Canadian institutions vulnerable to threat of political Islam
I’m interested in knowing what you think. Please be in touch with your comments. Take a look after the break for the full press release.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
‘Canadian institutions vulnerable to threat of political Islam,’
warns B’nai Brith in its brief to Canadian Human Rights Commission
TORONTO, August 29, 2008 – B’nai Brith Canada earlier today submitted a formal brief to the Canadian Human Rights Commission entitled, “Hate Jurisdictions of Human Rights Commissions: A System in Need of Reform”. In the brief, the Jewish human rights organization raises as a matter of priority its concerns that human rights commissions are unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with ideological complaints driven by political Islam.
“We have arrived at an important crossroads in the functioning of human rights commissions and their mandate to combat hatred,” said Frank Dimant, Executive Vice President of B’nai Brith Canada. “B’nai Brith Canada is uniquely placed to offer insights into the strengths and failures of the commission system, as an organization that is both the target of a complaint in Manitoba and as a human rights organization that has consistently valued human rights commissions for their important historical role in fighting hatred.
“It is high time that the human rights community, at home and abroad, recognize the dangers posed by political Islam.”
David Matas, B’nai Brith Canada’s Senior Legal Counsel and a world-renowned human rights lawyer who is the author of the brief, stated: “On the international scene, we have witnessed again and again the hijacking of United Nations institutions by groups such as the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) that embody the principles of political Islam. This group has used its regional voting power to advance a radical agenda that undermines fundamental rights and freedoms and democratic values.
“Here in Canada, our institutions are vulnerable as well. We must not allow our human rights commissions to become staging grounds for abusive complaints based on an extremist ideology that threatens the very integrity of the human rights system as a whole.”
B’nai Brith Canada’s full submission, along with its recommendations for reform, is accessible on the organization’s website at www.bnaibrith.ca. Representatives from the Jewish human rights organization met last month with University of Windsor Law Professor, Richard J. Moon, who the Canadian Human Rights Commission has engaged to conduct a review of the Commission’s mandate to combat hatred.
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For further information contact Karen Lazar, Director of Communications:
416-633-6224 X 140 office / 416-312-9173 cell
B’nai Brith Canada has been active in Canada since 1875 as the Jewish community’s foremost human rights organization
August 31st, 2008 at 8:54 am
Ezra Levant, writing from his personal experience with HRC’s, makes the more pointed case for reform of HRC’s, along the lines B’Nai Brith is advocating, even though Levant is advocating doing away with HRC’s altogether.
Was David Matas’ Submission by the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada to the Canadian Human Rights Commission done at the request of that HRC, or has B’Nai Brith chosen to present this paper to the Canadian HRC, unsolicited?
If unsolicited, will it even be read?
Why was this brief not presented to the Canadian government?
The brief suffers to an extent from being awash in political correctness. Your article Frank, Drowning in Political Correctness July 23rd, 2008 came to mind as I read through Matas’ brief.
With all due respect to David Matas, since when did he become an expert on Islam, where he waxes seemingly profound in the section, VI. UNDERSTANDING THE GEO-POLITICAL CONTEXT in his trying to draw a distinction between the religion of Islam and Political Islam?
There are more then a few noted experts, Muslim and not who have written that the religion of Islam and political Islam are inextricably bound.
Matas does imply there is a problem with the heads of HRC’s when he states:
“the reaction of the Ontario Human Rights Commission to the complaint against Steyn and Maclean’s, commenting on the substance of the complaint at the same time as the complaint was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, was inappropriate.”
Inappropriate? It was outrageous! Such attitude and similar attitudes evinced by other HRC staff, strongly suggest that the problem with HRCs is not just with the legislation under which the HRC’s operate, but with the very leadership and staff chosen to administer the HRCs.
Matas suggests that the staff of HRC are ignorant of Islamism, Islamofacism and the political agenda of these Islamic leaders and they need to be educated.
Really?
Is the problem really one of education or one of the failure to face square on the political correctness and multiculturalism has been arguably taken to insane lengths in our society.
Recall the Mohammed Cartoon incident when our own then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Peter MacKay issued a statement on behalf of the government on the issue, that presumed the cartoons were insulting too the religion of Islam and calling on all Canadians to have respect and regard for the sensibilities and beliefs of our Muslim community.
Are the HRC’s not just following suit by assuming that if something negative is said of Islam or any Muslims in particular such as Islamists and one Muslim complains that it is offensive to Islam, it is therefore a priori insulting and should properly form the basis of a complaint to be accepted by the HRC.’s and at the very least investigated?
