timeimmortal

Mohamed Elmasry wants you to shut up, O Reader. And he wants me to shut up, too.

Quoted in the National Post, Elmasry stated, “The state should act to empower those who are disadvantaged by hate speech, and that may mean lowering the voices of some in order that others may be heard.” Of course he isn’t talking about lowering voices; what he really wants is to silence them.

It’s a frightening prospect when adherents to any Religion can dictate what is and is not acceptable in public discourse. As a society we have taken strong measures to ensure that government and religion are separated, yet Mr. Elmasry wants to prevent so-called Islamophobes from speaking their mind by classifying anything they may have to say as “hate speech”.

His opposition to the repeal of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, a section that is so draconian in preventing free speech that even Alan Borovoy one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, thinks it overly intrusive.

[Mohamed Elmasry] wants to use this law to silence all critics of Islamic fundamentalism, which will impose a chilling effect on freedom of speech in this country. There are no guarantees in our democracy that anyone has the right not to be offended. Indeed, much of what Elmasry says is offensive, especially to those of the Jewish faith. Yet no one is attempting to gag his vitriol, even when he asserts on national television that killing all Jews over the age of 18 in Israel is desirable.

Now, is that a double standard or a hidden agenda on Elmasry’s part?

On the surface it seems odd that a controversial figure like Elmasry would be so eager to empower the state to censor offensive views. Elmasry himself has had issues with hateful words spilling out of his mouth. The CIC has also supported the free speech rights of Sheikh Younus Kathrada…Sheikh Yunus al-Qaradawi…Zafar Bangash…al-Jazeera…

Now, on the surface, it would seem odd that Elmasry would be so pro-censorship given that such a strategy could be self-defeating in that Elmasry and his friends could be caught in such a wide net.

Is this simply a double-standard — free speech for me but not for thee?

Maybe not.

Elmasry has been on record supporting what would be tantamount to blasphemy laws:

On February 23, Muhammad Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress and Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada told the Toronto Star they want to see changes in Canada’s Hate Laws that would make it possible to jail writers who, in their opinion, insult or mock religious beliefs.

Both Mohamed Elmasry and Syed Soharwardy are asking for changes in Canada’s hate laws “so that offensive remarks or depictions of any religious figure are considered a crime.”

Their demand has its origins in Egypt, where Islamists led by Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi of al-Azhar University have been lobbying Muslim leaders to ask the United Nations to write a law that “condemns insulting any religion, including the Holy Scriptures and the prophets.”

Obviously, Elmasry would face much more of an uphill battle if he were pushing for Egyptian-style blasphemy laws.

Maybe it’s not Elmasry who has the double-standard, but that he is merely taking advantage of the double-standard of human rights commissions to sneak in such a law through the back door.

It’s scary to think that such a thing as this — which is tantamount to advocacy for the implementation of at least some aspects of Sharia law — could happen in Canada, but there it is. And the HRCs have been co-opted into the tool of choice for this Islamic agenda.

Of course, the HRCs were already serving to undermine the human rights — free speech is a human right, and then an important one — of Canadian citizens. But at least, when it was just secular leftists and homosexual activists having their way in front of the commission tribunals, nobody was talking about implementing Egyptian legal policy on Canadian soil.

Update: Welcome, Kathy Shaidle readers!

But don’t be takin’ my word for it, O Reader. Ye has been told this staggerin’ truth by none other than Mohamed Elmasry, head of the Canadian Islamic Congress.

From the CIC’s Friday Magazine, IS THERE AN ISLAMOPHOBIA OUT THERE Pt. 4?

“Islamophobia also leads to discrimination in hiring and to the widespread public image-distortion of Muslims and their views, especially regarding issues such as democracy, women, and Western culture. Conversions of Muslims to other faiths (especially Christianity) have been made much easier.“

…

Elmo are you singling out Christians? Why that may expose them to hatred & contempt! That’s discriminatory!

Quick notify the CHRC Flying Squad!

