The lady puppets complain
tagged human rights, Islam, Khurrum Awan, Maclean's, Mark Steyn, MCC, Mohamed Elmasry, Muneeza Sheikh, Muslim Canadian Congress, Naseem Mithoowani, National Post, Ontario Human Rights Commission, Supreme Court of Canada and Tarek Fatah
Apparently, they think that the male puppet isn’t getting a fair shake from Muslim Canadian Congress head Tarek Fatah.
And after some obligatory digs at the MCC, Muneeza Sheikh and Naseem Mithoowani launch into a lengthy defence of themselves, fellow sock-puppet Khurrum Awan, and what they claim is their human rights complaint against Maclean’s magazine.
But here’s the most incredible part, for me: they manage to utterly avoid any and all mention of Jew-hater Mohamed Elmasry, the actual plaintiff in the proceedings against Maclean’s, despite discussing in detail the reasons the complaint was brought. What is more, they have yet again wasted another opportunity to appear in a major national publication with yet another re-iteration of the same tired claims they always articulate.
They could have, you know, published an excerpt from the response they are ostensibly demanding the right to publish…which they claim is all they want in the first place. It is strange, O Reader, that they failed to do this.
They also say a few other things worthy of mention:
And that is our point; anti-Muslim prejudice is growing because of pieces like the one that Maclean’s published, and that led to our human rights complaints, in a context where there is an absence of Muslim (or other) voices to challenge the material in question.
Actually, no: what stokes anti-Muslim prejudice is not an absence of Islamic voices in any particular media forum, either to affirm or to challenge other printed material. What stokes anti-Muslim prejudice, more than anything else, is when Muslim themselves attempt to trample on the rights of Canadians by, in essence, demanding that the government (or, in this case, an unaccountable government agency) wrest control of the publication of a private magazine from the hands of those who are, by law, its actual owners and editors.
The limitless free speech model — that the solution to harmful and hateful speech is more and better speech — does not work for minority communities, and our complaints illustrate that: Maclean’s still refuses to publish a response to just one of over twenty articles that even the condemned as Islamophobic.
As is their right, given that they are (again) a private company.
The limitless free speech model is beautiful precisely because it does work for both the majority and the various minorities; indeed, the fact that Awan, Sheikh, and Mithoowani have managed to publish quite a large number of articles in various newspapers (notably the National Post) demonstrates that they, despite being members of a minority, are not being denied anything.
What doesn’t work, if anything, is the way that in this particular instance, the minority community in question is doing one of two self-ruinous things:
- When given the opportunity to publish an article, the sock puppets can only think to re-iterate previously-made statements for the umpteenth time, when they could be using the space they are given to…say…publish the latest installment in their witty, scathing, and comprehensive response to the Steyn article.
- The rest of the time, said community (or, at least, those who claim to speak for it) spend all their time demanding that the Canadian government hand over control of a private newsmagazine’s content to them.
Dear sock puppets: you’ve been given plenty of opportunities to publish your side, and have wasted them all. Also, if you claim to represent every Muslim in Canada and if, in fact, you are correct in that claim, you should have no problem raising sufficient private funds to begin your own newsmagazine in which you could do nothing but publish anti-Mark Steyn articles to your collective hearts’ desire! That you have done nothing but repeat the same claims, which most of the rest of us now have involuntarily committed to memory, suggests that your motives are other, and then more sinister and repressive.
So please shut up about debates and responses, because you’ve squandered every opportunity to engage in or deliver both.
And yes, I’d be this mad at you even if you weren’t Muslims.
And that is why free speech is not limitless in our democracy.
And that is why it should be.
Section 1 of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that all rights in our democracy are subject to reasonable limits.
And those reasonable limits are: incitement. The Steyn article was not that.
The Supreme Court of Canada (not a bunch of Islamists*) properly recognized that free speech is not limitless in upholding our criminal and human rights laws regulating hate speech.
Because judges, like Allah, are infallible and never make mistakes!