August 31st, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Frank you got it half right, Political Islam is a threat to democracy and the HRC’s are in need of reform. However you are wrong to contend that an anti-democratic law such as Section 13(1) has a place in civil society.
No amount of tweaking Section 13(1) or HRC staff training will mitigate the potential for harm. The HRC’s are ideally suited to infiltration & abuse by illiberal elements i.e. your own report’s condemnation of Barbara Hall of the OHRC.
Any attempt to silence free-speech is an attack on the very foundation of our society and the HRC’s have provided the perfect venue by which to subvert the democratic process and the authority of both our courts and elected politicians. HRC’s must be compelled to stick to their original mandate, in their current incarnation they are an affront to democracy. No Government and certainly no faceless unelected bureaucrat has the right to dictate “acceptable” opinion.
Section 13 (1) simply has to go, there is no other recourse, the laws governing hate speech in Canada are more than adequate.
August 31st, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I’m afraid that the only possible use for such things as section thirteen(1) is censorship.
much like the holocaust denial laws in Europe.
there is no group which should be “allowed” to use such a law. It is ill-suited for democracy, regardless of the user, or how well-trained the caretakers of that law are.
And there are always people willing to exploit such a system for their own ends. 13(1) is very open for such people, as evidenced by the rash of undemocratic complaints across Canada now.
August 31st, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Too little and too late as the B’nai Brith and the CJC have been using the CHRC as their own private prosecutional service for some time.
The threat the Islamic councils pose is significant but the BB and the CJC have been preoccupied with fighting and destroying closet neo-nazis (poor, ignorant and isolated) for some time.
If you look at the shame and threat in the UK and elsewhere…it is a disgrace that you have not fought back until the bear bit you.
B’nai Brith, CJC and CIC have no right being “charities” and receiving tax free status at the same time they are engaging in political and other activities not necessarily in the interests of Canada.
Sorry…just my thoughts.
August 31st, 2008 at 7:52 pm
My first reaction when I learned that various Jewish groups supported the HRC’s was disbelief. My second was that this was a great way to make people hate these Jewish groups for supporting something which is fast taking away our “human rights”.
August 31st, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Having read this submission several days ago, I found much in it which was very true and in need of saying. Thank you for that.
However, there were some parts which I very strongly disagreed with and which - in my opinion - are illustrations of fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of human rights. Please, allow me to explain using just one example.
In section iii - ‘Hate jurisdictions and their essential role’, there is a statement: “The Holocaust did not begin with censorship. It began with hate speech. Auschwitz was built with words.”
This statement is demonstrably untrue. The Holocaust DID INDEED begin with censorship: the censorship OF hate speech!
Prior to Hitler’s rise to power, Germany did indeed have hate speech laws, very similar to those we have here in Canada today. These laws were indeed used to prosecute those who ’spread hate against Jews’ - and Jewish leaders of that era were very satisfied with the application and efficacy of these laws!
It was precisely these hate speech laws which Hitler, once in power, used in order to silence dissenters - the very people who could have prevented atrocities like Auschwitz…..had they not been stripped of their freedom of speech.
Auschwitz could never have been built had the fear of prosecution under hate speech laws not silenced those who would have spoken up against it!
It is precisely because hate speech laws can be, were and are used to silence those who would protest ‘incitement to hate’ which makes atrocities a possibility. True, the ‘incintement to hate’ must (at least at first) be veiled or disguised in order to become entrenched as ‘acceptable’, but the veil can be very thin indeed. We have seen it in history (the Nazi regime) and we are seeing it again from militant Islamists.
It is not by coincidence that many leaders of militant and politicized Islamism idolize Hitler. But these Islamists are doing more than just idolizing Hitler- they are quite intentionally emulating him by using hate speech laws as a weapon, not a shield. Failing to recognize this could be very bad for our society.
There is no place for hate speech laws in a society which wishes to remain free and whose citizens respect each other’s rights. It was these hate speech laws themselves which facilitated opression, torture and murder under the Nazi regime and which can (and, I fear, will) be used in this way again! That is something we must never again allow to happen!
If you would be interested in more of my observartions, please, contact me.
Thank you,
Xanthippa
September 1st, 2008 at 8:17 am
No “reform”. Ditch the whole apparatus and: Fire.Them.All.
If you want to fight the “problem of Islam”, or any other ideaology, then use your rights to free speech to do so. I will not stand for any government individual or institution dictating to me what will be “allowed” for me to think, say or print. Use the “court of public opinion” and if your arguments are valid, you may win. I’m doing just that, here.
