timeimmortal

A short piece, but worth the read:

No one who works for the [National Post] is unaware that many Muslims feel antipathy toward a newspaper that is officially pro-Israel and, in practice, generally skeptical of Canadian multiculturalism. It seems to occur to none of them to muck in and start up their own Daily Jihad that reflects the opposing views. Perhaps the Muslim world just doesn’t have enough oil wealth sitting around idle to underwrite such a thing. Maybe they’re content with the way the good old [Toronto Star] handles the task. Whatever the case, you’ll notice [Khurrum Awan] uses the “national” scale attained and defended by some media as an argument that they must, in essence, share the wealth. Because they’re successful, and have shown themselves capable of reaching out to readers who hold many different political and personal philosophies, they are required to cede the editorial judgment that led to that success, and abandon their own operating philosophies in favour of becoming mere venues for identitarian argument.

To say nothing of the fact that Awan et. al. have been claiming, from the start, that they just want a change to publish their side of the story, that they just want a debate. Well, they’ve had opportunities for both, in many other media outlets and even on live television.

And they have either attempted to flee from each such opportunity, or have used the opportunity only to repeat claims already made.

To the Osgoode Hall students in particular, Mohamed Elmasry in passing, and anyone who currently thinks that Islam and its adherents are getting an unfair shake in all of this: we’re calling your bluff. You are lying through your teeth and squandering every opportunity which is being generously presented to you that would enable you to obtain exactly that which you claim to want. Your repeated failure to take advantage of these opportunities speaks volumes about your true agenda of censorship of legitimate criticism of Islam, which is both a violation of a basic human right of all Canadians and something which, frankly, doesn’t belong in Canada in the first place.

So shut up already, or else actually do what you claim you came to do.

Jason Kenney all but flays Osgoode Hall sock puppet Khurrum Awan in this scathing letter, chastising him for his association with Mohamed Elmasry.

I’m almost tempted to wonder how long it will be before someone tries to file a human rights complaint against Mr. Kenney?

Update: Let’s see how well Scribd handles this:

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Check it out, and just keep punching “REFRESH”…

The importance of this hearing cannot be overstated: if Maclean’s manages to come away the victor, it will be an important victory for freedom of expression in Canada.

Although, in the opening remarks of his blog post, Andrew Coyne makes a very good point about some of the other implications of such a victory, not all of them positive.

Update: Blogging continues (dude is going to have a serious case of Blackberry thumb by the end of this) in part 2.

And then on trumped up charges, by the sound of it:

A human rights group says a 24-year-old Syrian blogger has been convicted and sentenced to three years in prison on charges of undermining the prestige of the state and weakening national morale.

In a statement sent to The Associated Press on Wednesday, The National Organization for Human Rights in Syria condemned the verdict issued the day before as “outrageous” and called for Tarek Bayassi’s immediate release.

In a way, is what is happening in Canada all that different from this circumstance? Under the guise of protecting human rights, are not the human rights commissions basically punishing those whose words go against what the HRCs — in their capacity as organs of the Canadian state — deem to be acceptable?

In a sense, are not people like Ezra Levant and publications like Maclean’s magazine being accused of in some way undermining the prestige of the state for their refusal to, say, subscribe to the “look the other way” multi-culti attitude that the likes of Mohamed Elmasry and his Osgoode Hall sock puppets are counting on the rest of Canada to demonstrate, and which the CHRC is demanding that all Canadians demonstrate?

The difference is only in degree. Syria jails bloggers who publish things that the state deems unseemly. Canada just forces them to a) pay a steep fine, in addition to the legal fees they incur, and b) cease saying what they have been saying.

In the wake of the embarrassing actions of Mohamed Elmasry’s three Osgoode Hall law students (read: sock puppets) and the cowardice they displayed when faced with the prospect of having to debate Mark Steyn three-on-one, Maclean’s has responded to the attempt by Faisal Joseph and the Osgoode trio offer a non-settlement (read: shakedown) disguised as a settlement offer.

To sum up, Maclean’s has basically said thus: “we’ll tell you where to shove that offer.”

Ezra Levant has an excerpt of the text of Maclean’s response to the offer:

The time to discuss reasonable replies to Mr. Steyn’s piece was after the article was published and before the human rights actions were launched. For Maclean’s to agree to any “settlement” with quasi-judicial proceedings under way would be tantamount to an admission of wrongdoing on our part when we have done nothing but practise responsible journalism.

