Time Immortal

Mohamed Elmasry wants you to shut up, O Reader. And he wants me to shut up, too.

Quoted in the National Post, Elmasry stated, “The state should act to empower those who are disadvantaged by hate speech, and that may mean lowering the voices of some in order that others may be heard.” Of course he isn’t talking about lowering voices; what he really wants is to silence them.

It’s a frightening prospect when adherents to any Religion can dictate what is and is not acceptable in public discourse. As a society we have taken strong measures to ensure that government and religion are separated, yet Mr. Elmasry wants to prevent so-called Islamophobes from speaking their mind by classifying anything they may have to say as “hate speech”.

His opposition to the repeal of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, a section that is so draconian in preventing free speech that even Alan Borovoy one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, thinks it overly intrusive.

[Mohamed Elmasry] wants to use this law to silence all critics of Islamic fundamentalism, which will impose a chilling effect on freedom of speech in this country. There are no guarantees in our democracy that anyone has the right not to be offended. Indeed, much of what Elmasry says is offensive, especially to those of the Jewish faith. Yet no one is attempting to gag his vitriol, even when he asserts on national television that killing all Jews over the age of 18 in Israel is desirable.

Now, is that a double standard or a hidden agenda on Elmasry’s part?

On the surface it seems odd that a controversial figure like Elmasry would be so eager to empower the state to censor offensive views. Elmasry himself has had issues with hateful words spilling out of his mouth. The CIC has also supported the free speech rights of Sheikh Younus Kathrada…Sheikh Yunus al-Qaradawi…Zafar Bangash…al-Jazeera…

Now, on the surface, it would seem odd that Elmasry would be so pro-censorship given that such a strategy could be self-defeating in that Elmasry and his friends could be caught in such a wide net.

Is this simply a double-standard — free speech for me but not for thee?

Maybe not.

Elmasry has been on record supporting what would be tantamount to blasphemy laws:

On February 23, Muhammad Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress and Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada told the Toronto Star they want to see changes in Canada’s Hate Laws that would make it possible to jail writers who, in their opinion, insult or mock religious beliefs.

Both Mohamed Elmasry and Syed Soharwardy are asking for changes in Canada’s hate laws “so that offensive remarks or depictions of any religious figure are considered a crime.”

Their demand has its origins in Egypt, where Islamists led by Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi of al-Azhar University have been lobbying Muslim leaders to ask the United Nations to write a law that “condemns insulting any religion, including the Holy Scriptures and the prophets.”

Obviously, Elmasry would face much more of an uphill battle if he were pushing for Egyptian-style blasphemy laws.

Maybe it’s not Elmasry who has the double-standard, but that he is merely taking advantage of the double-standard of human rights commissions to sneak in such a law through the back door.

It’s scary to think that such a thing as this — which is tantamount to advocacy for the implementation of at least some aspects of Sharia law — could happen in Canada, but there it is. And the HRCs have been co-opted into the tool of choice for this Islamic agenda.

Of course, the HRCs were already serving to undermine the human rights — free speech is a human right, and then an important one — of Canadian citizens. But at least, when it was just secular leftists and homosexual activists having their way in front of the commission tribunals, nobody was talking about implementing Egyptian legal policy on Canadian soil.

Update: Welcome, Kathy Shaidle readers!

Deborah Gyapong has an excellent report published in the latest edition of the Western Catholic Reporter concerning, of course, Canada’s human rights commissions, this time in light of Pope Benedict XVI’s speech to the UN.

Pope Benedict’s speech to the United Nations last month serves as a reminder to Canada that human rights discourse stems from a world view based on universal truths and an objective notion of right and wrong.

“Either we recover some of these assumptions and make a serious course correction,” McGill University professor Douglas Farrow said, “or we begin to encounter quite rapidly the consequences.”

Farrow sees Canada’s human rights commissions as a sign the country is in a transitional phase, because increasingly the Canadians are seeing human rights as what we say they are.

“Thus laws can be written concerning human rights that have nothing to do with universal standards.”

…

Increasingly, various individuals and groups are using human rights commissions to “generate traction” for that group’s particular construct of rights, he said. This method has often been used to suppress religious freedom, especially that of Christians.

Farrow said the real basis for human rights springs from a world view like that the pope outlined in his speech - a theistic world view that sees a benevolent Creator and human beings made in God’s image, with a capacity to distinguish between good and evil.

The pope exhorted the world body to return to its founding principles as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

The declaration is based on “the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations,” Benedict told the UN.

Human rights should mean the fundamental freedoms to which all human beings are entitled, exercised within a framework of obligations and responsibilities, the burden of which all human beings must bear. The notion of human rights, however, has been abgorated and, I would say, abducted by those whose view of rights is that they are a series of entitlements which are accompanied by no reciprocal responsibility whatsoever. Whereas there should be a natural “give and take,” the view of the HRCs and their “clients” increasingly is that rights is all “take” with no “give” reciprocal to it.

To call that immoral, to call it unethical, and to call it a violation of natural law would at once be accurate and an understatement.

I’m no fan of the UN, as the regular Reader will know, but at least the UDHR recognizes that the right to freedom of expression is one of the bedrock principles of human freedom. Yes, there are responsibilities that go along with that right, and yes we do have some legal protections in place in Canada to make sure that freedom of expression does not cross the line to incitement to violence.

But in regard to freedom of expression, it is worth noting two things:

1. it is nowhere written that, included among the responsibilities that accompany the right to freely express one’s opinion, we have a responsibility to avoid hurting people’s feelings or offending people’s sensibilities. Social convention encourages us to be polite even when expressing disagreement, but some ideas cannot easily be expressed in a manner that pays good observance to social convention.
2. it is nowhere written that any of us has the right to not be offended, nor is it anywhere written that any of us has the right to not have our beliefs and views challenged

Perhaps the word “yet” should affixed to the end of both of those points; I don’t know.

The plain fact of the matter is that, through the existence and operation of human rights commissions, specifically in regard to Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, Canada is going far beyond where it needs to go in order to ensure that so-called “reasonable limits” on freedom of expression exist. There is only one real “reasonable” limit on freedom of expression anyhow, and that is making incitement illegal. Limiting freedom of expression because some things are e.g. hurtful or offensive to others is not a “reasonable” limitation at all — such limitation is, in fact, the antithesis of freedom of expression: it is Censorship.

And as such, it has no business in Canada.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

“We recognize the conflict in Afghanistan as a liberation struggle, waged by the Afghan people and their allies, against oppression, against obscurantism, illiteracy, and the most brutal forms of misogyny. It is a fight for democracy, and for peace, order, and good government. It is also a struggle waged by the sovereign Government of Afghanistan, a member state of the United Nations, against illegal armed groups that seek to overturn the democratic will of the Afghan people. In Afghanistan, the great global struggle for the recognition and protection of basic human rights � universal rights - is being waged with a particular and necessary ferocity. We cannot and must not retreat from that struggle.”

And the Manley Commission recommends that Canada renew its commitment to Afghanistan and extend the mission deadline past Febrary 2009, possibly taking it into 2011 if needed.

“We often seek to define Canada’s role in the world. Well, for whatever reason, we have one in Afghanistan. Let’s not abandon it too easily,” Manley wrote last fall in a Canadian political journal following a return visit to Afghanistan in May 2007.

“But let’s use our hard-earned influence to make sure the job is done right.”

It’s really nice to hear this sort of level-headed honesty coming from a former of Canada cabinet minister (John Manley), although I imagine that is somewhere blowing a fuse over this.