As for the other side, start your own blog, newspaper, radio station, or magazine, it’s the “Canadian way,eh”. If the “other side” is uncomfortable with his/her adopted country’s ways vs the one they left: we are not going to change for you, go where you feel more comfortable, because nobody here is forcing you to stay against your will. You have that choice here.
September 1st, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Fire them all. We don’t need these scary and creepy people lurking in the shadows of our society pretending they are doing something noble. They are vile scum and I want them GONE.
There are real courts if someone has a real problem with their hurt feelings.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:28 pm
I am pleased to hear that B’nai Brith feels the HRCs in Canada need reform and your comments are a reasonable attempt to do just that. But I think you are mistaken in your assumptions. THe HRCs are just too political to tweak this or adjust that. What I have read suggests that there are serious investigative abuses, procedural problems, lack of disclosure and a general lack of judgement on the part of the CHRC and many of the other provincial commissions.
When HRCs are embolded to take on main stream media publications, cartoonists and even comedians, they become an embarassment to this country. They really aren’t able to exercise prudent judgement on issues such as freedom of expression. The solution with such a sorry state of affairs is to repeal Section 13 of the CHRA and any similar provincial legislation.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:03 pm
“Whatever else, poetry is freedom.”
— Irving Layton
Canada’s greatest poet, Irving Layton, grew up in the hardscrabble area of Montreal where Jews had to battle for their rightful place. Irving Layton was not a whiner – he was a fighter. He learned from experience, street experience. He advised me that survival required two punches to the face for every one punch received. Good advice.
He stood up for himself, and by doing so, he stood up for me and for you and for Canada, and by extension, for everyone on this planet who believed in the primacy of the individual over groupism and tribalism, of freedom of speech over muffled speech. He stood up for himself. He would never have countenanced a government agency standing up on his behalf. He would have rightly regarded that as a weakening of his own survival skills.
Irving Layton wrote: “There is no force more subversive than poetry and that is why tyrants have always feared it and sought to suppress it. But not only tyrants. Everyone who has a vested interest in preventing the individual from discovering the truth of his own self and his own capacities fears the liberating power that resides in poetry.”
Human rights commissions have become the current equivalents of the censorious U.S. House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, which was launched with the good intention of stpping the spread of odious ideas but ending in disgrace and injustice, so much so that President Harry S. Truman referred to it as the “most un-American thing in the country today.”
Human rights commissions are the step-child of the defunct Ontario Film Censorship Board (http://www.thefileroom.org/documents/dyn/DisplayCase.cfm/id/1234) set up to protect civilians from smut, pornography and immorality, proselytizing that society needed to be protected from the epidemic of rape and sexual assault that would follow if there were no censorship. The Board ended up becoming an embarrassment of injustice when it banned ‘Not A Love Story’, an anti-pornography movie because it contained images of oral sex, but the violent scenes were okay. The Board was ridiculed by the international community for its continual harassment of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Human rights commissions have become a re-re-re-tread of the zeitgeist of Victorianism, protecting the widespread cultivation of an outward appearance of dignity and restraint while practicing its antithesis; it was quintessential hypocrisy but now with a 21st century style gag. Human rights commissions do not decrease instances of hate; it nurtures them by driving them underground where they cannot be seen, where they cannot be fought in the full light of free speech.
Human rights commissions have become carriers of the infection of the alcohol prohibitionists, of the marijuana (reefer madness) prohibitionists, of the porn prohibitionists, and now, hate prohibitionists. The carriers of this prohibitionist infection are always the self-righteous, the interest groups claiming to protect society from itself, asserting they know what is best for the good of society while preventing the bad.
These prohibitionist groups have a fundamental mistrust of democracy; they cannot put their faith in the common sense of free speech, or in the historical record of the liberating power of free speech. The prohibitionists view the civilian masses in a democratic society to be intrinsically weak, that Canadians are a hair-trigger away from committing another holocaust.
The liberation of societies from the tyranny and oppression of the divine right of kings, from dictatorshit, from totalitarianism, did not come about from restrained speech. Democracy owes its existence to free speech. How can the continuity of democracy be assured when it is permitted only one arm to defend itself against totalitarian or ideological enemies, when incompetent human rights commissions tie the other arm with the restraint of censorshit.
The prohibitionists are poetry prophylactics; they prevent the conception and creativity of wit; they disarm the word warriors that are most effective at fighting hate. The prohibitionists are imposing their own bigotry on our democratic society. They are committing textual assault against free speech. It is not freedom of speech that needs restraining; it is the inept bureaucrazy of the human rights commissions that need restraining. They have become nothing more than a mafia of meddling mediocrity rats of the lowest disorder.
