Admittedly, this explains a lot
…such as: “how can Shaukat Khawja continue to avoid getting into trouble for the tripe he posts about the Jooooooooos?”
But today, I am not speaking of Rehmat. I’m speaking of a story that Ezra Levant is covering, the case of imam Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Al-Hayiti, who was recently the subject of a human rights complaint filed by Marc Lebuis, who blogs at Point de Bascule.
The salient points from Ezra’s article are, I think, these. The first is a set of citations from the imam’s own writings:
- Homosexuals and lesbians should be “exterminated in this life”
- “Homosexuals caught performing sodomy are beheaded”
The second is the CHRC’s reason for rejecting Mr. Lebuis’ complaint:
“…the majority of the references in “Islam or Fundamentalism” are to “infidels”, “miscreants” or “western women”. These are general, broad and diversified categories that do not constitute an “identifiable group” under Section 13 of the Act.“
Even taking it as read that for the most part the imam is referring to broad categories of person, what about those instances where he’s being specific, such as the above-cited quotes concerning homosexuals?
Well, the CHRC has its reasons there, too:
“As we have also mentioned, the extracts that identify groups on the basis of prohibited grounds of discrimination (homosexuals, lesbians, Christians, Jews) do not seem to promote “hatred” or “contempt” according to the criteria set forth in the Taylor case. Therefore, the document on which the complaint is based does not seem to meet the requirements of Section 13 of the Act for a complaint.”
So, just to be clear: according to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, explicitly stating that homosexuals and lesbians — especially those (ahem) “caught in the act” — should be killed/exterminated does not “seem to promote ‘hatred’ or ‘contempt’ according to [established] criteria.”
Riiiiiiiiiiight.
Ezra has a different theory:
I’d want to make sure that Al-Hayiti’s calls to violence (cut an apostate’s neck, kill Hindus and Buddhists, etc.) didn’t meet the standard of criminal incitement, and I’d hope that CSIS was attending his sermons to make sure he wasn’t going even further off the cuff. But plain old-fashioned anti-Semitism, misogyny, anti-gay bigotry, etc., ought to be legal. The answer is denunciation, debate, marginalization, etc. — not government censorship.
But that’s not the approach taken by the CHRC. They have prosecuted Canadians for much less. But they refuse to prosecute anyone who, well, isn’t Christian.
As readers will know, I was specifically acquitted of section 13 charges for publishing the exact same words for which Rev. Stephen Boissoin was found to have committed “hate speech”, by both the CHRC and the Alberta HRC. That’s because I’m Jewish, and Rev. Boissoin’s Christian. HRCs have a special hate for Christians.
And, despite the fact that there do exist a number of radical Muslim inciters like Al-Hayiti in Canada, not a single radical Muslim (or radical Tamil, or radical Sikh) hate-monger has ever been prosecuted.
And:
…when a radical Muslim says gays should be killed, Buddhists should be killed, women may be treated like slaves, etc., those victims are not legally considered to be “identifiable groups” — they have no human rights.
Gays, women, Buddhists, Jews, etc., do have human rights that can be offended only when white supremacists do the offending. When radical Muslims are doing the offending, gays, women, Jews, etc., can just get a thicker skin.
It’s B.S., of course. It’s an excuse made up out of thin air — there is no such jurisprudence. The rejection is tarted up to look official, or rooted in some sort of rule of law. But it’s not. It’s raw politics. In the politically correct war of censorship that the CHRC wages on Canadians, Muslims are exempt from the law (as are Tamils, Sikhs and even Jews).
That’s a form of corruption.
I’m no fan of the idea of a “human rights” commission that is, in essence, an office of Censorship in this country. I think section 13 of the CHRA should be done away with. But if I must endure the existence of both things, I would ask only one thing of them: consistency.
If it’s a human rights violation that should be punished with a public recantation and the payment of a fine for a Christian to say that homosexuality is immoral, then by golly it had better be a human rights violation punishable by a public recantation and a fine when a Muslim imam calls for the “extermination” of homosexuals and lesbians.
If not, then whatever else the CHRC is promoting in Canada, it isn’t promoting human rights. Because human rights, we are told, are universal…and this one-but-not-the-other approach to dealing with essentially identical human rights complaints is the antithesis of that ideal.
But we all knew, already, that the “human rights” commissions weren’t actually concerned with human rights in the first place, didn’t we?
I started blogging back in 2004 -- in May, if the Wayback Machine is to be believed. Not that I remember the exact day. To be honest, I didn't take it that seriously then; it was a fun distraction, but nothing more.
That all changed, I think, once the Danish cartoons were published, and the assault on the right to freedom of expression became very visible. With the recent issues in Canada concerning the "human rights" commissions, the gravity of the matter has only increased, and my interest in blogging has increased right along with it.
I used to blog at a domain called Time Immortal, but it seemed to be the right time for a change -- there's been a lot of that in my life of late. Hence this blog: a fresh start, and proof positive that I won't shut up even if I get shut down once in a while.
