timeimmortal

Syed Soharwardy would appear to have swung his opinion around to the side of right, at least as far as Canada’s human rights commissions are concerned.

When I initiated my complaint against Mr. Levant, I saw human rights commissions as a non-violent means of resolving differences among Canadians.

I was not aware of the controversies between the commissions and Canada’s faith communities. I am thinking specifically of my friend Fred Henry, the Roman Catholic bishop of Calgary.

Upon learning about the difficulties he and other faith communities have encountered with the commissions, I withdrew my complaint against Mr. Levant.

One of the reasons I chose Canada as my adopted homeland is because of our country’s great respect for religious freedom.

In Canada, I am free to be good Canadian and a good Muslim. There is no contradiction between the two.

In listening to the experiences of Bishop Henry and Pastor [Stephen Boissoin], I realized how precious religious freedom is to our country and how easily freedom is lost.

Strange words to hear from the man who took Ezra Levant to the Alberta HRC over the Muhammed cartoons…but if they are genuine, they are welcome, and it is thus good that he has shifted his thinking.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Apparently, the Alberta Human Rights Commission has no less than fifteen people working on Ezra Levant’s case.

And yet, surprisingly, not one of them realized that Shirlene McGovern — in her questions for Syed Soharwardy (the Calgary imam who filed the human rights complaint against Levant for the latter’s publication of the Muhammed cartoons) — doesn’t even know which cartoons Levant’s magazine, the Western Standard, re-printed, nor does she apparently know what the twelve original cartoons of Muhammad actually are.

No, really.

Here are McGovern’s questions for Soharwardy. There’s a lot of crap in there, and I’ll try to comment on it all later. But focus on question 10:

…[image]…

She talks about the “most offensive” Danish cartoon — the one with “mohammed as animal/pig; sex with animal”.

But no such cartoons were ever published by a Danish newspaper, nor by our magazine. Here are the original 12 cartoons exactly as published in Denmark: we chose eight of those.

What McGovern is referring to are three cartoons fabricated by Danish imams, designed to be as offensive as possible, in order to whip up ignorant Muslim mobs that might not get sufficiently excited about the actual Danish cartoons.

In other words, McGovern was duped by jihadist propaganda. Soharwardy must have smiled like a cat when he heard her regurgitate those lies as if they were truths.

Does anyone else find it alarming that one of the people charged with deciding what is perhaps the most important case of the right to freedom of expression that has ever come up in Alberta is so terrifyingly unfamiliar with even the most basic facts of the case itself?

Ezra Levant’s case before the Alberta Human Rights Commission has passed its 800th day — that is, it has been over 800 days since Syed Soharwardy first filed his human rights complaint against Levant. That complaint was, of course, in regard to the publication of the Muhammed cartoons in the Western Standard magazine (now defunct).

Eight hundred days!

So we’re at more than 800 days since the HRC first received Soharwardy’s complaint.

So you can imagine my amusement today when my lawyer told me that the HRC asked him for a copy of my videotape of that interrogation.

Uh, what have they been doing these past four months? Did Officer McGovern not take notes?

…

As the Alberta HRC boasts in its annual report, its case load of complaints has actually fallen by 15% in the past year. Albertans just aren’t bigoted enough for them, it seems. But it takes the HRC 7% longer to dispose of complaints — up from 382 days to 410 days. That’s a net productivity decline of 22% in a year. And their goal for next year: 435 days. Yes, the Alberta HRC actually wants to be less “efficient”.

(Imagine if the HRC was actually being used for its original purposes of helping people, say, kicked out of an apartment in wintertime because of their race. What good would “help” a year later do? But the HRCs long ago stopped pretending to be shields to protect people — now they’re swords to attack people for the crime of political correctness.)

So the average case takes 410 days. I’m at 800 days and running — and my formal hearing hasn’t even been scheduled. The only way I know my interrogators are still alive is that they called my lawyers to get a copy of my videos.

(Could you imagine if a real police officer grilled a criminal suspect for 90 minutes, and then four months later sheepishly called up the suspect and asked sweetly for a copy of that suspect’s notes on the interrogation? Imagine the peals of laughter!)

