Wednesday, 06.11.08
The Muftis of Cascadia
Photo by flickr user florian.b under a creative commons license
In the UK, during the early days of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, a similarly buffoonish quasi-governmental body moved to stop the film International Gorillay from being released in Britain. A hit in Pakistan, the movie portrayed Rushdie as a whiskey-soaked Jewish lothario who intended to subvert Islam by running a network of discos and casinos. Rushdie himself intervened to lift the ban, saying the offense was real, but not worth the practical or moral harm done by banning what amounted to just an exceptionally dumb movie -- even if it was a movie that encouraged his own murder. British audiences watched the film, and thanks to YouTube, you can too.
The whining of the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) contrasts unfavorably not only with Rushdie's integrity and Steyn's characteristically bracing retorts, but also with the work turned in by the CIC's co-religionists twenty years ago. Even now, the Pakistani film mesmerizes with a sort of Ed Wood-style anti-brilliance. Consider the final scene, in which an avenging Allah ex machina zaps Rushdie with thunderbolts issued from flying Korans, or another scene (a favorite of the real-life Rushdie) in which the author kidnaps his antagonist's wife and, between dance numbers, literally tortures her by reading from The Satanic Verses.
What gives me hope for Canada is that the Canadian Islamic Congress appears to be aggrieved only in the most boring and uninspiring way. These people show no brilliance, nor even anti-brilliance. If they made a movie, it would probably resemble a cross between an after-school special and a particularly soporific hour of C-SPAN. In Pakistan, Rushdie's supposed heresies aroused howling fury, and a mature, purposeful, and formidable challenge to Western ideals of free expression. By contrast, one of the complainants in Steyn's case, Mohamed Elmasry, was apparently so unthrilled by his indignation that he did not bother to show up for the trial. The other, Naiyer Habib, was reduced to arguing that Steyn's articles had, in essence, hurt his feelings by expressing contemptuous and hateful sentiments toward the Muslims of British Columbia. That's it.
Sadly, though, that might also be all it takes for the CIC to win the case. The plain language of the British Columbia Human Rights Code prohibits exactly the kind of ridicule and contempt to which Mark Steyn exposes everyone left of John Howard, often with dazzling effect. He's guilty as charged -- and not only of violating the BC Code. The U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects against "attacks upon honor and reputation." These are Steyn's tools of trade. But the U.N. version, I note, also guarantees "the right to freedom of opinion and expression," which by contrast with protection from taunters seems like an actual human right, and a right in direct conflict with the right not to have one's honor attacked. The B.C. Human Rights Code is at least consistent: it makes no mention of the right to free expression at all. Whatever else the Steyn show-trial demonstrates, it's proven that "human rights" remains a hopelessly muddled concept, and that British Columbia is a place where the best face conviction, even when the worst aren't filled with passionate intensity.
An embarassment for democracyIn The Chronicle Herald, Paul Schneidereit discusses inconsistencies in the Canadian Islamic Congress's complaints. |
The marketplace of ideasIn an editorial blog for The National Post, Marni Soupcoff critiques Khurrum Awan's disregard for free speech. |
Steyn wants to loseAccording to The Canadian Press, Mark Steyn wants to restore Canadians' civil liberties. |
In his own wordsIn the aftermath of the Muhammad cartoon controversy, Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, lays out his views on Islam and freedom of speech. |
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Thank you Graeme. When will North America start facing the facts on this issue, Islam doesn't tolerate free speech, so how does our free society expect this ideology to co-exist in our democracies. Doesn't every good muslim want to live under Shia law? Guess what that means for the rest of us. Let's all heed the warning, "Fear the book".
OK, how pleased were you when you came up with that last line? Admit it, I bet you were smiling for the rest of the day. I certainly will be.
These sorts of articles by Steyn are part of an organized pattern of Islamaphobic speech that target large swathes of the population.
The author here does the trick of linking Muslims in Canada to Muslims in Pakistan, basically saying that, well, THEY are all the same. THEY allow hate speech in THEIR country, and THEY expect us to ban the same speech in OUR country.