It would also be improper and damaging to the integrity of Maclean’s, and a troubling precedent in Canadian media, for us to agree to negotiate the content of our magazine in return for the withdrawal of quasi-judicial legal actions and relief from punitive costs of defending those actions.

Moreover, any settlement at this point would have to be approved by human rights authorities in Ottawa, and would thus involve an implicit acceptance on our part of the jurisdiction of human rights commissions to regulate the content of print media publications in Canada. That is an unacceptable precedent.

We believe that a sincere attempt to settle this matter would have involved a direct and timely approach to Maclean’s rather than a press conference and public ultimatum eighteen months after the publication of Mr. Steyn’s piece. But rather than approaching this magazine for the purposes of conciliation, Mr. Joseph and his clients publicly impugned our journalists at a press conference, tactics sharply at odds with their stated goal of reaching an amicable resolution.

While we have no interest in negotiating with the CIC for the withdrawal of its complaints, we remain committed to fostering free and open discussion of important public issues. Maclean’s would be pleased to host a public debate at a neutral venue between Mr. Steyn and Mohamed Elmasry, head of the CIC and the complainant in both the B.C. and federal investigations. The debate would cover issues raised by Mr. Steyn’s original article as well as the CIC’s decision to resort to human rights commissions. We are sure that such an event would be interesting and informative, and we would publish a transcript of the debate either in the magazine or on our website.

Of course, Mohamed Elmasry is never going to accept the challenge to a debate, lest he again be exposed for what he is: a hateful, anti-Jewish bigot and apologist for terror. Still, it’s a pleasant pipe dream to imagine Mark Steyn tearing in to the man the right-of-centre blogosphere has come to know as “Elmo.”

This is a good, principled stance that Maclean’s has taken: they refuse to be intimidated by the human rights apparatus in Canada, and refuse to recognize the authority of the abrogation of basic human rights that the HRCs in Canada truly are. Likewise, they’re calling the bluff of Elmo, his sock puppets, and his flashy lawyer. It’s a “come and get us” attitude that I think Colonel Maclean, especially, would be very proud of.

Certainly, I’m a little bit prouder to be Canadian for having read it.

Update: 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!

On the Left writes in to correct our thinking, O Reader.

Check your facts folks. Mark Steyn IS NOT A PARTY TO THE COMPLAINTS - therefore HE HAS NO LEGAL BILLS!! HE IS FREE TO WRITE WHATEVER HE WANTS - This proceeding has been initiated against Maclean’s Magazine for publishing Islamphobic material - 20 articles over a year and a half without a single counterview response - The issue is about targeted communities to have the right to respond.

Allow me now to correct On the Left’s thinking.

Yes, Mark Steyn might not be a party to the complaint — the complaint itself is filed against Maclean’s magazine — in the sense that he doesn’t have any legal bills to pay, but he is a party to the complaint in the sense that it is his article, The Future Belongs to Islam (October, 2006) which forms the core of the issue for the Canadian Islamic Congress, Mohamed Elmasry, and the Osgoode Hall law students that he uses as his sock-puppets.

Indeed, Mark Steyn himself spells it out rather well in this article, in which he explicitly states that the complaint is against Maclean’s, and that the key reason for the complaint is the “Islamophobic” article that he penned (which was really just an excerpt from America Alone, his best-selling book).

So while Steyn may not be on the hook for legal bills, he has a horse in this race all the same. After all, had Maclean’s not run his article, Mohamed Elmasry wouldn’t have had anything to complain about. Oh, sure, there are a handful of other articles, some of which (if memory serves) might even just be letters to the editor, but they’re all garnish. Steyn’s article is the main issue here, and without that there wouldn’t be enough material on which to base a complaint.

Now, as to the whole thing about “targeted communities to have the right to respond,” precisely where in the is the “right of response” outlined and detailed? I realize that leftists do rather enjoy inventing new and previously unheard of rights for those they deem to be minorities (since, in the soft bigotry of low expectations that most leftists engage in, those minorities need these rights because they would otherwise be unable to help themselves, the poor darlings), but no Western nation has ever enshrined in its constitution the notion that a person has a “right to respond” to a published article.
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It turns out that the promised offer of settlement was not any different than the previous offer made to Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine by the Canadian Islamic Congress through its sock puppets, the four Muslim Osgoode Hall law students.