You know, I wonder if perhaps there isn’t a point to this delay, if it isn’t some kind of tactic on the part of the HRCs? Attrition, perhaps? We know that people called to account before a human rights commission have to pay their own legal fees, so could the AHRC be using this delay to try and magnify Levant’s costs, in the hope that he’ll eventually be crushed under the financial burden of defending his good name, and thus give in?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Just what it says, O Reader:

Six Qassams were fired from the northern Gaza Strip towards the western Negev since Sunday morning. All the rockets landed in open areas, without causing injuries or damage. The Salah al-Din Brigades, the Popular Resistance Committees‘ military wing, claimed responsibility for firing the rockets. The organization’s spokesman, Muhammad Abed al-Aal, told Ynet that the firing operation, dubbed “the lines of fire”, was a response to the “crimes of the Israeli occupation against the Palestinians,” but also “in response to the cartoons published in Denmark degrading the memory of Prophet Muhammad.

“The Palestinian resistance has committed to respond to the cartoons, and this is our initial response,” he added. Asked why the residents of Sderot and the Negev should pay the price for cartoons published in Denmark, Abed al-Aal responded, “The Jews have also hurt Islam and have also hurt the Koran in their prisons, as part of the plot to harm Islam and the memory and status of Prophet Muhammad. “The Palestinian resistance will not let Israel’s crimes and the smearing of Islam’s symbols go unanswered,” he said.

Makes pefect sense, doesn’t it, O Reader: the Danes publish some pictures of the (false) prophet Muhammad, and the Palestinians launch rockets at the Jews in Israel in response. And we’re trying to negotiate with these savages, and sending them aid packages? How much of that aid money gets transfered to Israel in the shape and form of Qassam rockets, I wonder?

Completely unacceptable. I guess even the Danes have a point at which they fold and give in to fear of Islamic violence.

He was “too much of a security risk.” Unconscionable. This man should be a hero of every freedom-loving Dane. “Danish Caricaturist of Muhammad Fame Now Homeless,” from Spiegel (thanks to all who sent this in):

Draw a picture offensive to Muslim extremists, and you might find yourself without a roof. Ask Kurt Westergaard, one of the twelve Danish cartoonists whose autumn 2005 Muhammad caricatures lead to violent protests throughout the Muslim world. He was booted from his police-protected hotel room on Feb. 15 for being “too much of a security risk.” And now the 73-year-old cartoonist and his wife are without a place to live.

Westergaard was forced to leave his actual residence in November after the Danish security and intelligence agency, PET, informed him of a “concrete” plan to murder him, according to the paper that originally published the cartoons, Jyllands-Posten.

It is much more likely, now, that both the cartoonist and his wife will end up getting the Theo van Gogh treatment, living (as they are) exposed on the streets of Denmark. That would be a travesty, O Reader, and an indictment of the Danish government and its police service as well.

Around 11am today a bomb exploded in a solarium in Copenhagen. The suntan shop was situated just by the national football stadium in Oesterbro, a peaceful and affluent part of the Danish capital. The explosion completely destroyed the shop and the surrounding flats were also damaged. The police are putting the fact that no one was hurt down to sheer luck; two other bags were found in the area and have been destroyed. Two young men between the ages of 15 and 25 were seen running away from the crime scene; they were described as “foreign-looking” and are now wanted by the police.

The explosion is a drastic escalation of the week-long riots on the streets Denmark where young Muslim men have vented their anger and frustration towards Danish society by setting fire to cars and burning bonfires in the streets. The rioters claim that their action is a protest against the reprinting of the prophet cartoons, which took place last Wednesday when a unified Danish press decided to print/reprint the cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. The decision to reprint was taken when the Danish security service (PET) notified the public that three men had been arrested on suspicion of plotting the murder of the cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard.

However, it is debatable whether the reprinting of the cartoons was the real reason behind the rioting. The night before they were published the air on Oesterbro was thick with the smoke of bonfires and burning rubber, carried by the wind from neighbouring Noerrebro, where much of the rioting has taken place. The cartoons no doubt had an explosive effect on matters, but the fire was already burning.

