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

Censorship and sharia: Anything yet on the CJC site condemning the Judenhass at that Somali mosque? No? Then I guess we’ll have to settle for a condemnation from the CJC’s compadre-in-censorship, Toronto Star pundit Harpoon Siddiqui. In today’s column, Harpoon appears to be chastising the Somalis for their hateful words about “the Jews” (although, discretion being the better part of cowardice, he doesn’t mention the loopy Jewish chick-Satanic shoes connection). Of course, what he’s really saying is what the Saudis have been saying--that kafirs had better knock it off with the blasphemy, as per the terms of Allah’s law:

A Somali Canadian mosque in Toronto is being condemned, rightly so, for carrying anti-Semitic and anti-Western messages on its website. This, though, does invite a question: Where are the free-speech advocates defending the right of this group to say whatever the heck it wants?

There aren't any, rightly so. But we can be certain that if some other group was saying similar vile things about Muslims and Islam, free speechers would be out in droves defending it.

This double standard is at the heart of the recurring controversies bedevilling relations between the Western and Muslim worlds, from the Danish cartoon episode to Maclean's magazine being dragged, unsuccessfully, before three human rights commissions in Canada.

The issue is not going away. In fact, it is coming to a head.

When Pope Benedict held a historic dialogue with Muslims in Rome recently, the final communiqué said this of religious minorities: "Their founding figures and the symbols they consider sacred should not be subjected to any form of mockery or ridicule."

The Catholics and Muslims present have jointly challenged a fundamental tenet of free speech, that religion is not above ridicule.

At the just-ended special multifaith session of the United Nations, 80 nations derided the "serious instances of intolerance, discrimination, expressions of hatred and harassment of minority religious communities of all faiths."

The meeting was held at the behest of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (backed by the U.S. and Israel, as an antidote to Iran).

The theme was picked up Thursday by Pakistani President Asif Zardari: "Hate speech aimed at inciting people against any religion must be unacceptable."

This has been the stance of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group of 57 nations with majority or significant Muslim populations. And the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council has passed resolutions calling for "combating defamation of religion."

All this has been challenged. The human rights council is dismissed, rightly, as the playground of states that routinely violate human rights at home.

Abdullah's outreach is seen as a smokescreen to hide the severe restrictions on non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia.

The campaign to curb post-9/11 Islamophobia in North America and Europe is described as a tool autocrats use to prosecute domestic dissidents, mostly Muslims, on trumped up charges of blasphemy.

Meanwhile, Canada, the U.S., the European Union and free speech groups have been campaigning against any limits on free speech.

All of the above represents one side of the ledger. On the other is the reality of the systematic vilification of Muslims, particularly the linking of Islam to violence (ignoring that people of all faiths – Christians, in particular – have shed a lot of blood invoking their gods).

Islamophobia "tends to dehumanize an entire faith, portraying it as fundamentally alien and attributing to its followers an inherent, essential set of negative traits, such as irrationality, intolerance and violence," notes the U.S. media watch group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. "Not unlike the charges made in the classical document of anti-Semitism, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, some of Islamophobia's more virulent expressions include evocations of Islamic plots to dominate the West."…

Right, ‘cause Muslims are the “victims” of a gigantic plot to “dehumanize” them, that whole Dar al-Islam/Dar al-Harb thing being something hateful kafirs concocted to make the faithful look bad. And the fact that the Koran, that perfect, uncreated text, engages in some concerted “dehumanizing” itself— hello, “apes and pigs”—well, best not to dwell on such unpleasant truths. As for The Protocols, that pernicious tract, that “warrant for genocide,” there again, Harpoon has taken pains to conceal the unpleasant truth that Muslims employ it in two ways. When they want to disguise and/or distance themselves from the oft-stated plan to establish sharia’s primacy, they claim that that plan must be bogus because The Protocols is bogus; think of it as piggybacking on a canard. At other times, however, they inisist that The Protocols is legit, that it captures the actual minutes of a long-ago gathering of Jewish elders during which they laid out their plans for global dominance.

As a free-speecher, I say hurray for free expression on Somali websites and other Islamic websites; how else would we know what these folks are really thinking? And phooey on all those who support the Saudi-sponsored effort to pull a fast one on us by instituting global blashphemy laws—i.e. the sharia— under the guise of countering “Islamophobia.”

Nice try, Harpoon, but you can’t fool me.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:55 | link | comments

Comments: