When Good People Grievously Err

"Most Canadians and Westerners are unaware of instructions drilled into the impressionable minds of Muslim boys at a very early age in schools by mullahs, or religious teachers. They are taught that idolatry or associating a partner with Allah (shirk) unbelief (kufr), and apostasy (ridda) are crimes against God deserving of death, and that it is obligatory on Muslims to execute this punishment. They are taught any rule of law apart from Sharia is sinful and illegitimate, and that it is obligatory on Muslims to establish Sharia rule wherever they can and persist in the effort until the whole world eventually submits."
"The result of such teaching, and the culture that perpetuates it, is the ideology of jihad that glorifies terrorism as the cult of martyrdom."
Salim Mansur, professor, Western University, London, Ontario

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot   Two Muslim women demonstrate against the proposed Quebec charter of values outside the legislature in Quebec City.

It was with a sigh of relief that Quebec elected a Liberal government and threw out the separatist Parti Quebecois and its agendas to destroy the unity of the Canadian confederation. A new man came on the scene, a reasonable man who believed in equality and in federation, a doctor by profession who would lead Quebec back into union with the other provinces and put a stop to the uneasy relationship his province has agitated toward for decades.

But now the Quebec government of Liberal Premier Philippe Couillard has brought forward new legislation that would stifle free speech. Bill 59 is a perverse bit of legislation, as inimical to free democratic values as Bill 101 has been in banishing English in the province. Bill 59 would make it illegal, through a proposal made real initiated by the Quebec Human Rights commission, to bring lawsuits against any who engage in "hate speech".

Hate speech is defined in this context as criticism of Islam. The Conference of Islamic Cooperation must be chortling with satisfaction, if they know of this new initiative in Quebec. Where the Parti Quebecois made strides to bring into law the illegality of wearing conspicuous religious symbols for civil servants serving the public, Quebec's Liberal party has gone to the opposite extreme. The Conference of Islamic Cooperation has been attempting for years to have the United Nations declare that criticism of Islam represents a criminal, human rights offence in its obvious "Islamophobia".

No other religion in the world would have this distinction of being universally protected against criticism. Coincidentally, no other religion in the world has roiled the international community with its calls to jihad and its spread of global terror. No other religion in the world has been responsible for the countless bloodthirsty deaths of its own, from Africa to South Asia to the Middle East. No other religion in the world is guilty of inciting its own faithful to flee the countries where sectarian, minority ethnic and tribal oppression and conflict makes migrants and refugees of their own.

Professor Mansur speaks on behalf of Muslims who have fled the oppression and repression and human rights violations common in Muslim majority countries for haven elsewhere, where democracy and equality rights benefit all equally under the law. Those Muslims who are appalled when the strictures of Islamist values and Islamist Sharia law have followed them and taunt them and once again imfringe on their lives.

Premier Couillard states that Muslim terrorism is a response to criticism of Islam. Believing that if criticism becomes unlawful then terrorism will cease to be a problem; jihadists will no longer have a reason to spread their brand of violence across the world. President of the Quebec Human Rights commission, Jacques Fremont, has stated publicly his intention to sue any who "write against ... the Islamic religion ... on a website or on a Facebook page." Effectively joining ranks with repressive countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran.


This alarms Professor Mansur, an outspoken critic of fundamentalist Islam. "As a Canadian, I know the values of freedom and democracy are indispensable for the world of Islam if it eventually makes the transition from closed to open society. These values, especially freedom of speech, have to be vigorously defended and taught to immigrants from Muslim countries to embrace as citizens of a liberal democracy."

"...In Bangladesh bloggers have been hacked to death for practising free speech. In Iran, Saudi Arabia, and across the Middle East freedom of speech and freedom of religion are repressed with lashings, crucifixions, imprisonments and beheadings. This is why Bill 59 is not merely a diminution of liberal democracy. It is worse It is a betrayal of those Muslim immigrants and refugees in Quebec who came seeking freedom and democracy. And it is an abject capitulation in appeasing those Muslims who cling to the values of a closed society and fear, like rulers of the OIC countries."