Denmark, once acknowledged for her liberal stance and social egalitarianism, has over the last years become an increasingly polarised society where the differences between the Danish majority and migrants and especially Muslim migrants have been the dominant political agenda.

…

In certain neighbourhoods the atmosphere is now so tense that I avoid going there when in Copenhagen. Far from the prophet cartoon crisis clearing the air like most good arguments, this argument only led to division. There are countless examples of qualified foreigners who can’t get a job in Denmark simply because of the sound of their surname. On the other hand, many young Muslim migrants have behaved like thugs, vandalising their neighbourhoods. The situation is clearly untenable; the question is: who’s got the remedy to solve it?

Any European government could come up with the remedy to solve the problem — the real question is: would any European government have the necessary stones to implement harsh restrictions on immigration and harsh policing measures in predominantly immigrant communities? Basically, the degree to which a European nation espouses multiculturalism as a virtue is the degree to which that country is imperiled by a surge of radical Islam within its immigrant population; the degree to which a European nation demands that immigrants integrate into the prevailing culture of that nation is the degree to which that nation might have a fighting chance in the years to come.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: SDA)

I’m dead tired this morning, so this will kind of just be a list of things that I noticed on my morning browse through a few parts of the internet. Regular posting will resume tomorrow, ideally.

Apparently, the Milky Way is twice as thick as was previously thought — 12,000 light years, instead of 6,000. That’s kind of interesting, admittedly, although also rather “ho hum” — given the massive distances we’re talking about here, what’s a factor of two? Apparently, the researchers at the University of Sydney were just doing some basic fact-checking on internet-available data and realized the error after a few hours of computation. Guess it just goes to show: science is never 100%.

Moving on to more terrestrial matters, it appears that Danish “youths” — “mainly with immigrant backgrounds” — are burning things again, mainly cars, but also schools and trash bins. Officially, it’s not clear what caused the riots to trigger. Personally, I’m thinking that this is another case where we can strike out the words “immigrant youths” and replace them with “Muslims.” Probable cause? Here’s one guess:

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: RightGirl)

Speaking of Terrorism (since really, what else can we call it when Muslims are rioting and burning things?), the possibility is emerging that those undersea cables that got cut, thereby denying Internet access to millions of users across the Middle East and Africa, may have been destroyed in an act of sabotage, not in an accident as previously thought.

I hope nobody is too surprised by that.

In a follow-up to yesterday’s post about demographic winter, I see that Vox Day has added his own thoughts on the phenomenon to the virtual din.

You can’t completely grasp the extent of Europe’s post-Christian decline until you walk through the ghost towns of Italy, populated by no more a dozen elderly women and one old man sleeping in the sun. It’s not something that any tourist is going to see in Florence, Venice or Rome, much less Milano, but go outside the tourist tombs and the desolation of demographic winter is impossible to miss. And the imported African hookers scattered along the truck routes in the countryside are hardly adequate compensation for what were once famously vibrant family units.

There’s a large and spectacular church on the outskirts of a town near which we like to wander. Its doors are only unlocked for an hour or so every month, because despite its gorgeous interior architecture and painted ceilings, there’s not only no one around to attend it, there’s not even anyone left to visit it.

There is no cause of the demographic decline that is now afflicting much of the West that has done more to exacerbate the problem than secular progressivism and related ideologies. Put plainly, the societies we have built for ourselves (and, indeed, most human societies in general) are predicated on the expectation of a populace that maintains an almost “Catholic” birthrate — an average of 2 to 3 kids per woman. Our present fad of 0 to 1 kids per woman, and then usually one “designer” baby at age 35 (I shamelessly crib Mark Steyn’s phrasing here) is, quite frankly, insufficient to sustain Western society. To keep up our end, we need immigration.

That will, I think, be our untimely end.

Should Canada require its immigrants to “earn” their citizenship?

In the past, simply having lived in Britain for a sufficient length of time was enough to qualify a person for citizenship there. Now, a move is afoot to have immigrants “move on” through a system that encourages citizenship by encouraging the adoption of national traditions and values (possibly at the expense of the traditions and values those immigrants have brought with them from the “old country”), at the end of which they may achieve citizenship…or may be asked to leave, if in fact they do not integrate satisfactorily.

Methinks we need something like that in Canada.

According to the Associated Press, pro-lifers and other ‘domestic’ extremists account for “most of the damage” from terror-type attacks committed on American soil, to a larger degree than even Islamic terror.

As a pro-lifer, I’m pretty accustomed to having all manner of lies told about me and my beliefs — it comes with the territory. But the above assertion is pretty egregious, if somewhat easily refuted. Just for context, Muslim terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people in one day back in 2001, and destroyed two of the tallest skyscrapers in America in the process. Since 1973 (the year of Roe vs. Wade), misguided pro-lifers have killed just seven people in the U.S.

But clearly, those pro-lifers account for “most of the damage” done in acts of terror on American soil. The newsman says so!

Ezra Levant remarks that since it’s clear that Stephen Harper is gunning for an election, the Conservative government might as well try passing a few different pieces of increasingly more ambitious legislation, all via confidence motions, until Stephane Dion finally slips up and stops trying to avoid bringing the government down.

Gun control, the Wheat Board, tax cuts — and how about a gentle amendment to Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act?

The irony is that last bill wouldn’t be controversial at all. Other than a lone Liberal lobbyist who hasn’t been in the party’s good graces for four years, and a fringe ethno-political special interest group, I don’t think anyone in the country would even consider such an amendment controversial.

As they say in the funnies…”it’s just crazy enough to work!”

And speaking of pro-life issues, the ladies of ProWomanProLife are suggesting contacting the Governor General directly to let her know that Henry Morgentaler does not deserve the Order of Canada. Fully 85% of online respondents to the Globe & Mail’s poll on the issue said “no,” and while that can hardly be called a truly “representative” number, I think it does indicate rather clearly that a majority of Canadians think that giving Morgentaler this sort of official recognition is a very bad thing.

The PWPL ladies also provide the names of the various people who sit on the “independent” advisory council that considers nominations for the Order of Canada.

Update: Suzanne Fortin sends in the following additional information by email. Here’s the process one can follow to contact the Governor General’s office:

It’s easy.

First call the Governor-General’s Office. Phone numbers:

Ottawa: 613-993-8200

Rest of Canada: 1-800-465-6890

You will get a receptionist.Ask to speak to Madeleine Proulx (pronounced “Prew”). She deals with the Order of Canada. When I phoned today, I got a voicemail and I have been told by another pro-life caller that calls about Henry Morgentaler are being re-directed to her voicemail. State your name. Tell her that you want to register your objection to Henry Morgentaler receiving the Order of Canada. State the reason why. Please try to be neutral in your tone– calling him a bloodthirsty murderer probably won’t gain us a lot of credibility. I stated that he’s a symbol of inequality as he is the reason that unborn children have no legal status today and that I believe in the equality of all human beings, and that he fought this struggle in my name as a woman, and I resent that.

And that was it.

If you’re a pro-lifer, O Reader, or even if you aren’t but nevertheless think that Henry Morgentaler doesn’t deserve the Order of Canada, I encourage you to follow the steps above. Be civil and be articulate, and choose your words carefully. Calling him a murderer with blood on his hands might seem like a reasonable objection to raise, but it’s also a very good way to ensure that your phone message gets ignored. Present your case fairly and without appeal to emotion or horror, and it will be listened to.

Yup, must be Friday.

But, given their rather unambiguous statement on the value of freedom of expression, the Alberta Liberal Party is looking like a pretty good choice compared to Ed Stelmach’s Progressive Conservative party. Especially since Ed can’t seem to sort out his head from his butt when it comes to said same important issue:

“We have in the Province of Alberta a system where the Alberta Human Rights Commission, um, hears, ah, different cases that come forward, uh, under the Charter, and protection of human rights. I know that, ah, this is an issue that came as a result of some comments made, uh, and cartoons I believe with respect to the Muslim faith. Uh, and, uh, it’s–it’s most unfortunate because Alberta is a mosaic of many cultures, and, uh, our goal is here to, of course, the additional resources we put in to arts and culture that we bring — uh, just better understanding the various cultures in the Province of Alberta that we can live together in peace.”