That’s right — after all the hype of a big settlement offer, they wound up offering to drop their human rights complaints against Steyn and Maclean’s if, and only if, Maclean’s agreed to publish, with no editorial oversight as to content or formatting, an Islamic rebuttal to Mark Steyn’s article The Future Belongs to Islam.

I have never been prouder to be a Canadian than the day I heard Ken Whyte say he would rather Maclean’s magazine go bankrupt than allow it to be hijacked by a handful of Muslim beligerents.

At this morning’s press conference, held by the Sharia Creeps, we were promised a big “settlement” announcement in the absurd case of Steyn & Maclean’s v. A Bunch of Sock Puppets and Their Anti-Semite Master Behind the Curtain.

In a dazzling demonstration of both taqiyya AND hudna, we received no such thing.

The three law students — or rather, their obnoxious lawyer, who did all the talking — simply reiterated their original demands: that Maclean’s magazine honor the students’ imaginary “right to rebuttal” (a right that exists nowhere in English common law or centuries of journalistic and publishing practice) by letting them publish 5,000 unsolicited and unedited words in someone else’s magazine.

Despite the repeated (I lost track at 6) attempts by the National Post’s Joseph Brean to get them to explain what exactly was different about this new and improved “settlement” offer, no clear answer was forthcoming.

And for an additional “heh”:

My outburst caught the attention of one of the female law students on the dais, and we engaged in a evil eye staring match for the next 15 minutes. Heh. Made ‘er blink.

And of course, we had to hear about four different times about Ken Whyte’s “disgraceful” bankruptcy comment, which they are totally and utterly obsessed with.

See, this is why there hasn’t been a Muslim Reformation:

there must not be an Arabic equivalent of “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

Their wee Borg-like brains cannot fathom such independence of spirit, such defiance in the face of the great and mighty Islam. Especially defiance by a mere infidel, and his “pig” (or is it “dog”?) stooge, the suspiciously surnamed “Mark Steyn” — whom this case has nothing to do with and don’t you forget it while I read more excerpts from the previously unheard-of essay which we are basing our whole case on even though NO ONE ELSE HAD READ it in Canada’s biggest and only newsweekly and between the covers of a bestselling book — until I read it to you, just this minute.

And we’re supposed to believe these people invented chess.

Pitiful. But I suppose that in a sense it’s all we should have expected; this case has been an exercise in absurdity since its inception, and it’s not really surprising that the losing side has opted to maintain the status quo.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

The Ontario Human Rights Commission has dropped the case against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine, but one should be wary of calling this a victory too soon. Reading the commission’s statement on the matter, their only reason for not proceeding with the case is a jurisdictional one:

Denying a service because of race or creed can form the basis for a human rights complaint. However, the Ontario Human Rights Code does not give the Commission the jurisdiction to deal with the content of magazine articles through its complaint process.

Of course, Maclean’s didn’t deny “service” to Mohamed Elmasry (the plaintiff in this case, not to be confused with the four Osgoode Hall law students he uses as sock puppets) on the basis of his race or Religion; service was denied because Maclean’s is a private enterprise and wasn’t in the mood to be told that it must allow a rebuttal to be printed.

And, as Mark Steyn notes, the commission seems also to have convicted Maclean’s and himself, at least in terms of organizational opinion:

While freedom of expression must be recognized as a cornerstone of a functioning democracy, the Commission strongly condemns the Islamophobic portrayal of Muslims, Arabs, South Asians and indeed any racialized community in the media, such as the Maclean’s article and others like them, as being inconsistent with the values enshrined in our human rights codes. Media has a responsibility to engage in fair and unbiased journalism.

That first sentence is a laugh, isn’t it, O Reader?

Ah, well — one expects the sort of petulance that drips from ths commission’s statement from…I don’t know…adolescent girls on the cheerleading squad. It’s shameful that a government department would engage in such verbal cheap shots. Then too, there are a couple of positives to be derived from what we see here. Firstly, of course, this is one less human rights complaint that Maclean’s and Mark Steyn are going to have to fight, and that is a good thing in and of itself. And as a bonus, for what it may be worth, the has now put down in writing their commitment to freedom of expression. Whether they believe that or not, it might be something they can be held to in the future.

