A rchive Date
[ 13-03-2006 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
|
[http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Levant_Ezra/2006/03/12/1484796.html
Freedom to oppress
Bullying power of state used in clash over cartoons
By Ezra Levant
Mon, March 13, 2006
One of the strategies of radical Islam is to use the tools of the liberal West against itself - to use freedom to undermine freedom.
It's a paradox, in the same way Adolf Hitler's first steps towards fascism were through a democratic election.
That's the modus operandi of today's Islamic fascists, too. The 9/11 hijackers used Western freedoms such as mobility, lax security and Western technology. Al-Qaida despises the softness of our culture, but it is willing to use our softness against us.
I have noticed a similar streak in my own little battle: Namely, the response to the reprinting of the Danish cartoons in the Western Standard, the magazine I publish.
I debated various Islamic leaders. That's the court of public opinion - a Western, liberal concept that values diversity of opinion, and the cut-and-thrust of the clash of ideas.
One of my debate opponents wasn't satisfied. Syed Soharwardy, a Calgary imam I debated on CBC radio, thought he'd "appeal" our debate to the government.
Soharwardy went to the police and asked them to arrest me. The police politely threw him out of their offices. Peacefully disagreeing about contentious matters such as politics and religion is not a crime in Canada.
So then Soharwardy went to a less liberal institution: The Alberta Human Rights Commission. Unlike real courts, the human rights commission doesn't follow rules of evidence. Unlike real courts, it is often packed with activists, not neutral judges. And the government pays for the inquisition - unlike civil courts, where a complainant has to pay for his own lawyer.
Human rights commissions were created to help people denied an apartment because of their race, or fired from a job because of their religion. Today they're about political correctness and ideological engineering. Of course, Soharwardy was attracted to them.
Soharwardy's incoherent "complaint" makes his CBC debate look Churchillian by comparison. In fact, he complains about that debate, bemoaning the fact I called him "radical," and implying that should be illegal.
The most delicious part is his complaint that I dared to justify publishing the cartoons. Not only does he think publishing the cartoons should be illegal, but he thinks arguing for the right to publish them should be illegal, too!
Other parts are just bizarre. Soharwardy attaches e-mails with various strangers, including one with a pornographic cartoon.
It's not clear what that has to do with our magazine - the e-mails weren't from us; we didn't publish the porn; and those e-mails pre-dated our publication.
But don't trouble Soharwardy with the facts or the law - or anything as trivial as the Charter guarantee of a free press. The complaint isn't about freedom. It's about using the bullying power of the state to settle a score he couldn't settle in a free debate with me.
His complaint reads like it was written by a child; his arguments are infantile and vain. It is a nuisance suit, designed to cost us money and time. It's an abuse of power, and an embarrassment to the Alberta government that funds the commission. Soharwardy wants to use that as a weapon. Better that than violence, I guess, which is how many Muslims in other parts of the world expressed their anger over the cartoons.
Fine. I, in turn, will use the commission as a forum, to remind Soharwardy and the rest of the press that Canadian values include diversity of opinion, freedom of speech and the right of a secular magazine not to be subjected to a bullying imam's religious edicts.
Have a letter for the editor? E-mail it to webmaster@calgarysun.com
Copyright © 2006, Canoe Inc. All rights reserved
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|