But the Muslims in Canada are CANADIANS, they're not Pakistanis. So the proper way to analyze the situation would be to compare similar types of hate speech directed at other groups WITHIN Canada itself, to see how the courts have dealt with those situations.
This article effectively racializes Muslims by saying that the ones HERE are the same as the ones THERE. That they are a group that can be singled out and identified by their religion above all else. And that this group is irrational and hateful. This is the obvious subtext.
The irony is that this article is itself a great example of the sort of Islamophobia that is at issue. Linking an obscure movie in Pakistan with the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), only because they are "co-religionists" is a disgusting attempt to racialize Muslims and lump them all in the same boat.
Under Shia law, Jesse, or merely under Shia LaBeouf?
Fahd,
You have two problems.
First, the point of the article is freedom of speech and the relative protection or destruction of it. When a council twenty years ago tried to ban a movie because of offensive content, a writer (the victim of the movie and of related death threats) defended their right to say what they wished. He defended free speech, and the abusive "human rights" council backed down. Now, a man has claimed offense, and the "human rights" council in a different "free" society is going to steamroll free speech, opinion, expression, thought in the name of ... something warm and multi-culti.
Part of the dehumanizing and faceless nature of the new crop of "human rights" councils is the fact that, unlike twenty years ago, no one seems particularly emotional about this; they're just stamping the forms and doing their jobs. Twenty years ago, there were riots, crazy pop culture phenomena, and full-throated fighting. Now, some guy files a form and doesn't even bother to show up to the show trial; he lets some vanilla bureaucrat read from a sheaf of papers.
So the proper way to analyze the situation would be to compare similar types of hate speech directed at other groups WITHIN Canada itself, to see how the courts have dealt with those situations.
Though this article doesn't do it, others have. There is no difference in treatment on the side of the Canadian government; everyone is guilty. There is a 100% conviction rate, with the exception of one group who did not, in fact, exist. It doesn't matter whether the complainants are gays, Muslims, Jews, or HRC employees. Everyone is guilty of something.
The assault is on freedom of speech.
Second, unlike you, Graeme Wood is not conflating THIS Muslim country with THAT one. He saying that the Pakistanis had a very different, more entertaining, and more robust response to Rushdie and that the Muslims in CIC are vastly inferior, complaint-wise. He didn't "link" these two groups; he compared them. And the Egyptian-national Elmasry (not Canadian in any meaningful sense) came up short. It doesn't even have anything to do with their religion or their "race" except that that both groups, themselves, are using their religious identity as an excuse to stamp on someone else's free speech.
If this is Islamophobia, where is the fear?
This is really embarrassing for Canada, and frankly, for Canadian Muslims. How is it that Muslims seem to be the only group, outside perhaps politicians, that can't tolerate criticism? Even Fahd's comments above contain the usual veiled threat that anyone critical of any Muslim group is guilty of "radicalizing" them. Well, if all it takes are a few biting remarks to radicalize someone, then they really didn't have too far to go in the first place. Get a freaking life.
Ella,
Great response.
Unfortunately, Fahd is not interested in what you have to say. He's much more interested in wallowing around in the mire of self-inflicted, self-pitying victimhood and conspiratorial fantasies. Why? Because doing so eliminates any possibility that Fahd might actually have to grow up, assume responsibility for his own actions, and defend his arguments with verifiable evidence.
Free speech: deal with it, Fahd, or move someplace that's more agreeable to your philosophy.
...literally tortures her by reading from The Satanic Verses.
Literal torture. Made my day.
I am saddened and embarrassed for Canada. What has happened to a once great and brave people?
if we're on the subject of ridiculing Maclean's writers, I wrote a bunch of letters to the magazine unanswered (I'm canadian), but when I mentioned that its Ottawa bureau chief has the same name as a WSJ managing editor (John Geddes), I got a reply the next day from the Macleans chief himself, drooling with vanity.