Kathy finds a gooder — a Muslim (presumably Canadian?) blog complaining thusly:

In order to understand why Canada’s HRC has no ears for Canada’s largest minority, Muslims, because HRC was brain-child of a Jewish lawyer, Abe Borovoy - and has a history of Zionist-Jewish domination.

Okay, let’s look past the atricious spelling and poor grammar. After all, the guy describes himself as an industrial/power-generation engineer. And as we all know, engineers aren’t usually gifted with eloquent use of the English language, especially in print.

(Note: that statement is sardonic; my writing is just fine, thank you very much, and I’m an engineer as well)

Let’s look at the content of his statement, shall we? Muslims, he asserts, are unable to have their complaints heard by the human rights commissions in Canada, because the HRCs — found by a Jewish lawyer — “has no ears for…Muslims.” This explains why the Jew Mark Steyn and the Jewish newsmagazine Maclean’s is currently taking noted Muslim scholar Mohamed Elmasry and four Muslim Osgoode Hall law students to the Canadian Human Rights Commission (and the , and the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal) for their refusal to allow Steyn & Maclean’s to publish a rebuttal to a written piece by Elmasry that the plaintiffs are calling “anti-Jewish.”

Oh, wait, sorry, I turned on the sardonic filter again. Let’s reiterate!

Muslim scholar and terrorist supporter Mohamed Elmasry is the one taking (the non-Jewish) Mark Steyn and (the not particularly Jewish at all, really) Maclean’s magazine to the CHRC for their refusal to allow Elmasry and others to publish a rebuttal to a Mark Steyn piece that appeared in Maclean’s discussing the prospect of looming global Islamification, which Elmasry and the four Muslim Osgoode Hall law students that he uses as sock puppets assert was “anti-Muslim.”

Yes, Canada’s HRC has no ears for Canada’s Muslims — that’s why the most high profile case in front of the CHRC has a Muslim plaintiff!

Also, what is it with Muslims and the tendency to jump, almost instantly, to the belief that everything is a conspiracy by the Jews?

Finally, the Borovoy behind the formation of the HRCs was Alan Borovoy, whose first name is Alfred. I don’t know where our blogging industrial/power-generation engineer gets the name Abe from…maybe he just needed a Jewish-sounding name and went for the first one he could think of?

Update: Welcome, Steynians and 5FoF readers! To answer Kathy’s question more directly, I don’t know if it’s something about engineering as a discipline, or if it has more to do with the sort of person who is attracted to the discipline as a whole. To describe most of my male classmates as social misfits (or, in some cases, nearly autistic) would be a very charitable understatement. Most of the women, for some strange reason, were normal enough.

Update II - The Quickening: Mark Steyn points out that the crazy only gets better from the already auspicious start above — was the good Reader aware that Pope Benedict XVI is a Zionist plant in the Catholic hierarchy?

Victor writes in a few words of encouragement.

I found your site through freemarksteyn. According to the
last post I read (the cab drivers and inconvenience* store owners) you seem to be losing readership over your outspoken views on Islam. You’ve also gained one, if that’s any consolation, please keep up the good work.

I attend Ryerson in Toronto, where our student union president made moonbat notoriety by joining forces with the [Osgoode Hall] 4, and giving them a public platform from which to whine about their victim-status to my fellow Ryersonians (Mike Brock covered it well at noncogent.blogspot.com). Seeing that shit for 4-8 hours a day, seeing ‘celebrate diversity’ posters with every flag of the middle east (except Israel) beside defaced posters for the school Christian club, well…I sometimes feel the world is upside down. I appreciate doeses of sanity from sites like yours.

Thanks.

Well, Victor, you are more than welcome. The issue of losing readers doesn’t much bother me, although the concern is appreciated. There have been times in the past where I’ve racked up a couple thousand visits in a week, and there are times when I’m lucky to have a few hundred. It is, as Victor notes, a case of ebb and flow…but equally, it is also a non-issue. At the end of the day, I write this blog for myself; if other people derive value from something I say, that’s a bonus, but hardly a requirement. That said, it is always nice to get feedback and to hear that something I’ve written reaches people.

