Time Immortal

Here are two examples of his salient, clear and rational thinking on issues facing Canada today.

First, on the nature of the committee decision that saw Henry Morgentaler awarded with the Order of Canada:

Like many, many, many Canadians, I took the appointment of Henry Morgentaler to membership in the Order of Canada — proclaimed on “Canada Day” — as a stick in the eye for everything we believe in. As a gratuitous insult to the memory of three million aborted babies.

It was intended as that.

…

A very dark thing was done, as such things are always done — in a very dark way.

Yet I think it may be for the best, in a longer view of things.

We might often grumble that the “ruling class” in Canada — the smug, self-serving, “progressive” political, legal, academic, and media elites, including that prime example in Rideau Hall — belong to some other world than the one from which they suck taxes. But seldom is there an event so stark, that we see them as they are. The Morgentaler award revealed that to so many Canadians.

The whole issue of Morgentaler getting the Order of Canada smacks of duplicity. It was obviously not a popular choice for many Canadians, and (what is more) the Governor General’s office had explicitly denied, back in February of this year, that he was being considered for the award.

The sudden reversal is enough to give one whiplash.

And as noted here and elsewhere, the decision to award Morgentaler — ostensibly for humanism — was not unanimous, a first for the committee that decides who does and does not receive the Order. At every step of the way, it seems, there has been a slippery, eel-like activity that has brought this travesty about, and perhaps that is somehow fitting for someone of Morgentaler’s character.

It’s still repugnant, and tells us something very troubling indeed about those who are “in charge” of this nation.

But then, we knew that much already from the travesty of the human rights commissions, and Mr. Warren has something very profound to say about them as well:

In the course of this last grim week, the Ontario government of Dalton McGuinty quietly announced a huge expansion of the , giving its apparatchiks enhanced powers of intrusion, removing the cap on fines, providing a new class of lawyers to assist in prosecutions, and opening 22 new “hearing and mediation rooms” around the province where these star chambers will conduct their quasi-legal proceedings.

As a writer who does not subscribe to the “politically correct” ideology, it is reasonable to expect that, sooner or later, they will come for me. Of course I also realize that, in making this statement, I will be mocked by the usual leftwing jackals. But in light of what has already happened in this province and country, my assertion is reasonable. Moreover, I write with the sincerity of a man who has already tasted the New Canadian tyranny, and the threat of imprisonment without due process, under the feminist rewrite of Ontario family law.

I was born a free citizen of the Old Canada, and before her God I declare, that I will go to jail rather than acknowledge the legitimacy of any “human rights” commission. I invite other journalists and indeed, every other Canadian, to declare likewise.

In the wake of Canada Day, one could not ask for a more stirring call to action than that; if there is anything left to feel proud of in Canada, it is that some Canadians — like David Warren, like Ian Hunter — are still able to articulate a clear moral standard in opposition to the received wisdom of the day, to the wind-blown sentiments of progressivism.

I take Mr. Warren’s closing sentences as my own here.

Update: Welcome, UnAborted readers!

The Ontario legislature looks at alternatives to the Lord’s Prayer as an opening recitation for their daily proceedings.

What surprises me here is that the Ontario legislature was actually using the Lord’s Prayer to begin daily proceedings with. That they’ve decided they want to ditch it in favour of something a little more multiculturally trendy comes as no surprise.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Tarek Fatah points to a troubling new trend:

It seems only yesterday that Premier Dalton McGuinty declared: “There will be no Sharia law in Ontario.” Many of us, who witnessed the medieval nature of manmade sharia laws in our countries of birth, heaved a sigh of relief back in September of 2005. We thought this was the end of the attempt by Islamists to sneak sharia into a Western jurisdiction. We were wrong.

The campaign to introduce sharia is back. Last time, the campaign took a populist approach, invoking multiculturalism. This time, the pro-sharia lobby is dangling the carrot of new niche markets and has the backing of Canada’s major banks. Such icons of the corporate world as Citibank NA, HSBC Holdings PLC, and Barclays PLC have endorsed sharia banking and have started offering Islamic financing products to a vulnerable Muslim population.

…

The origin of Islamic banking has its roots in the 1920s, but did not start until the late 1970s and owes much of its foundation to the Islamist doctrine of two people — Abul Ala Maudoodi of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan and Hassan al-Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The theory was put into practice by Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul-Haq who established sharia banking law in Pakistan.

Proponents of sharia banking rest their case on many verses of the Holy Koran that outlaw usury, not interest.

Verses that address the question of loans and debts include:

Al Baqarah (2:275): God hath permitted trade and forbidden usury;

Al Baqarah (2:276): Allah does not bless usury, and He causes charitable deeds to prosper, and Allah does not love any ungrateful sinner.

Every English-language translation of the Koran has translated the Arabic word riba as usury, not interest. Yet, Islamists have deliberately portrayed bank interest as usury and labelled the current banking system as un-Islamic. Instead, these Islamists have created exotic products with names that are foreign to much of the world’s Muslim population. This is where they mask interest under the niqab of Mudraba, Musharaka, Murabaha, and Ijara.

…

In the name of Islam, deception and dishonesty is being practised while ordinary Muslims are being made to feel that their interaction with mainstream banks is un-Islamic and sinful. As Mr. Saleem asks, “If Islamic banks label their hamburger a Mecca Burger, as long as it still has the same ingredients as a McDonald’s burger, is it really any different in substance?”

Sharia is a barbaric system, a fusion of Islamic religion with political ideals. It is backward and openly misogynistic (a couple of examples that I find particularly odious are (a) how males, under sharia, are free to marry any woman from one of the three major monotheistic religions…but women are permitted to marry only another Muslim, and (b) divorce is a man’s unilateral right, but women must seek their husband’s permission to obtain one). It’s also just plain silly at times. And all of this doesn’t even begin to bring into focus the punishments Sharia prescribes for adulterers (stoning to death) or thieves (forcible removal of the hand). And did I mention the part where wife-beating is permissible under certain circumstances, and subject to certain criteria?

Put more plainly: Sharia and Western principles are wholly incompatible. No person has any business demanding that Sharia become the law of this land, or of any Western nation; any person who desires to live under Sharia is welcome to move/return to the Middle East and any of the nations there which are governed by this ugly system of laws. Yes, I am aware that most such countries are unliveable hellholes. Yes, I do think there’s a connection. No, I don’t think that means what I’m suggesting is unfair.

This will not be the last attempt to sneak principles of Sharia law in the back door of Canada’s legal system, and (as was the case with Sharia courts in Ontario a couple of years ago) must be opposed in no uncertain terms. Put simply, there is no place in Canada for the sort of near-barbarism that Sharia law represents, and it must be openly and plainly communicated that not only do Canadians regard as odious the deceptive and falsehood-laden tactics of Sharia propnents in the case of these banks, but that Canadians regard as odious the very tenets and principles which these would-be bankers claim to be driven by.

Because no sane Canadian should ever desire to see Sharia gain any foothold here.

(Unrelatedly, though, I’ll try not to feel too much of a swell of pride that a phrase which I may have coined is being used in the title of a column in a national newspaper (even if it is just the Globe & Mail).)

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Kathy Shaidle)