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

There’s no Fox like an old fox: Islamic supremacist Syed Soharwardy has been trekking across Canada with one aim in mind—to remake his image. Syed has grown tired of the bad PR he garnered when he complained to the local human rights authorities that Ezra Levant has bruised his tender sensibilities by printing some purportedly scurrilous Mo ‘toons. The gentleman behind both the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada (a title which, sorry, Syed, always gives me the giggles) and Muslims Against Terrorism (in which capacity he‘s earned the approval of assorted useful idiots) has sought to put all the unpleasantness behind him via his perambulation across the nation. He might have done so, too, if he hadn’t lost his cool and lobbed new threats at Levant when the two were brought together recently on a Toronto radio program—thereby tipping his hand that it was more or less the same old Syed. The sound of Syed avowing that Ezra would “soon pay” should have dispelled any illusions that he had become a new man. Some, however, like clueless Calgary Herald scribe Naomi Licorice, are determined to look for the good in the man no matter what. Here’s la Licorice, wildly cheering on the imam who would be Terry Fox (my bolds):

…What Terry did, what Soharwardy is doing, what all these people who run, cycle, walk or otherwise travel the Trans-Canada Highway for a particular cause do, is called tikkun olam in the Jewish faith.

Tikkun olam means mending the world and Jews believe everyone has a duty to do this. It's an obligation to do constant mending to keep the world from falling into greater disrepair -- to put good back in, to fill the spaces where pain, injustice and other evils might otherwise take root.

"We can't eliminate violence, but we can reduce it," Soharwardy said. He was a few kilometres west of Winnipeg when he heard about the killing of Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus just ahead on the Trans-Canada, near Portage la Prairie. Someone asked him if he was embarrassed by the irony of his walk against violence being in proximity with this terrible crime -- didn't it prove the fruitlessness of his venture?

"I was not embarrassed. I felt despair and hope. The killing of this young man strengthens my resolve," Soharwardy said. He sees it like this: When we say or do nothing, when we simply absorb violence out of fear, as when the victims of domestic abuse are afraid to expose their abusers, then we are enabling more violence.

"To stop violence, to not accept violence -- one person has to stand up and speak against it," he said.

In one aspect, Soharwardy agrees with the letter writer. "We're not able to change the whole world," he said. But he feels that if he's changed one person, enabling that individual to say no to whatever form of violence he or she may be personally experiencing, then his walk is a success. That's tikkun olam. You do what you can. As Ming Jiing Hsieh told the weekly Stonewall Argus about his disaster relief cycling tour: "If I can help people, that's happiness."

Where else but Canada does an imam walk across the country, practising a tenet of the Jewish faith? Some days, it seems like peace may not be such an impossible dream after all.

Oy vey. Could someone please tell the tikkun olam-beffuddled Ms. L. that the imam is doing no such thing. What he’s actually doing is practising an age old tenet of Islam, i.e. taqiyaah, i.e. pulling the wool over the eyes of easily gulled, let’s-all-join-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya types like Naomi. If he wants to “tikkun” (Hebrew for “repair”) the “olam” (Hebrew for “world”) it's so that the "olam," as per Allah’s promises to “the seal of prophets,” will one day be in the hands of "olum" al-Isam. She, of all people, should recognize fabrications when she sees them. After all, she did get her start concocting fairy tales for skeevy supermarket tab the National Examiner.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:38 | link | comments

Comments: