Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The Big Mo   [Mark Steyn]

Further to Stanley's note below, Damian Penny, the dean of Newfoundland bloggers, writes:

Live by the Human Rights Commission, die by the Human Rights Commission

A warning for members of the Canadian Islamic Congress, now calling for the state to punish Maclean's for running an article by Mark Steyn, that they could ultimately find themselves sanctioned for their own beliefs.

Mohamed Elmasry's Wikipedia page lists many more controversial, even hateful, statements by the CIC president - mostly against "Zionists," natch, but also this one:

"There is no need to revise the Qur'an or the teaching of Islam on the issue of homosexuality. It is clear that homosexuality is forbidden and if someone wants to insist on doing it, that is their personal decision. They will be held accountable in the end."

His point is that some litigious gay will eventually haul Mr Elmasry into court. But it seems to me, given the increasing muscle of Muslim lobby groups and their willingness to use it, that the opposite is more likely to happen - that old-school victim groups, like gays and feminists, will inch by inch cede territory to Islam. You see small signs of this already - liquor stores being forced out of certain neighborhoods in (I think) Sydney or Melbourne; the sex-mad British advertising posters being removed from billboards in certain areas. I remember seeing a few years ago a Muslim woman covered from head to toe trudging with her shopping past a highly explicit sex-shop window on Montreal's boulevard de Maisonneuve: The internal contradictions of the multicultural society in a single snapshot. But it doesn't take much thinking to see which faction is just a brief cultural moment and which one's playing for keeps.

In another post, Mr Penny quotes Mr Elmasry on free speech:

In a democratic society, all voices should be heard - even ones whose viewpoint some of us might oppose. My organization, the Canadian Islamic Congress, disagrees with much of what is published in this newspaper [the National Post], for example. But we still support its right to publish, and the right of people to buy it.

Canadians must question the CRTC's decision to sacrifice Canadian rights of free speech to silence an Arabic-language news network whose only sin, ironically, is that it believes in the Western notion of freedom of speech.

That splendid declaration would appear to be contradicted by his complaint about my book excerpt. But in practice neither he nor the speech commisars behind the Maple Curtain of the 49th Parallel will have difficulty reconciling their commitment to "free speech" with the need to punish my "hate crime". 

12/11 10:37 AMShare