I’m sorry to hear of how set upon Victor sometimes feels at Ryerson, especially because that is something that our progressive “betters” would have us believe they desire all people to be free from feeling. I suppose that the bigotry is still acceptable when it is directed at Christianity, or when it is directed at Jews in a subtle way.

This brings me back to something. Yesterday was, yet again, an interesting time of reflection, and reading the above rather adds to it.

On the face of it, we who live in Canada are really lucky. Really, really lucky. Oh, sure, our government operates censorship commissions (HRCs); and sure, we don’t have the right to private property enshrined in our Charter; and sure, our health care system is bloated and failing; and sure, pretty much every politician we’ve elected in the last 30 years has been hot for gun control. Let’s take all that as granted. We’re still pretty lucky.

We live in one of the biggest, most resource-rich countries in the world, but our population is only slightly higher than that of the capital city of Mexico (and our population density is, for the most part, negligible by comparison to almost everywhere else in the world). We’re more or less free from the burdens of war, famine, poverty, terrorism, and disease that ravage so many other places in the world, and we’re even pretty safe from most natural disasters that befall other places in the world. Yeah, the weather sometimes throws us into the deep freeze, but that’s okay; the variety is good, and it makes us a hardy lot for the most part.

My interesting reflection added one thing to the above: it was that here in Alberta, we seem to be even luckier. It’s with no small amount of relief that I observe that out here, I’ve rarely if ever witness people defacing the posters for the ’s Christian groups, and even the pro-life group’s posters have remained mostly intact (including the huge one that they recently hung in a major student traffic area). The student council has remained mostly non-radical, and in my last year the student president was a practicing Catholic and all-around reasonable guy. One of the busiest lectures held on campus every year is given by a Christian, presenting on the issue of the science-Religion dialogue. And around Christmas time, traditional carols are sometimes sung by choirs inside the provincial Legislature, and a Nativity Scene can be found in the annex thereof.

It seems that such freedoms are becoming a rare thing in other parts of the country. And that is, I think, a lamentable wrong, and hardly befitting a free, Western nation with as proud a heritage as Canada’s. Still, it is wonderful to hear of people continuing to persevere, as Victor does, in the face of the “soft” bigotry of progressives. Canada needs as many people like that as it can get.

So in turn, Victor, thank you. It can be too easy, sometimes, to lose heart, and I hope that you never do.

Update: Actually, since this whole Mark Steyn/Ezra Levant/HRC fracas started, my traffic has tripled. That’s not saying all that much, given that back in December of last year I was averaging about 20 visits a day. But according to Google, I’m up to 61.56 visits/day over the last month, and that’s pretty cool. Admittedly, that’s only about half the traffic that another site that I run gets, but hey…even a single visitor is cool, I think. I’ll take 60 when it happens though, given that it’s about 60 more than I’m ever expecting to get on any given day of the week.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

* Heh…this is such an old joke, but it made me chuckle.

Mike — or Mike Savant, as his email address would suggest his full name is (don’t worry, Mike, I won’t post it here) — writes in to “clarify” the “facts” of the complaint filed against Mark Steyn and magazine.

I think many people do not understand why a complaint was filed against Macleans Magazine. The following YouTube link provides an interview from Khurrum Awan *himself* [Oooohh...aaaah... - Ken] on the Mike Duffy Live Show explaining the facts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeenAJx-Zjk

I would encourage the reader to watch the above-linked video; it’s an interesting re-hash of things already known.

At the core of the complaint, Awan’s big beef is that he found the excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book America Alone to be “Islamophobic”, and full of errors and assertions about Islam and Muslims, and the aims of said same on the global stage. He and his compatriots demanded of Maclean’s equal space to publish a rebuttal (free from any editorial oversight) to Mr. Steyn, a demand which Maclean’s refused since — as an independent company — they are free to choose what they do and do not publish. Lacking sufficient evidence for a formal court charge of discrimination or dissemination of hatred, Awan et. al. filed a human rights complaint with four (I think it was four) different HRCs — the national one, and three provincial tribunals as well (two of which have taken the case).

What is interesting is that, since launching this human rights complaint, Mr. Awan and his associates have had an immense amount of public exposure and media coverage, and could have — at any point — leveraged that coverage to issue their rebuttal to Mr. Steyn. True, it wouldn’t have been published in Maclean’s…but Mr. Awan could have, for example, used his time on the Mike Duffy Live show to address some of Steyn’s main points. Or he could have done it through LawIsCool, as a guest author. Or he could have started his own website (as I did some years back, for the measly sum of $7.95 USD/month) and then only appeared in public whilst wearing a shirt with the URL of said website emblazoned on it. In this era of new digital media, it is ludicrously easy for someone — anyone! — to spread any message they want to.