Yarr! BCF be exactly right here; thar be discrimination in the words of Elmasry! He be sayin’ that conversions of Muslim folk to other religions be discriminatory and Islamophobic, and he be singlin’ out Christianity in particular. One can only be assumin’ that he means t’say, then, that for a Muslim to be convertin’ to the way of the Lord be a particularly egregious example of Islamophobia. Because, God forbid, surely nobody ever be wantin’ to be leavin’ the sexist death cult that be much of Islam in the world today.

Of course, the articulation of that opinion be meaning that Elmasry himself is Christophobic, don’t it?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

The Canadian Islamic Congress plans to appeal the dismissal of their complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Way to stay classy, guys. Because really, when the CHRC tells you that you don’t have a case, you really don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of actually having a case.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dropped the complaint against Maclean’s magazine. This is a good and welcome development in the debate over freedom of expression in Canada, although one is left to wonder at why Jennifer Lynch and her CHRC actually went about dropping the case in the first place.

Mark Steyn notes the official reasoning that was given:

The Steyn article discusses changing global demographics and other factors that the author describes as contributing to an eventual ascendancy of Muslims in the ‘developed world’, a prospect that the author fears for various reasons described in the article. The writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Overall, however, the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature as defined by the Supreme Court in the Taylor decision. Considering the purpose and scope of Section 13 (1), and taking into account that an interpretation of s. 13 (1) must be consistent with the minimal impairment of free speech, there is no reasonable basis in the evidence to warrant the appointment of a Tribunal.

For these reasons, this complaint is dismissed.

And Maclean’s official statement in reaction to this dismissal (linked to above), notes:

Maclean’s magazine is pleased that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed the complaint brought against it by the Canadian Islamic Congress. The decision is in keeping with our long-standing position that the article in question, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s best-selling book America Alone, was a worthy piece of commentary on important geopolitical issues, entirely within the bounds of normal journalistic practice.

The Maclean’s statement, however, also continues the indictment against the HRCs:

Though gratified by the decision, Maclean’s continues to assert that no human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation’s media. And we continue to have grave concerns about a system of complaint and adjudication that allows a media outlet to be pursued in multiple jurisdictions on the same complaint, brought by the same complainants, subjecting it to costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the inconvenience. We enthusiastically support those parliamentarians who are calling for legislative review of the commissions with regard to speech issues.

The question could be raised as to why the CHRC decided to back down on this issue. Could it perhaps have anything to do with the fact that the RCMP are investigating the Commission (in regard to, among other things, hacking into a private citizen’s wireless network in order to surf white supremacist websites)? Could it be the brutal beating the Commission has taken in the media, and on the blogs? Could the Privacy Commissioner’s investigation have had anything to do with it? Could the attention being given to e.g. Bill M-446 have played a role?

The CHRC has been under a lot of pressure, and one kind of begins to suspect that they may have issued this dismissal in an effort to appear magnanimous. Personally, I don’t buy it for a second — I think they are looking to regroup, but not to fundamentally change anything about the way they operate. This is little more than skin-saving.

Still, a victory is a victory, and good news is good news. This is both, I think.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Count Roland follows up on an observation he had previously made concerning the fact that Time Immortal is blocked at the Catholic high school in Lloydminster, Alberta. Apparently, I’m classified as an “advocacy organization” by the IT personnel there.

But it appears that the rabbit hole goes even deeper than that. Roland has done quite a lot of investigative work, and his conclusions are…surprising, on one hand, and yet unsurprising as well.

O Writer,

I did a more extensive perusal of a small sample of organizations that have websites.

You are still blocked as an advocay organization; FreeMarkSteyn is blocked as a message/discussion board.

I was allowed to go to Planned Parenthood, CHRC, COLF, CCCB, CCRL, and Lifesite.

Given the Catholic position on abortion, I was surprised that PP was allowed, but as a defender of free speech it must be allowed - dynamic tension that is better than simple dichotomies, no?

CHRC and CCRL are opposing legal organizations. Lifesite was to test if the Catholic organizations were only allowed because the developers were told to allow Catholic sites — it was allowed as a non-Catholic life issues site, which is good.

But I am stil surprised that they, in general, were allowed considering they are as advocative as you are, if not more.

Right away, I confess myself surprised by the level and scope of the site categorization that is in play here, not all of it accurate. Lifesite is more or less correctly categorized: it is a life issues site, though not one that takes a specifically Catholic perspective.