I have a developed a deep and profound hatred for the contaminating effects of human rights commissions. I hold the entire group of human rights commissioners in naked contempt for their textual assault on free speech. I will continue to call for their complete liquidation as a group in our society. So there you have it; go shake your rattle tail to the nearest human rights commission near you.
Wally Keeler
314 – 37 Eden Place
Toronto, Ontario, M5T 2V6
poetburo@hotmail.com
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:46 am
I must add my voice to the unanimous condemnation of the whole HRC ‘industry’. They have become a perversion of ‘Human Rights’; a twisted ‘evil twin’ of the real thing.
It is time for B’nai Brith, the CJC; everyone who initially supported these abominations to just take it like a man. Stand up and admit it; “We helped create a monster. We believed that we could control it with the sheer force of our good intent; but it has slipped it’s leash and is on the loose. We were wrong; but now we will take the side of freedom and civil society in fighting against our own creation”. That’s what needs to be done. No amount of tinkering will change the nature of the beast now. It has tasted blood and will not willingly go back into it’s cave.
At the very, very least, the HRCs must be stripped of any actual power. Section 13 must be repealed completely. Their quasi-justicial powers stripped from them; completely. Perhaps they could continue to exist as an investigative body; or even provide prosecutors for HR cases deemed worthy of prosecution. But they must be forced to do so in real courts, with real rules of evidence; where truth is a defence. Where people who think that “freedom is speech is an American value and we don’t believe in that here” will be forced out from under their bigotted, intolerant rocks to face the light of day. Where nasty, cynical and opportunistic sleazebags like some former HRC investigators will be put to a real test; and where they will have to pay themselves when caught weaving webs of deceit and false accusation. Where laughing Islamist bigots and theocrats don’t get to enjoy watching the devolution of civil western society; at no cost to themselves; using the tools that ‘useful idiots’ in that same civil society have provided for them.
The HRCs are a sham and a disgrace. In my opinion, they are in fact, evil. An insidious and potentially mortal danger to civil Canadian society. Even now, we have convention groups in the US and other democratic countries wondering whether they should come to a country where Star Chamber Commissars hold sway. Who knows who they’re going to go for next? Certainly the Ontario Physicians College is afraid of them already; reference their recently published new ‘guidelines’ for doctors.
This madness must stop. And as one of the creators of this monster; no matter how well intentioned at first; I believe that it is incumbent on B’nai Brith and others to step to the forefront of the effort to defang them now that they have shown their true intent. To do less is to tacitly admit that ‘you’ are as bad as ‘they’ are; and I don’t actually believe that.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:36 am
Frank, you began this post with:
“I’m interested in knowing what you think.”
Obviously that same opening statement implicitly prefaces all of your posted articles and comments.
Those who have taken the time to post their reactions to your comments deserve to know what you and B’Nai Brith think about the comments you have received!
Why should anyone bother following your blog and spend their time responding if we have no indication from you and B’Nai Brith that our comments are taken seriously and that they will have any impact on your thinking and that of B’Nai Brith?
So Frank the question to you is whether the comments you invite in this and your other posted articles means a tinkers damn to you and B’Nai Brith?
September 5th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
It was with great sadness that I read the submission of B’nai Brith to the alleged Human Rights Commissions. Sadness that a civil organization like BB could be so blinded as not to see that they are supporting an abomination of democracy and a civil society.
First they came for ne-nazis; and no one cared because they are hate-mongers and probably deserve what they get; hatred for hatred. Then they came for devout Christians who wouldn’t support gay rights because of their religious beliefs. Then they came for media columnists who, by quoting Islamist zealots with the intent of exposing their hatred, were branded as racists. Next they came for Jewish organizations like B’nai Brith; with anonymous charges creating process that continues 4 years later. Then they came for Ontario doctors; insisting that any doctor who possessed a conscience have their licences revoked.
Today, people in other civil societies fear to tread on Canadian soil for fear of our Commissars. Next will be the Islamist zealots demanding that they be appointed to head these so-called ‘Tribunals’ in proportion to their representation in society. Imagine tool that you have created in the hands of Islamist zealots! And after all of this, I read that B’nai Brith still supports this growing monster; just some minor tweaking and all will be well. How blinded can one be?
Weep for your children Canada. We have created the perfect weapon with which to intimidate and ultimately destroy our civil society. The Islamists must be laughing themselves silly to think that it was well-meaning Jewish organizations and other mindless, aethiest ‘kuffar’ that will be ultimately responsible for creating, empowering, nuturing and defending the beast that will one day undo us all. After reading the B’nai Brith submission, perhaps we deserve what will come if these blots on our society retain their power. Obviously, we are too blinded by our own immediate concerns to see the larger danger.