Time Immortal

Remarkably, I’m actually not talking about Jennifer Lynch’s tasteless and tone-deaf plan to lay a wreath at the national Remembrance Day ceremony to mark the passage of a UN declaration concerning human rights that a) most of its member states ignore anyhow, and b) wasn’t actually ratified until a month (less a day) after November 11th.

Although it must be said that Lynch’s gesture is the height of tastelessness. But then, what else might one expect from the lady in charge of the state Censorship organ in Canada. The mere fact that she is laying a wreath, when her very department exists as a mockery of one of the fundamental rights that so many Canadian soldiers sacrificed their lives for, is insulting beyond the ability of words to describe.

But I digress.

No, remarkably, I’m not talking about CHRC tone-deafness today. The tone-deaf group that is the target of my considerable ire today is something called the “Urban Alliance on Race Relations,” who are going after a magazine called Toronto Life for publishing an article on Aqsa Parvez which (gasp!) dares to discuss her brutal murder (at the hands of her father) as an “honour killing.”

There’s even a Facebook page, created by said Urban Alliance, urging people to complain to the editor of Toronto Life, Sarah Fulford.

The article in question, entitled Girl, Interrupted and written my Mary Rogen, presents the facts of Aqsa’s life and final days, and captures the tension that arose in the Parvez household between Aqsa and her father, Muhammad Parvez, who insisted that she wear the Islamic headscarf, the hijab. And when she refused, he strangled her to death.

Rogen’s article says some things which are at once uncomfortable to hear, but which ring true. But that’s the problem with truth, isn’t it? It can sometimes be very uncomfortable to hear:

Aqsa Parvez had a choice: wear a hijab to please her devout family or take it off and be like her friends. She paid for her decision with her life. When her father and brother were charged with her murder, it raised the spectre of religious zealotry in the suburbs. Is this the price of multiculturalism?

…

In the days following her death, Aqsa’s story was widely reported in the Canadian media as well as on CNN and the BBC. Was her murder an honour killing or simply a gruesome case of domestic violence? Worldwide, an estimated 5,000 women die every year in honour killings — murders deemed excusable to protect a family’s reputation — many of them in Pakistan, where the Parvez family had emigrated from.

Canada prides itself on its multiculturalism and, to varying degrees of success, condemns institutionalized patriarchy. But there is growing concern that recent waves of Muslim immigrants aren’t integrating, or embracing our liberal values. Aqsa’s death — coming in the wake of debates about the acceptability of Sharia law, disputes over young girls wearing hijabs at soccer games, and the arrest of the Toronto 18 — stoked fears about religious zealotry in our midst. Is it possible that Toronto has become too tolerant of cultural differences?

The rest of the article gets into a lot of depth, including interviews with many of Aqsa’s friends, and presents a very comprehensive picture of a girl torn between two worlds. Along the way, it gives glimpses into the home life of the Parvez family, and communicates the abject fear that Aqsa felt in her final days.

It also points out that Aqsa was a victim of peer pressure and a desire to fit in with the rest of her friends; she was aware that her religious garb was setting her apart, and took great strides to fit in with the crowd. Seraphic notes that in this sense, the article is “as much an indictment of youth culture in Mississauga high schools as it is of Aqsa’s family,” which I think is very much the case as well. Indeed, the article does a lot to suggest that Aqsa was being led astray by her “friends”, who evidently thought it was Aqsa’s “right” to part ways with her virginity before parting ways with high school.

Not that this excuses the fate she arrived at. And for all the threads it plucks at, the article leaves very little doubt as to the probable motive behind her murder — her death was, as the article notes, Toronto’s first honour killing. Or, at least, the first one to become public knowledge.

But let’s come back to the Urban Alliance folks and their tone-deaf campaign against Toronto Life. While there hasn’t been a human rights complaint filed yet, their clear opposition to the right of the magazine to publish content of its choosing comes across, and the usual points get missed. As Kathy notes, the group seems to be “more upset about Islam being “insulted” and “misrepresented” by the violence perpetrated by its own members (and by a mere infidel’s decision to publish an article about it) than by the actual dealth of a young girl.”

And much like the tone-deaf Jennifer Lynch, they opted to launch their campaign on Remembrance Day. Because hey, who cares about those 60,000+ dead Canadians anyhow?

This is why I can’t stand “professional victim” groups and grievance-mongers: they are unabashedly narcissistic, and think nothing of co-opting even solemn national holidays to serve their own narrow-minded ends. It’s Remembrance Day, you tasteless losers! Would it have been so hard to just wait until the 12th? Did you just have to attack a magazine’s right to publish content of its own choosing on the day that marks the sacrifices of thousands of Canadian men and women made in the cause of that very right, and others like it?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Interesting choice by John McCain — Sarah Palin has only been governor of Alaska for a year or so, but she seems to be a solid, reasonable person who is comfortable with governance.

Oh, and she’s pro-life, which is also really cool. And not just in some vapid “talk the talk” sense, either: one of her five kids has Down’s Syndrome.

So now, I guess, the American presidential race has gotten somewhat more interesting. The Democrats chose Barrack Hussein Obama over Hillary Rodham Clinton, and so missed a chance to put a woman in the White House. Now, McCain has decided to put Sarah Palin one heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

This seems to be an interesting move tactically for McCain. I’m curious to see how it pans out.

Update: Ace handles this with his usual odd humour here and here.

Best remark: “How many millions is SNL going to offer Tina Fey to come back to the show?”

Also: “Obama was a junior Senator from a state for about sixteen or seventeen months before he decided he was experienced enough to be president.

But Obama wants to talk about how inexperienced she is.”

Update First Blood Part 2: CNN is evidently on Palin’s case concerning how the job of VP might conflict with her being a mother to a Down’s child.

My God, but the Left are a bunch of hypocritical morons — nobody would dare ask a Democrat female candidate, at any level of the political ladder, how she was going to manage her job as an elected official with her responsibilities as a mother. And anyone who did dare ask such a question wouldn’t keep his job long enough to ask it a second time.

But evidently, when the woman in question is more of a conservative, her place is in the home.

At least as far as CNN is concerned.

If this keeps up, McCain’s marketing team is going to have enough dirt to fling at Obama to last well into McCain’s term in office.

Frankly, I’m not surprised.

It’s still a bit early to tell, but it would appear that Jim Adkisson — charged with first-degree murder after a shooting at a Unitarian Universalist church that left two dead and several wounded — was something of an anti-religious bigot.

The man being questioned by police in a deadly church shooting was a “nice guy” who became upset when the subject of religion came up, according to his neighbors.

Jim Adkisson’s neighbors in a Knoxville suburb described him as quiet and helpful, but sensitive about certain topics.

“I was telling him about my daughter graduating from Bible college and I was a Christian and stuff, and he just automatically almost turned angry,” neighbor Karen Massey told WVLT-TV, a CNN affiliate.

“He was angry with his parents because they had made him go to church all his life,” she told the station.

“When the subject of Religion came up, it set off like a light in him or something I noticed,” Massey told WATE-TV, another CNN affiliate. “And at that point I thought I’d never bring up religion again.”

Adkisson, 58, is charged with first-degree murder after the shooting at a Unitarian church during a children’s play Sunday morning, officials said.

Oh, and yeah…he was a quiet loner and a “nice guy” (let’s leave aside the fact, I suppose, that nice people don’t typically shoot other people in cold blood). But it would appear that he harboured a deep-seated hatred of all things religious as well. One wonders if his manifesto, found in his car at the site of the attack, will read like an excerpt from God Is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens?