. Asking women to enter by a side door, reserving the main entrance for men only? People get in such a tizzy (rightly so) when a priest requests that women not step onto the altar at a Christian church, but Islam seems to get a pass from the chattering classes. What gives?

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Small Dead Animals and Kathy Shaidle)