The Right To Be Informed

Freedom of speech has been redeemed in Canada. Kind of. In a half-hearted way that leaves much to be desired, since the arbiter of what is to be considered free speech has placed very special limits on what may be allowed - according to his singular interpretation as southern director of the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission.

Pardeep S. Gundara found, in the case of a complaint lodged by the Edmonton Council of Muslim Canadians against Ezra Levant, the then-publisher of the Western Standard, that the re-publishing of cartoons highlighting the Prophet Muhammad in various unorthodox poses, originally published in Denmark, did not constitute a hate crime.

The charges brought by the Edmonton Council of Muslim Canadians (originally brought by the national president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, Syed Soharwardy) were that the re-publication of the Muslim-offensive cartoons of their revered religious figure was likely to expose Muslims to hatred and thus represented a hate crime.

Never mind that the cartoons appeared alongside a legitimate news story, one that Muslims themselves, world-wide, stimulated through their violent reaction against the original group of cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. Muslim riots, threats against the West, anguished breast-beating, and violence against non-Muslims leading to deaths was in itself a story about Islam's followers.

Little wonder that Muslims profess to some concern about the prevalence of Islamophobia. How might it be otherwise, since most of the terrorist activity taking place in the world today - all over the world, to varying degrees of bloodshed - are undertaken by Islamists. The ongoing threats to world security emanate from Islamist theocracies.

And how are non-Muslims to react when a teasing cartoon whose purpose it was to point out how hypocritical Muslims are in insisting that theirs is a religion of peace, when all current events point to the contrary - and they consolidate that opinion by unleashing a thunderstorm of violent reaction in response to the cartoon?

Nothing appears to be sacred in the world of Islam, outside of Islamic precepts and beliefs. Scorn can be heaped on other religions and other cultures can be decried as corrupt and utterly worthless. The heritage of other cultures and traditions, their religious icons and institutions can be attacked and destroyed by Islamist terror groups, but this is no matter of concern for Muslims.

So when an admittedly sometimes-obnoxious but news-entitled editor of a magazine makes a decision to publish a story detailing just that, with the re-printing of the cartoons for emphasis, why would Canadian Islamic groups consider it their entitlement to scream foul? This was a legitimate news story carried in a legitimate news magazine, after all. Whose editor had every legal right to publish what he did.

And what he published was in the interests of informing that portion of the reading public for whom information on that subject was of interest. And that would include pretty much anyone who keeps abreast of the news as it unfolds. Yet the spokesperson for the complaining groups claims "We weren't shopping around for any laws. We thought this was a good way to bring our concerns to the attention of the public."

Public attention would be grabbed by those same groups decrying the damage to the reputation of their religion being done day by day through the bloodily-determined exploits of fanatic Islamists. Public attention would be riveted by the news that Canadian Muslim groups extended their careful attention to making efforts to rout fundamentalist clerics whose fulminations against western culture and traditions ensure Muslim alienation from Canadian society.

The unrelenting drive to silence criticism - particularly thoughtful criticism, well warranted by events playing out everywhere in the world, including within Canada itself - does no credit to Muslim groups within Canada. If those groups are truly that concerned about discouraging further maligning of the Prophet then it is toward jihadist Islamists they should be focusing their attention, and doing their utmost to separate themselves unequivocally from their activities.

And the best way to do that would be to monitor what's happening in their mosques in every Canadian city; in their social groups, in their madrases, sponsored and paid for by Wahhabist interests in Saudi Arabia, anxious to spread their fundamentalist ideas of strict separation between Muslim and kuffars.