...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

Cold front: After months of silence, CIC Grand Poobah-for-life Mohamed Elmasry has re-emerged from wherever he’s been chillin’ to defend his “right” to combat rampant Canadian “Islamophobia”. Here he is, sounding remarkably Farberesque, in the Waterloo Record:

Since 9/11, Canadian Muslims are the number 1 minority group being demonized in the public square, in books, in print and broadcast media.

The recent smearing of a Canadian institution like our human rights commissions by Islamophobes, who claim to be protecting "free speech," is a classic case of chopped logic.

They seem to have forgotten that reconciling two potentially conflicting legal rights that are also human rights -- the right to be free from hate propaganda, and the principle of freedom of expression -- is not a new challenge, nor is it an easy one.

Recently, the Canadian magazine Catholic Insight, has been facing a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission alleging it made derogatory comments about homosexuals.

In 1998, someone representing Canadian Jews filed a complaint with the British Columbia Human Rights Commission against North Shore News columnist Doug Collins. The commission ordered Collins to pay $2,000 in damages to the complainant for "injury to his dignity, feelings and self-respect." The commission also ordered the North Shore News to cease publishing statements that expose Jews "to hatred and contempt."

A lawyer with the Canadian Jewish Congress was quoted by the Jewish Independent on Dec. 21, 2001, saying the decision reflects Canadian legal precedents which recognize that certain types of speech are not legally permissible, especially if they are seen to cause public harm.

In these two cases there were no critics of the human rights commissions. But the situation changed dramatically in another recent case, when four Canadian Muslim law students launched human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine with respect to its October 2006 article, The Future Belongs to Islam, written by Mark Steyn. The Canadian Islamic Congress, of which I am president, acted as a facilitator.

The basic premise of Steyn's article is that, just as the "white man settled the Indian territory," Muslims in the West are poised to take over entire societies and the "only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be." Once the ominously predicted transfer occurs, Steyn's article implies, citizens will be subjected to oppressive Islamic law.

The impending Muslim takeover is in turn attributed to immigration and multiculturalism, which have resulted in Muslims flooding into Western societies and enjoying far too much freedom of movement in them. The flood, the freedom of movement, and the fact that "enough" Muslims share the goals of terrorists -- the imposition of Islamic law -- mean that the Muslim takeover is inevitable.

On March 30, 2007, the law students met with Maclean's senior editors and proposed that the magazine publish a balanced response to Steyn's article from a mutually acceptable source.

The response was that Maclean's "would rather go bankrupt."

The Ontario Human Rights Commission, however, declined to hear the case because its code does not cover printed magazines.

But in a rare public statement, the commission rightly noted that "this type of media coverage has been identified as contributing to Islamophobia and promoting societal intolerance towards Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Canadians," and further noted the "serious harm that such writings cause, both to the targeted communities and society as a whole."

The B.C. Human Rights Commission finished hearing the case earlier this month. The decision on whether the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission will hear the case is still pending.

After the B.C. hearings, Brian Strader said this about Steyn's article in a letter published by the Vancouver Province: "It's the closest thing to Nazi and anti-Jewish posters I have seen. Nazi propaganda was meant to show that Jews were a threat. The current analogy with an 'Islamic threat' is truly chilling."…

Au contraire, Mo. What’s truly chilling is that Canadian “niceness” is helping pave the way for sharia-style “free speech”. What’s truly chilling is that your second-in command, the lovely and talented Wahida Valiante, can go on a local cable show (as she did yesterday afternoon) and spread the calumny that the National Post constantly says that “all Muslims are terrorists.” What’s truly chilling is that a flagrant Jew-hater who continues to lobby for Israel’s demise and who has stated that every Israeli adult is a legitimate target for liquidation (put ‘em all together and you got yourself a nice little genocide) has the chutzpah to insist that what’s happening to Muslims in Canada is akin to what happened to Europe’s Jews in the run-up to the Holocaust. What’s truly chilling is that you think you can shut down discussion about Islam and jihad and sharia and dhimmitude by shouting “racist!” at those who care to educate themselves about the one, the only true faith and its ummah.

What’s truly chilling is the Jewstablishment’s utter cluelessness: in seeking to “protect” Jews from the Nazi “threat” (a phantom menace) they have laid down decades of legal precedent that has done grievous injury to our body politic, weakening our ability to remain free.

Brrrr! Someone pass me my parka. All this chillin’ has given me a bad case of hypothermia.

Update: Another CIC functionary, imam Zijad Delic, has an anti-free speech rant in the Ottawa Citizen.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:33 | link | comments (3)

Comments:

#1  25 June 2008 - 11:48

 

Brrrr! Someone pass me my parka.

If el-Masry is successful, in another ten years this will read:

"Brrrr! Someone pass me my burqa"...

Anonymous

#2  25 June 2008 - 12:43

 

Hadn't you heard? A parka is a burka with fur.

scaramouche

#3  26 June 2008 - 13:07

 

Stop all this chatter about "rights"! In fact you are really talking about "privileges", which - awkwardly - come with "responsibilities".

The only "right of way" you have at a traffic intersection is that which someone else gives to you.

Don't be so foolish as to believe you can "take" or "enforce" your "right of way" by barging into the intersection. Rather, your duty is to give that "right" to others who also want to cross the same intersection, when required, as it is their duty to give it to you, in the reversed circumstances.

Anonymous

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