Come to think of it, Mr. Awan enjoys the backing and (presumably) the financial support of the Canadian Islamic Congress. I wonder, for a moment, what the CIC could accomplish if its president, Mohamed Elmasry, took a break from claiming that all Israelis over the age of 18 are legitimate targets for suicide bombers and focused the energy and financial resources of his organization into the creation of an alternative to Maclean’s, in the same spirit of entrepreneurship that led to the founding of Maclean’s a century ago. This is the West, this is a (relatively) free country — if you want to say something, found your own damn magazine and publish it! This sort of thing could have been immensely beneficial! Just think: a vibrant, active, well-written (well, not if Mr. Awan was doing the writing, but there’s always hope) magazine for the Muslim community in Canada, or maybe for all Canadians to find something in.

But did Mr. Awan and his compatriots do any of those things?

Nope.

Instead, they went whining to the Canadian Human Rights Commission and are currently demanding that, because a privately-run newsmagazine didn’t cave in to their (unreasonable) demands, they receive a formal apology in the form of several thousands of dollars.

Now, as comprehensive a reply to Mike as all the above is, there is one even more curious, and potentially amusing, detail. Binky has also written a response to someone named Mike (curious, that) who also very helpfully provided a YouTube link to Mr. Awan on the Mike Duffy show:

Sorry, Mike: ZZzzzz. We could rehash Khurrum’s stale pitch almost verbatim, and he’s had lots of places to explain his point. What’s still lacking from the chatter from the Four Elsmasry Puppets is the specific, serious, and substantial content of an ‘answer’ to Steyn & Company as published in Macleans over the past few years. As of yet, there’s just no ‘There’ there.

Yeah, we get it: you really, really, really disagree. What became clear from the comments of two Osgoode Hall students was their apparent expectation that the comfy-blanket of the modern university– speech-codes, tribunals, one-sided arguments and leftward intellectual life with no serious engagement with differing views, or the vast history of Western Civilization out of which everything arose– that the comfy-blanket should be imposed on the entire country and population of Canada, at least in the matter of criticism of Islam, or of ideas and institutions beloved by the left.

Perhaps you actually are all nice sincere diversitarian law-kids who just dream of, like, an inclusive tolerant enforced Trudeaupia, a heaven on earth– but that crazy world-view is not a solution: that’s part of the problem.

However, within your own religious community there are those who would use you to unmake Canada and rebuild the pieces in an exclusively Islamic shape. That the political left and aggressive Islamists cooperate to do so is a bad thing– and to be pointed out by Macleans columnists and many, many authors and commentators around the world, where free presses and free speech allow it– well, that’s a rather helpful and timely warning as to what is NOW happening in Europe (the motherland of Western Civilization), and what is slowly beginning to happen in North America.

As the nearly-silenced Pentagon expert Maj. Stephen Coughlin points out, this is not hate-speech or fear-mongering, but to simply describe what world-wide jihadis actually say, plan, hope for, and are all about. If the Osgoode 4 and Dr. Elmasry actually stand with Western Civ on this one, they’d do better to leave Macleans & Steyn & [Ezra Levant] alone, and get to work exposing and correcting those truly hateful elements within their own community who do espouse silencing critics, and worldwide religious war, here and abroad.

Personally, I think it’s decent advice. And Mike, just one thing, speaking to you personally: if you’re the same Mike that Binky has already dispensed with, and given what you and I both doubtless know about the essentially instantaneous nature of the interconectivity of the blogosphere…what are you doing going after the smaller blogs, when the bigger ones have already pegged you for the fool that you are? Did you think I wouldn’t be a regular reader of a blog that has now linked to this one a dozen times, and for which I have composed banner images? Did you think I wouldn’t make the connection? And did you think I wouldn’t instantly recognize just how foolish your attempt at persuasion was?