In imposing these limits, the Supreme Court noted that hate speech undermines the equality rights and multicultural heritage guaranteed in our Charter.
So when Mohamed Elmasry made that remark about Jews over the age of 18…?
1 Comment »The Islamist agenda of an HRC
tagged Canada, Canadian Islamic Congress, CIC, Islam, Maclean's, Mark Steyn, MCC, Muslim Canadian Congress, OHRC, Ontario Human Rights Commission, Osama Bin Laden, Racism, Salma Siddiqui and Sharia
The Muslim Canadian Congress, though pleased that the decided not to pursue the complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine, is nevertheless concerned that members of the OHRC may in fact be closet supporters of sharia law.
In a statement, the Vice President of the MCC, Salma Siddiqui said, the OHRC decision had the finger prints of its pro-Islamist commissioners who have close association with the Canadian Islamic Congress. It is not just the commissioners, but we have reason to believe that there are staff on the OHRC that support Sharia law and endorse the CIC’s positions.
Had the OHRC restricted itself to the legality of the issue, the MCC would have no problem with its decision. But in editorializing and coming out to bat for Canada’s Islamists, the OHRC is sending a very dangerous message to moderate Muslims who reject Sharia and do not take inspiration from overseas Islamic countries or groups.
…
The OHRC decision must be cause for celebration in Osama Bin Laden’s cave and among the soldiers of the world Jihadi movement that love to spread the falsehood that Canada is at war with Islam and that Muslims in Canada live under a cloud of Racism and persecution. Nothing can be further from the truth.
That’s a serious allegation, although in a sense it is not that surprising. Modern liberals and progressives, with their inherent fear of seeming judgemental or condemnatory, have provided a curious weakness in the structure of Canadian law that Islamists of a very intolerant bent are only too quick to exploit.
Update: Welcome, Steynians!
Cartoons and Riots
tagged Australia, Cronulla, Denmark, Europe, France, free will, God, Islam, Jyllands-Posten, Lebanon, Muhammad, Muhammed cartoons, Muslim Canadian Congress, Paradise, Piss Christ, Tarek Fatah and women
 |
||
I’ve been abstaining, in recent days, from commenting on the whole Muslim cartoon controversy, primarily because I’ve been busy getting the new site operative, and also because in a realistic sense I’ve just not been up to writing about it. But I feel moved to wade in with some commentary, some comparison/contrast if you will, because of the recent (rather predictable) turn of events that has come about.
For those who have only just heard of what’s going on with these cartoons, I can recap just briefly what has happened. It began with a Danish author writing a book about the life and death of the Prophet Muhammad. He had wanted illustrations done for it, but found that nobody wanted to touch the project, nor come within ten feet of it. Not surprising — according to Islam, graphical depictions of the Prophet are haram (forbidden), and in the region around Denmark, artists who have in the past flouted the tenets of Islam, or offered direct criticism of that religion, have met with death threats, and even murder in the case of Theo Van Gogh. Many European nations, faced with stagnant birthrates of their own, have opened their doors to millions of immigrants, and many such nations now have large Muslim communities that are almost nations within themselves. This has led to any number of problems in the past: rapes committed for sectarian reasons, violence against people who criticize Islam (see above), race riots in France and Cronulla, Australia, and so forth.
And it has contributed to a climate of fear in, among other places, Denmark. That is why the Danish author could not find illustrators for his book: the artists feared a backlash from the Danish Muslim community.
 |
||
As a result of this, one Danish newspaper — Jyllands-Posten — challenged artists to come up with pictures of Muhammed, and received twelve submissions. Some of them were rather lame, and others flirted with offensiveness, and one or two were kind of funny. Some of them — depicting fearful artists and violent Muslim rage at the cartoons — turned out to be rather prophetic in nature. Not that it was a hard call, I suppose. The composite image on the right is an assembled montage of all the cartoons that I cribbed off of Kathy. The pictures, clockwise from the upper right, depict the following:
- A man in a turban holding up a stick-figure sketch. I can’t remember which one is supposed to be Muhammed…but I think it’s the stick-figure. The orange ball in the turban reads “PR Stunt”.
- Muhammed, with the Islamic crescent forming the bottom of his face and the Islamic star as his right eye.
- Muhammed with a bomb for a turban.
- Muhammed with golden horns that look, from a distance, like a halo.
- A series of sketched balloons — actually the Islamic star and crescent. The words read: “Prophet! daft and dumb keeping woman under thumb”.
- A slightly frumpy Muhammed walking in the desert
- A fearful cartoonist looking over his shoulder as he draws a picture of the Prophet.
- A Muslim holding up his hand to stop two of his bretheren who are wielding swords. He is saying something in Dutch that roughly translates as “Relax folks, it is just a sketch made by a Dane from the south-west of Denmark”.
- A student named Mohammed Valloyskole standing at a blackboard. The Arabic text he has written reads “Jyllands-Posten’s journalists are a bunch of reactionary provocateurs”.
- Muhammed, with his eyes covered by a black box, flakned by two women in full burqas.
- Muhammed greeting a line of suicide bombers in Paradise with the words: “Stop! We have run out of virgins!”
- And the middle picture, which is a line-up different people (Muhammed is second from the right, I think) and a man viewing them saying “Hmmm…I don’t recognize him”.
If you’re really curious, you can view all of the cartoons in detail here, in another posting on the site.
Okay, so these cartoons were drawn. Now what, you might ask, was the result?
Well, I said that some of the cartoons, depicting fear and backlash, were rather prophetic, didn’t I? And you may have noticed the protest rally picture that began this posting. That’s right…outrage resulted from the printing and re-printing of these cartoons. Outrage would, I suppose, have been justified, much as Christian outrage over things like Piss Christ was justified…provided that the outrage over these cartoons also took the same form as Christian outrage over Piss Christ.
Which means that boycotting art shows and writing letters of complaint would be justified. Burning embassies, making death threats against the artists and the newspaper, attacking Danish social workers in other nations, and murdering Catholic priests would not be justified. And, as Lost Budgie points out in the article concerning that priest, the cartoons are not really the incident so much as they are the reason-du-jour for violence and rampage.
Christian communities in Lebanon have been torched, allegedly because of these cartoons. What connection a Christian enclave has with Dutch secularist artists is suspect, and indeed probably does not exist. But it is as Budgie says: the cartoons are not the reason, only the thin justification. Muslim mobs can use these cartoons as the “spark” that starts the fire, but once the blaze is lit, anyone who isn’t Muslim is a legitimate target for “revenge”. That is why a Catholic priest was shot dead in Turkey, allegedly in connection with riots over these cartoons. Father Santoro’s murderer didn’t say anything about cartoons: he simply shouted “God is Great” and fired his gun…his desire was not to avenge himself upon a Dane, but instead to please Allah by slaying the infidel.
 |
||
It was irresponsible of Jyllands-Posten to provoke this response, I think, but it serves to note that they do have a freedom of the press, and freedom of speech, as we ostensibly have over here as well. And the exercise thereof cannot be trodden upon to accomodate the sensibilities of any particular group…and I apply that even to my fellow Catholics. I think Piss Christ was offensive and vulgar, but I accept that the artist, being made in the image and likeness of God and therefore possessed of free will, had a right to make that picture. And even though I find it offensive and vulgar, I don’t respond by uttering death threats, or by holding up signs like these that are pictured, calling for the extermination of the artist in question, and indeed all who oppose Catholicism.
Tarek Fatah, who I mentioned previously in connection with Khalid Usman, had this to say regarding the reaction of his Muslim bretheren world-wide to the cartoons:
“The protests in the Middle East have proven that the cartoonist was right,” said Tarek Fatah, a director of the Muslim Canadian Congress.“It’s falling straight into that trap of being depicted as a violent people and proving the point that, yes, we are.”
And he is right. And indeed, in all of this violence, there is irony. For when cartoons were published that depicted Muslims as exciteable and murderous, how did Muslims the world over respond? With riots and murder.