Does anyone know what that means — other than the man politically responsible for the Alberta Human Rights Commission hasn’t got a clue?

His statement was one part free association, one part drivel, two parts political correctness and five or six empty cliches, all delivered with the hestitation of a deer caught in the headlights.

Ugh. What an embarrassment.

Last Friday, three people died in Nigeria because of another caricature of Muhammad.

Three persons including a police officer were killed after Muslim students rioted over a caricature of Prophet Mohammed by their Christian colleagues, police and teachers said Friday.

Students of Government Secondary School Sumaila, some 76 kilometres (47 miles) south of the northern city of Kano, went on the rampage late Thursday, after a Christian student suspended for two weeks returned to the school.

He had been suspended for having drawn a caricature of the Prophet and posted it on a wall inside the school.

“Two people and a police inspector have been killed in the violence while the divisional police station and everything inside including ammunition have been burnt by the rioters”, Kano police chief Aminu Yesufu told reporters outside the burnt police station.

He said about 20 others were badly wounded, including the divisional police officer, who suffered a deep machete cut to the head.

Police had arrested 25 people and opened an investigation, he added.

“The students began chanting Allahu Akbar (God is the greatest) when the Christian student returned and pursued him to lynch him”, Sadiq Haruna, a teacher at the school, told an AFP reporter who visited the town on Friday.

“The Christian escaped in taking refuge in the local police station but hundreds of angry Muslim students attacked and set on fire the premises after the police refused to hand him over,” Haruna said.

So much for the law of the land, I guess — these people evidently make up their own laws.

Robert Spencer comments thusly:

A cartoon of Muhammad does not harm Muhammad. It does not harm Islam. It may even reflect more poorly on the cartoonist than on the object of the cartoon. Yet all too many Muslims around the world continue to fail to grasp this, and to commit cold-blooded murder in their static rage, unaware of or indifferent to the fact that their murderous anger is impotent to eradicate the fact of the cartoon itself, and reflects more poorly on their religion than any cartoon ever could.

I don’t honestly know if the rage these cartoons inspires is a genuine religious issue, or whether it has more to do with rampant ignorance and lack of education in the Muslim world (and, more and more, within Muslim communities in Western nations). I do know, however, that whatever the reason, the reason is irrelevant — violence over a cartoonish depiction of a religious figure, even a false prophet, is pointless, absurd, and completely unjustifiable. Christians at the University of Saskatchewan didn’t riot, storm the police station, and murder three people when this cartoon was published:

And Christians at the University of Alberta didn’t riot when this cartoon was published:

Respectfully, I submit that the image of a zoophillic, homosexual Christ performing fellatio on a pig is substantially more offensive than an image of Muhammad with a bomb for a turban. And yet strangely, nobody died over the Christ image. Oh, sure, some people wrote letters of complaint, and some other people boycotted the student paper that ran the cartoon…but that’s just the point. Those are legitimate avenues of protest, and are appropriate forms of protest. Rampaging and killing? Not so much. Not at all, in fact.

I get that some Muslims understand this principle. I really, really do get that. But it seems to be the case, just a little bit more each week, that the majority of Muslims tend toward the opposite view, and see rage and murder as wholly justifiable whenever even the most crudely-drawn depiction of their false prophet is published.

And why? Because images of Muhammad are forbidden out of fear that the Muslim faithful might commit idolatry, giving undue reverence to the image rather than to the person it depicts. Okay, fine…but, as a Catholic, I can do nothing but scoff at that very sentiment. Is their faith so weak, and are they so ignorant, that a poorly-drawn image could distract them from proper reverence for their prophet? Can they even tell the difference between a picture of the prophet and the real deal?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Kathy challenges all bloggers to re-post the Muhammed cartoons in a show of solidarity with the Danes.

And here’s a detail on the cartoon drawn by Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who was the target of the recent murder plot:

So say we all!