Update: Oh. My. God. Mike…could you at least have tried? Do I mean so little to you? There you go flirting with that tramp Binky, and when he spurns you, you turn around and send me exactly the same love note? But seriously, dude…are you even trying?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Apparently, Ezra Levant was interviewed on CTV Newsnet a while ago, and the follow-up interviewee was one of the four Osgoode Hall law students currently at the center of the Mark Steyn/HRC fracas, Khurrum Awan.

Evidently, it didn’t go well for Mr. Awan.

Most of Awan’s comments were the same ones he and the rest of Elmo’s Kids have been offering for months. But Awan said something bizarre, for the first time that I’ve heard. He claims that human rights commissions “are not government bodies” and that “it’s completely false… to say [their penalties] amount to government Censorship.”

Huh?

Every human rights commission in Canada is part of the government. They were each created by a government law, directed by government appointees, funded by government budgets, staffed by government bureaucrats, and their orders have the force of the government behind them.

There are two possibilities here: Khurrum Awan is really that bad a lawyer, or he’s lying through his teeth. It’s hard to believe that, even with its affirmative action programs, Osgoode Hall Law School would admit someone so thick as to support the first possibility, or if they did, to graduate him. I believe the second possibility is more likely true: that, like his boss Mohamed Elmasry, Khurrum Awan will say anything and do anything to promote the cause of radical Islam and to undermine our Western freedoms. If that means lying to CTV and its viewers about the nature of a human rights commission, why, that’s just a little bit of taqiyya.

(Taquiyya, so the Reader knows it, is a practice in Islam wherein it is acceptable to lie to a non-Muslim if by doing so one is able to advance the cause or influence of Islam)

Levant also raises the possibility of whether the AHRC might become an election issue in Alberta (a contact who works at Hansard tells me that a writ may be dropped within another couple of weeks). One can only hope that this will be the case, although I share Levant’s reservations about the Stelmach government.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

James Gregoire writes in regarding the formal document complied by the 4 Osgoode Hall law students currently embroiled in the Mark Steyn/Maclean’s-HRC fracas. That document bears the title A Case Study of Media-Propagated Islamophobia, and serves as a handy catch-all reference of pretty much every time anybody in Maclean’s magazine in the last six or seven years has said anything about Islam which is not fawning praise.

I just read the complaint submitted to the various Human Rights Commissions (I agree that they should go by the way) regarding the Maclean’s articles.

I also took the time to review the complete articles at macleans.ca.

Everytime I find myself beginning to sympathize with adherents to Islam because of perceived slights, after reading a little further, I inevitably find that the body of the complaint contains skewed and inacurate information.

Sad to say, this tends to remove what sympathy I may feel and replace it with dislike and disbelief.

If the majority of Muslims are pro-peace and anti-terror, (And I do believe most are) why don’t they make more noise against the radicals? Why are they a silent majority? The only time we hear from them is about some slight they feel they have suffered.

The four who submitted the above complaint are typical examples. They misrepresent the information to the point where one must consider them stupid or deliberately obtuse.

This colours the perception of all non-Muslims and gives every Muslim a bad rap.

The Islamophobia is bing created by the silent majority of Muslims!

This raises an interesting question, of course.

On one hand, one wants to believe that a majority of Muslims are indeed opposed to terrorism committed in the name of Islam, and that most Muslims are of a non-radical bent (and therefore are not chomping at the bit to see the Sharia — disgusting and misogynistic as it is — become the law of every land). And indeed, one may know any number of reasonable Muslim folk who would seem, on the surface of it at least, to prove the belief in this silent majority correct.

But on the other hand, there is the silence, and that is a major stumbling block towards accepting the conclusion that a majority of Muslims are reasonable. Because if there is a majority that is not speaking out, then the only reason they are not speaking out is that they are fearful of being ostracized from their communities, or else persecuted somehow.

But it’s kind of misleading to say that, because if the reasonable sort are in the majority, it should be they who have no trouble driving out troublesome imams and/or community leaders/members. That they do not is puzzling, and also seems somehow contradictory — it casts a doubt on the idea that a large majority of Muslims are reasonable (although, to be fair, it could mean that only the narrowest majority of Muslims are).