Fahd has ignored the fact that our attitude in the west toward Islam is not Islamophobia, fear of Islam. It is loathing of Islam. Islam is "irrational and hateful". Of the 140 or so armed conflicts around the world at any one time, more than half involve a group of muslims and their non-Islamic neighbors. The only places in the world where actual chattel slavery is still practiced are muslim areas. We can all see the pathological way women, and "other gendered" people are treated in muslim societies. We can all see the way Bahais, Buddists, Christians, Jews, Animists, and Atheists are treated in muslim societies. We can all see the vast additions which muslim society has made to world culture and science in the last 7 or 8 hundred years.(sarc) I don't think many of us have an un- reasoning phobia towards muslims. But if you want to be part of our society and its benefits and drawbacks there are certain rules, attitudes and conditions which go with modern western civilizations. And as the punchline of the joke says, "We aint played cowboys and arabs, yet partner".
Will
p.s. I know not all muslims are arab.
"The B.C. Human Rights Code is at least consistent: it makes no mention of the right to free expression at all"
This is not correct. In Section 3 of the Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act subsection 2 it states:
"Nothing in this Section shall be deemed to interfere with the free expression of opinion on any subject"
The interpretation of this clause may not mitigate allegations of hate crime ( see recent case of Lund v. Boisson) but it is at least present.
No matter what commentary an "infidel" offers about Islam, "good" Muslims must reject it. Infidels are outsiders, we don't know Allah. We are unworthy of respect, therefore our commentary is unworthy of consideration. We are, quite literally, beneath contempt for the "believer." I know one thing with all my heart, however, and that is that the true God is not the same as Allah. Allah is false, a construct of an Arab man. That man created a god in his own image -- demanding, slave-driving, capricious, beyond reason, above the law, lover of violence and conflict. In other words, beneath contempt and unworthy of the faith of human beings.
And Jeremy Waldron, a U.S. professor of law, thinks this is a great idea--these anti-free speech laws and punishments. So long as its the free speech Waldron doesn't like, of course, which basically means anything to the right of Howard Dean.
The NYT piece today basically equates civilized nation with restricted speech laws. How many countries that have "hate speech" laws have state-owned media?
To me, it seems like two Religious Right groups arguing about how they need the right to trash others but need special accomadion themselves. The same people who claim that their rights are being violated by not being able to write screeds against Jihadis or Gays at the same time roll around like soccer players at perceived attacks against their own institutions (marriage). It's so much bad theatre at a cynical point in history.
"I am saddened and embarrassed for Canada. What has happened to a once great and brave people?"
They sold their birthright to freedom-hating liberals in exchange for a mess of porridge (socialism).
When are one of these muslim country's going to have a real Human Rights Tribunal? Let's start with a country that has experienced the wonderful fruits of Islam and Sharia law,...like maybe Darfur, Sudan.
One of the most despicable lies perpetrated by the media is that this is a case of Mark Steyn having his mouth shut. In actuality, the case was prompted by Maclean's refusal to air the free speech of the affected Muslim community. It was not an attack on Steyn's right to speech, but on the right of the Muslim community to defend itself from libel. Moreover, I don't think it coincidental that the HRC is only coming under attack now because Muslims are using it, but was never attacked by the international and mainstream media when the Canadian Jewish Congress was rightfully prosecuting a slew of Holocaust deniers through the HRC, a far more egregious imposition on the limit of speech then anything the CIC is doing. Graeme, you should research before you write.
"But the Muslims in Canada are CANADIANS"
Would that were true. But that's largely false, and that's the whole problem.
Will is spot on. I don't have a phobia of Islam. I HATE Islam. I hate everything about it.
Does that qualify as "hate speech"?
This illustrates the problem with "hate speech" laws or ANY restriction of free speech that goes beyond actual libel or threats.
These laws are subject to idiosyncratic interpretation, political pressure groups seeking to shush opponents, fashions about who's oppressed and violate THE fundamental freedom -- to say what's on our minds.
Various anti-Muslim diatribes are stupid and can led to prejudice, Lou Dobbs is a nativist fear monger, David Duke's racial theories are specious and divisive, anyone who denies that millions of Jews were murdered in the 1940s is either a liar or pathetically ignorant, Jeremiah Wright is an egotistical idiot and Jerry Falwell was a homophobic rabble-rouser.
Let them and all the other jerks talk (except for Falwell, who's dead).
No nation that has these laws on the books is a truly free nation, and that includes Canada.
These people are the Borg.
Posted by Tom Renda | June 11, 2008 1:17 PM