Following the arrests of three Muslims for plotting to kill Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who drew Muhammad wearing a bomb turban, the Danish media have today republished the offending illustration.

Good for them. The minute it became clear that violence and intimidation were the response the western press should have said: Okay, you want to kill one of us, you’ll have to kill us all. The Danes have now taken an important stand against Islamic encroachments on freedom of expression.

In Canada, by contrast, the state hauled the only publisher of the cartoons, my old boss Ezra Levant, into one of its thought-crime courts at the behest of a raving incoherent imam. And all the jelly-spined squish of a Minister of Justice has done is issue lamely evasive talking points. Nonetheless, the imam has now folded, and is calling (insofar as I can follow him) for the matter to be settled according to Gene Autry’s Cowboy Code or some Islamic understanding thereof. Ezra is going on the offensive.

The lesson is, if you face down these bullies, you can win and stop the lights going out on liberty. But you won’t get much help from your government.

Good on the Danes for this. There really is only one proper response to terror and bullying — stand up to it, maybe even do again whatever you did in the first place to anger the bully.

That’s a truth one learns even on the playground at school. It’s a pity that most world leaders seem to have forgotten that lesson by the time they become presidents and prime ministers, chancellors and…well, whatever.

I never learned to fight, not in the sense of taking a martial art or being shown by my father how to throw a right hook properly. And personally, I’m not keen on fighting when it can be avoided. But I know how to throw a punch, and I have a pretty decent idea of what parts of the human anatomy to aim for if I need to make the first hit hurt.

When I was in the first grade, I got picked on an awful lot, especially by two boys in particular. One of them had me cornered on the second level of the playground one particular recess, and wouldn’t let up. Until that point, I’d been trying to be a bit more passive in my defiance, shrugging off the slights and what have you. Not this time. This time, I turned around and punched the kid right in the chest. He stumbled backward through the gap in the railing where the sliding pole was; it was February, so the sand below was still icy and hard.

He never messed with me again. In fact, when next I ran into him (in high school), we got along just fine.

That’s a fact about life that I hope my kids are able to learn one day, and a fact about life that I think we all need to keep in mind when we look at how we deal with the world. Creating conflict for conflict’s sake is not right, obviously, but there are some things which we simply cannot afford to tolerate, lest we invite the antagonist(s) to take further advantage of us; only be resisting, with as much force as is required, can we actually effect meaningful, positive change.

That’s certainly the case with radical Islam, and the Danes deserve all applause for refusing to be cowed by the fact that some of their immigrant citizens have been plotting murder and mayhem. That they have republished the offending cartoon in spite of the threat of violence is the right decision, because it speaks volumes about how violent reprisals against freedom of expression, even odious freedom of expression, can not, must not, and will not be tolerated.

The world needs as much of that right now as it can possibly get.

Islamist imam Syed Sohawardy has withdrawn his complaint against Mr. Levant’s publication of the Muhammed cartoons. Interestingly, he first announced this to the Calgary Herald editorial board; I can’t see the reasoning behind that move.

Ezra comments thusly:

If he’s really withdrawing the complaint, this is the first I’ve heard about it; and when I spoke with my lawyer this afternoon, the complaint was still proceeding against me.

It might be a lie — it wouldn’t be Soharwardy’s first, but then again, lying to an infidel newspaper isn’t immoral to someone like [Syed Soharwardy]. It’s called taqqiyah.

But even if Soharwardy withdraws his complaint against me, an identical complaint filed by the Edmonton Muslim Council still proceeds.

So why would Soharwardy do this — and why now?

The answer lies in another Arabic word: hudna. A hudna isn’t a peace treaty. It’s a temporary truce called by a Muslim warrior who’s losing in battle. It’s pretty easy to understand how hudnas work by watching Israel fight Hamas and Hezbollah. Those two terrorist groups lob rockets and send suicide bombers into Israel for months; then, every once in a while, Israel deploys its military and flattens Hamas and Hezbollah, who then call for a hudna. The UN intervenes, saving Hamas and Hezbollah to fight another day. That’s a hudna: a tactical truce for a strategic advantage.