On the other hand, Time Immortal is very incorrectly categorized: I am just one guy, not an organization, and though I do have a couple of guest bloggers (e.g. my wife) there is no explicit advocacy done through the site, certainly not in the sense of “one cause/raison d’etre” that my being categoriezed as an advocacy organization would imply. Contrast this with the allowance of Planned Parenthood’s website, despite the fact that PP openly admits that (pro-abortion) advocacy is part of its mission.

(Note that I’m not suggesting that the Planned Parenthood website should be banned — unless the ban on advocacy groups is to remain in place: consistency is important!)

And then there’s the issue of Binks’ FreeMarkSteyn aggregator, which is not really a discussion board (not more than any other blog that allows comments is, at any rate), nor a message board (according to the normative definition of the term). It is more properly termed an aggregator; that is: a collection or compliation of links to various stories from around the internet, which may or may not revolve around a common theme.

But this is also not as deep as the rabbit hole goes, O Reader. Roland notes, in a follow-up message, that a rather peculiar, though perhaps predictable, trend has begun to emerge.

Here is a list of more sites I tried.

Blocked:
Real Women of Canada - advocacy
National Rifle Association - weapons
Stormfront - hate
Black Panther - advocacy

Allowed:
PETA
National Organization of Women
Jack Chick
Coalition for Gun Control
Canadian Islamic Congress
Jihad Watch
SteynOnline
Reverend Wright on wiki -> tucc.org
Christianity Today

From my observations so far, the blocked sites all seem to be from the “conservative” side of the spectrum. Many allowed sites, from PP to now to PETA to Gun control, are largely advocacy groups but are on the “progressives’” approved list, although it also has a fair number of ‘conservative’ sites. How, though, realwomen/nra is blocked while now/gun control is not is beyond me.

Also, how is Jack Chick or TUCC not a hate site, or at least problematic on advocacy grounds for black liberation / anti-Catholic Theology?

I am somewhat confused (although I guess the web-block company likely has a liberal bias) and dismayed. I would hope that any censorship be in favour of groups closer to Church teaching and that Censorship be minimized, or if more widespread, to be at least not in favour of non-Church teaching sites.

This is a confusing trend, to be sure. For all intents and purposes, the person or persons responsible for policing the Internet access at the Catholic high school in Lloydminster — Holy Rosary High School — seems to be operating under something of a liberal bias in terms of how he or she applies the school’s presumably extant web access policy.

To wit: if advocacy groups are banned, why can the websites of organizations like PETA, Planned Parenthood, NOW, and the CIC still be accessed? If weapons-related sites are banned, why can the websites of gun control groups still be accessed? Roland points out other dichotomies which would appear to exist as well.

The extent of the bias is not great, but in general this situation doesn’t pass the old “sniff test” — there does seem to be some effort that has gone in to reducing access to conservative opinion on the Internet at Holy Rosary. And since censorship in any form is unacceptable…

Holy Rosary High School

Principals
Principal: Mr. T. Brochu
Vice Principal: Mr. Vince Orieux
Vice Principal: Mr. C. Musyj

Contact Information
Address: 6611A-39 Street
Lloydminster, AB T9V 2Z4
Phone: (780) 875-3600
Fax: (780) 875-9516
Email: hrhs@lcsd.ca

Do drop them a line, O Reader. There’s quite enough censorship — especially censorship of conservative opinion — going on in this country of late as it is, without some tin-pot IT dictator adding to the list of problems. That this sort of thing is happening at a Catholic hich school, especially one which states that its mission is to “nurture spiritual, academic, emotional, social and physical growth in every individual.”

Update: Welcome, readers from Sleepy Old Bear, Walker, and BCF! And welcome, Steynians!

They’ve been demanding a “debate” for months.

Mark Steyn gives them the opportunity to debate — three of them against just him.

Do they take the offer? No, they run for the hills.

More and more, it seems that the Osgoode Hall law students, all of them mere sock puppets for Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress, are not telling us the whole truth. The issue is not just one of debate, nor is it one of a “right of response” (which doesn’t actually exist).

More and more, the issue seems to be about controlling the infidel.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!