Far more likely, then, is the possibility that a majority of Muslims agree, at minimum, with the aims and goals of the radicals, if not with their methods per sé. That is to say, the silent majority tends not to speak out in denunciation of the Islamist radicals because that same majority approves of any (or all) of the following causes:

• the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state
• the implementation of Sharia as the law of the land
• the responsibility of the government to censor any and all criticism or mockery of Islam or its supposed prophet, Muhammad
• the responsibility of the government to jail and punish any transgressors who engage in the aforementioned mockery and/or criticism
• the partial/complete integration of mosque and state

(Some of those categories overlap, which should come as no surprise.)

Unfortunately, this interpretation of the lack of a response to idiots like the Osgoode 4 and the Canadian Islamic Congress (and its leader, Mohammed Elmasry) fits the available evidence a bit better. Again, one wants to believe that this silent majority is not speaking up for some easily-excusable reason…but it makes more sense to conclude that the real reason so many Muslims are silent about these issues is that, to one degree or another, many Muslims agree with the goals of the radicals.

The HRCs have been a huge issue in the blogosphere, but most of the commentary is coming from non-Muslim sources. Some Muslims have indeed added their own commentary in support of the downfall of the CHRC and its provincial equivalents, but I note that a number of these — Tarek Fatah is an easy example, though not the only one — are do not hold orthodox Islamic beliefs (and so are open to the charge of apostasy), or have parted ways with the formal practice of the Islamic faith (and so are open to the charge of apostasy).

Very few orthodox Muslims that I have read have come down as being opposed to the censorship that the CHRC is attempting to impose on Steyn and Maclean’s. Taking that and coupling it with the apparent silence of the larger Islamic community in Canada, one is left with the impression that the possibility exists that the number of truly reasonable Muslims in Canada is smaller than one might be hoping for.

Although, to be fair, I’d be happy to be proven wrong about that conclusion.

At any rate, I think Mr. Gregoire is quite right to note that it is becoming increasingly difficult to sympathize with Islam in general, especially given the rather bald-faced falsehood of this latest attempt to silence anyone who has the temerity to ask some pertinent questions about the aims and goals of the Islamists. Still, one possible benefit of such issues as these is that it will force Western society to consider more carefully whether or not Islam is compatible with Western ideals and values.

One can only hope that, in the case of Western society realizing that several key incompatibilities exist between the tenets of Islam and the values of the West, Western society will have the guts to take a stand against the slow (and, at times, not nearly slow enough) creep of Sharia into once-civilized parts of the map.

Update: Welcome, Steynians, to what Blazing Cat Fur calls a “really cool” blog!

As I say in this week, freedom of speech only for inoffensive speech is no freedom at all. A nation free only to prance along to Barney the Dinosaur pabulum is living under a soft beguiling totalitarianism, even if it doesn’t yet know it. Take Dean Steacey, the Canadian HRC’s lead “anti-hate” investigator, and his delusion that “freedom of speech” is an “American concept“. Golly, we’d all hate it if the ghastly Yanks had invented it. But isn’t Canada a signatory to the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Including Article 19?

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

No Americans need be involved, folks. Why, the UN Declaration of Human Rights is so Canadian, it’s on the back of Canada’s $50 bill - and, if the HRC doesn’t believe me, it can check the next time its doling out another cash settlement to Richard Warman. Mr Steacey and the HRCs are, in fact, abusers of the “human rights” laid out in the UN Declaration, so the only reason for me to string along with their game is to play my part in ending their regime.

More than what Steyn did or did not say, the issue in this matter is that the very process by which certain parties are now attempting to nail Steyn to the wall is — in and of itself — a fundamental violation of human rights. I will say it again, and more clearly: the Canadian Human Rights Commission is itself a violation of the rights of Canadians.

The astute reader will know that I am no fan of the Charter or the Universal Declaration, prefering British Common Law to either/both. But Canada has its Charter and is supposed to be governed by the stipulations thereof, and Canada is a signatory to the Universal Declaration. But as much as a non-fan of both of those documents as I am, I can recognize that enshrined in both is the inalienable human right to freely articulate opinions — yes, even hateful ones.

Some commentators here have asserted that Mark Steyn has his facts wrong, and that the Osgoode Hall law students have it right. My personal view tends toward the opposite of that one. But even the issue of who is actually right is unimportant. What is important is that this star chamber called the HRC is even allowed to operate in Canada, in flagrant violation of what Canadians have declared to be their rights and freedoms, and the universal rights of all human beings. Mark Steyn’s article in Maclean’s magazine might be the battleground, but the actual war is about something much more critical.

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