Soharwardy wants a hudna because he’s losing badly. Not financially: he hasn’t spent a penny to further the complaint against me — that has been done courtesy of Ed Stelmach’s government and the taxpayers of Alberta, to the tune of $500,000, I’d guess. Nor has Soharwardy had to spend hundreds of hours battling against me at the commission — Alberta government employees do that for him. It’s because over the past two years — and the past month in particular — Soharwardy has become known for what he is: an Islamofascist imam, who’s trying to bring Saudi values to Canada. Though I’m being pummelled in a kangaroo court, he’s being pummelled in the court of public opinion. He didn’t expect it, and he hates it.

He hates that hundreds of bloggers ridicule him. He hates that my video clips, in which I describe his illiberal nature, have been viewed almost 500,000 times. He hates that his own enemies within his mosque have taken advantage of this media coverage to shine a light of scrutiny on the way he runs his mosque - from his financial irregularities, to his abusive treatment of women. These documents here, here, here and here, first published on my blog, have been viewed thousands of times and led to a series of newspaper items in the Calgary Herald and even the Washington Times. Soharwardy is embarrassed — as well he should be. He is no longer polite company. Now he’s known as a censor, a fascist, a sexist. He’s un-Canadian. And if the complaint against me goes to a tribunal, he’ll go through this again on a larger scale.

Two points to draw attention to. Firstly, this isn’t the only complaint that has been filed against Ezra Levant, and the other one is still in process. Secondly, by all indications, Syed Sohawardy has had a very sudden change of tune, since as little as two weeks ago he was threatening additional legal action against Mr. Levant. There’s not a great deal of room to draw breath over this issue, because the issue of Canadian Muslims abusing the already corrupt HRCs in an attempt to impose Saudi Arabian-style (or Iranian-style) Censorship is still very much at large. There’s also not a great body of evidence which suggests that there’s any merit or trustworthiness to Syed Sohawardy’s claim that he is withdrawing his complaint, and a much more substantial body of evidence which suggests that he’s telling another convoluted lie.

One more thing:

Well, back in the land of real laws and real rules of court, there’s a tort called “abuse of process“, and Soharwardy has just admitted to it.

Now, let’s reflect on something here. What the above means is that Ezra Levant will be pursuing legal action against Syed Sohawardy, to recover financial costs of having to defend himself against a spurious and unfounded human rights commission claim (that’s the way HRCs work, by the way — the plaintiff spends nothing, because it is a government “investigation”, while the defendant is responsible for his/her own legal fees), that is not to say that Levant is now employing in reverse the tactics that Sohawardy employed against him. In a civil court, both plaintiff and defendant pay their own way until a decision is reached — the case itself is judged on the merit of weight of evidence (not hurt feelings), and the loser will typically have to pay all or a portion of the winner’s legal fees. It’s a fair process, in other words, unlike a HRC tribunal.

Notes Jay Currie:

Now, no doubt the niceniks and the Kinsellians will moan about how Ezra will not give this ?Imam? a break and how mean Ezra?s being. Suing the man for abuse of process? How un-Canadian. I say go for it. It is well past time that people like this learn actions have consequences. Serious ones. A million dollars in damages? Go for it. It sends exactly the right message.

Personally, I say we’ve been tolerant enough in this country to last us all several lifetimes. If people wish to come to Canada and abuse the services and processes of the government to advance an Islamist agenda, it’s about time we stopped giving those abuses a pass and started hitting back. And given the choice, it’s better that we hit back with rhetoric and financial penalties — actual violence being substantially less preferable.

From our bulging ‘Oh God how I wish we were making this stuff up‘ file:

Syria’s top Sunni Muslim cleric urged the media Tuesday to use caution when reporting on religion, saying that the choice and timing of a report can cause a war.

“A simple piece of information can spark a war. If a man dies because of information that you have made public, his death will be on your conscience,” Shiekh Ahmed Badreddin Hassun told reporters at the European Parliament.

