timeimmortal

Don’t get me wrong — I’m glad that the Calgary imam who filed a human rights complaint against Ezra Levant has swung his opinion ’round and set it against the HRCs, more or less.

But he still doesn’t get it entirely.

“Is it safe to say you miscalculated the public response?”

Syed:

It was not a miscalculation. I honestly believed at the time that, in Canada, if you felt offended by something that had been said about your religion or identity, this was the way you resolved the issue.

Incredible. 99% of Canadians had never even heard of the HRCs before he brought his complaint against Levant, and most still don’t know what they are. But Syed knew all about them. So where did he get this wacky idea?

Based on what I’d seen in the media and read on the internet, I thought this was a process that brought the parties together to set things right. I had seen, for example, that other groups, including members of the homosexual community, had done it.

Well, thanks again, gay activists, for your absolutely fabulous contributions to Canadian life! This is right up there with amyl nitrate and French bulldogs.

Yeah, gay activists‘ complaints against Christians who dare to publically express their Christian beliefs has brought people together all right — now more straight people hate gays than they did before! Brilliant…

And congratulations to an orthodox Muslim imam for taking a page from the gay agenda manual. I’m sure your co-religionists will be thrilled to learn who inspired you. Will Syed be the token “righteous straight dude” grand marshall at the next Pride Parade?

What a country. Syed, your Order of Canada is on its way.

…

Anyway, Syed’s newfound objections to the HRCs has more to do with this kind of elitist snobbery than with Enlightenment principles. He tells Maclean’s:

Basically, it’s a bunch of bureaucrats: some of them are lawyers, but for the most part these are people without a great deal of legal training. They have neither the ability or [sic] the means to deal with these sorts of issues.

And make no mistake — Syed wants “these issues” “dealt with”. Hooooo yeah.

I’ve never been a fan of the old saying “enemy of my enemy is my friend” — I’ve always preferred http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030929.html”>”enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy” myself — and I’m willing to grant that imam Soharwardy is a fair-weather ally at best. It’s good that he’s swung around to set his opinion against the human rights commissions, but it would seem that his transformation is only one of self-interest.

And self-interest is a fickle sail indeed with which to run any ship.

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?

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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!

Ezra Levant draws attention to an interesting coincidence:

Here is a letter in the Toronto Star from Ali Mallah of the Canadian Arab Federation, supporting human rights commissions and their arrogation of the powers of political censors. It’s signed by the vice-president of the Canadian Arab Federation.

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Say, that wouldn’t be the same Canadian Arab Federation that, at the last Liberal leadership convention, smeared Bob Rae because his wife was Jewish? Or the same Canadian Arab Federation that denounced Gerard Kennedy when he criticized the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah? The same Canadian Arab Federation that supports boycotts against Jewish businesses in Canada?

So a hater named Syed Soharwardy uses the Alberta Human Rights Commission to persecute the Western Standard;

A hater named Mohamed Elmasry uses the Ontario, B.C. and Canadian Human Rights Commissions to persecute Maclean’s magazine;

And now the hateful Canadian Arab Federation weighs in to defend these commissions as necessary.

Anyone see a pattern here?

Not that this really comes as any surprise. Islamism does have a very appreciable ability to adapt its tactics to the “lay of the land,” and in this case the Islamist agenda is being advanced in part through the human rights commissions (HRCs) in Canada.

It’s a known fact that when a majority of society aligns against some tenet of sharia law, the advocates for that Islamic bigotry will beat a hasty retreat (as CAIR recently did down in the States over the issue of Muslim cabbies refusing to give service to blind persons and their “unclean” guide dogs). It is to the advantage of the Islamists, then, if it is made illegal and punishable by fines to criticize Islam or the various barbarities of Sharia law — into the sudden silence, the radical imams and politically-minded advocates can inject all the misogyny and cruelty of their beliefs without any fear of opposition.

Update: Welcome Steynians!

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.