His remarks came in response to questions about the 2005 crisis when satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad first published in Denmark caused an uproar in the Muslim world, resulting in protests and several deaths.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I don’t think the media are the ones who would be causing the war in the Shiekh’s example here; this is not a Wag the Dog situation. Rather, as Kathy Shaidle notes, in the example that the Mufti gives, it is Muslims themselves who are causing conflict and wars, by their seeming willingness in many regions of the world to riot and engage in murder at the slightest provocation. If a man dies because a group of exciteable ‘youths’ decided to riot over a perceived slight published in a foreign newspaper that only has readership in most Middle Eastern nations due to the pervasiveness of the Internet, it’s not the fault of the publishing newspaper that the man is dead — it’s the fault of the mob that kills him.

As the reader may be aware, Ezra Levant has had a run-in with the Alberta Human Rights Commission over the publication of the Muhammed cartoons, which emerged as a controversy from the moment of their first publication back in Denmark in 2005. Ezra Levant’s now-defunct magazine, the Western Standard, published the cartoons in the interests of…you know…actually showing the Reader just exactly what it was that was causing all the rioting and violent invective overseas.

And so we’re clear, here’s the cartoons themselves:

The publication of these pictures, many of them little more than childish scribbles that are much more pitiable — for the obvious lack of talent behind them — than they are offensive, was legitimate within the rights and freedoms that the UN purportedly grants all people of the world, which the EU supposedly recognizes. One drawing, in particular, is a very accurate commentary on the relationship of European artists and Islam (that would be the picture of the cartoonist drawing a little scribble on his paper whilst fearfully looking over his shoulder). Most of the artists of these Danish cartoons are now in hiding, their fear of ending up like Theo van Gogh very real and very justified.

That’s a huge story, and one would think that the only way to report on it accurately would be to begin by reprinting the cartoons, to provide context for the reader. And this is all the Western Standard did.

For that ‘crime’, a radical, Saudi-trained imam in Calgary — Syed Sohawardy — filed a complaint with the demanding an apology from Levant. (Point of interest: In his complaint, Sohawardy even makes the claim that he is descended directly from Muhammad.)

Of course, these sorts of things take time to happen, and it was only in the last week that Levant had his day before the officer of the AHRC. Ever articulate, and ever in fine form, below is his closing argument.

He says some pretty powerful, and defiant, stuff. It’s hard not to feel proud to be a Canadian standing in solidarity with someone like Levant:

I do not want to be excused from this complaint because I was reasonable, because it was not the government’s authority to tell me whether or not I’m reasonable. If I commit a crime with words, which is possible — fraud, a tort like defamation — then the government has a role. But political and religious debate are not the proper province of human rights commissions. They have exceeded their original mandate, they have strayed far, and they are tampering in illegal ways with fundamental rights. It is my hope that this matter is not dismissed. It is my hope that this complaint is accepted, that it goes to a hearing, and that I happen to appear before the most fascist of the panelists — some thug down in Lethbridge named Lori Andreachuk. I hope I appear in front of her, and I hope she’s having a particularly angry day. I hope she hears every word in this [video], and that I call her a thug. And I hope that she convicts me, and “sentences” me to the apology that this fascist from Saudi Arabia demands of me. Because then I will take this junk out of the human rights commission, and into real courts, where eight hundred years of common law, and the Charter of Rights, and the Bill of Rights will come to my aid, and where we won’t have hearings where reporters are not allowed, and we won’t have hearings where my defence team is limited to one person, and we won’t have hearings before a divorce lawyer like Lori Andreachuk, who knows nothing about constitutional freedoms. I reserve maximum freedom to be maximally offensive, to hurt feelings as I like. I didn’t do that in this case; a few thin-skinned radicals radicals were angry. It was a reasonable publication, but that is not what should exculpate me. My rights as a free man should.

That is, I think, the most important point: his rights as a free man — a Canadian citizen — as outlined and stipulated in the should exculpate him, should set him free from the kangaroo court that is the HRC, is that such a thing as the HRC should not even exist in Canada to begin with. The human rights commissions — at both the federal and provincial levels — are illegal and an affront to the rights of every Canadian citizen, including the right to freedom of expression.

Thus: