Advertisement
Advertisement
Jewcy Book Club
Welcome Authors
Rachel Kramer Bussel
& Stephanie Klein
who are posting all week.
Coming up:
- 01/12: Bob Morris
- 01/12: Lily Koppel
- 01/19: Peter Manseau
- 02/09: Tania Grossinger
Contributors
THE CABAL
Toothless Canada Borrows Crescent Fangs |
|
 by Abe Greenwald, December 7, 2007 |
|
Writer Mark Steyn, and the Canadian journal Maclean’s are poised to go up against a tag team made in multicultural heaven: Canada’s federal, Ontario and British Columbia human rights commissions, and the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC). The CIC was outraged when Maclean’s published a piece titled “The Future Belongs To Islam,” an excerpt from Steyn’s America Alone, The End of the World as We Know It. They labeled Steyn’s work “flagrantly Islamophobic” and requested equal rebuttal space in the pages of Maclean’s. When the journal refused the CIC launched human rights complaints. The British Columbia hearing is scheduled for next June.
The Canadian judiciary is traveling a ruinous course in entertaining this tantrum. If Western courts begin to outlaw the kind of uncomfortable critical analysis already verboten at universities, neutralization of public opinion is complete.
Steyn is going to have his work cut out for him in British Columbia. Just a month or so back it was he himself who wrote about Muslims in Vancouver winning an exemption from a by-law that otherwise banned smoking in the city. Steyn quotes one Emad Yacoub who according to The Vancouver Sun said, “hookah lounges are essential for immigrants from hookah-smoking cultures, because it helps them deal with the depression common for newcomers and gives them places like they have at home.” How that differs from the experience and needs of cigarette smokers from say, Eastern Europe, isn’t clear, but the nature of the exception is. If British Columbia is making legal decisions in order to “[give Muslim immigrants] places like they have at home,” then silencing criticism of Islam is presumably the first order of business.
And what of this criticism? This is from “The Future Belongs to Islam”:
In a few years, as millions of Muslim teenagers are entering their voting booths, some European countries will not be living formally under sharia, but -- as much as parts of Nigeria, they will have reached an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots, who like many intolerant types are expert at exploiting the "tolerance" of pluralist societies.
So, is that “flagrant Islamophobia” or a tragically prescient summation of the predicament in which Steyn now finds himself (sooner than “in a few years” I may add)? In fact, this case is more than a potential misstep for Canadian lawmakers; it’s also an example of “tolerant” Europe’s ability to team up with “tolerant” Canada and “tolerantly” force Canadians to be more “tolerant.” The London Free Press reports that London lawyer Faisal Joseph is leading the complaint against Maclean's. If nothing else, one begins to see why Steyn titled his book America Alone.
But, ultimately, this kind of legal leveling of opinion spells disaster for the U.S. too. In a recent response to the CIC charges, Steyn praises America for its First Amendment. It’s true, legislated speech codes may be hard to pass here, but then again they may not be necessary. A few years ago, in another life, I was involved in the writing of a social studies book for South Carolingian third graders. The text was to start with the native tribes of the region and go all the way to the present day. This covered, obviously, slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. One day, after we were well into the creation of the book I received, straight from the local education board, an alarming directive that would require us to go back and revisit a good deal of the work we’d already done. It turned out the word slave was not to be used anywhere in the text.
Government sanctioned “tolerance” spreads by osmosis, and if Steyn and Maclean’s are silenced a few miles north of the state of Washington it won’t have far to travel. Soft and cuddly Canada is already the fetish destination of so many enthusiastic multiculturalists in the U.S. I can think of at least fifteen people who swore to me personally they were northbound in the event of Bush’ reelection. I doubt any of them made good on it, but if they did they better watch what they say.
Recently I heard comedian George Carlin on a radio show dispensing his yawn-inducing brand of scorned hippie pop-nihilism. In talking about how the world had “jumped off the cliff” and was now in “freefall,” he said he was always on the lookout for censorship coming from the right, but had never expected the PC variety to overtake us from the left. Funny that Mr. Seven-Words-You-Can't-Say was blindsided, because quite a number of fussy right-wing thinkers saw it coming ages in advance. Allan Bloom wrote about it twenty years ago. Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz wrote about it decades earlier. This silliness moves so swiftly that Steyn’s ended up writing about his own troubles in real-time.
(Note: The Cabal’s own Ali Eteraz has done an unimprovable job, over at comment is free, pointing out the counter-productivity of the CIC’s approach and its net effect on the West’s perception of Islam. He also takes Steyn to task.)
 |
Abe has written fiction and non-fiction, and also blogs at Commentary Magazine. |
The Real Reason Men Won't Settle Down
His granddad was a nazi officer, but Hendrik said he loved Jews....
Paleoconservative firebrand Paul Gottfried and his French-speaking,...
Jimmy Jamshid Delshad is a new kind of Jewish politican
| Dev Blog | Privacy | FAQ | Contact | |  | | Comment Policy | About Us | Submissions |
| Hosting provided by Tilted Planet | ||
Anonymous
But of course it's flagrant Islamophobia, without any doubt. Not better than der sturmer. Yeah, keep defending, you'll be next. Well, maybe not; perhaps next the Mexicans and only then you.
Emil Ernst
While I agree that no special legislative exceptions should be made
for Muslims, nor for anyone, and concur that much of what you mention
above is a bit of "political correctness gone mad," I also agree
wholeheartedly with anyone who would assert that you (judging from the
blog entries of yours I've read here and at Commentary) and Mr.
Steyn are either bigots or are employing prejudice and paranoia as
devices to pander to a particularly hysterical and alarmist segment of
the population for your own gains.
You're on the correct side
this time, but your "outrage" is motivated by nothing righteous at all.
In fact, if this didn't involve your hated Muslims it's unlikely it
would even have been a blip on your, or Mr. Steyn's, radar. The Muslims
are not taking over and liberal guilt and the shit laws to which it
gives birth, troubling though all of that is, are not paving the
way for a Muslim uprising.
Abe Greenwald
Emil Ernst,
When someone accuses you of being a bigot there's not much you can say in your defense except, "no I'm not." No I'm not.
Okay, I'll bite. What, specifically, makes you think I'm a bigot or pretending to be one for my "own gains"?
Anonymous Abe admirer
Abe wrote:
"So, is that “flagrant Islamophobia” or a tragically prescient summation of the predicament in which Steyn now finds himself (sooner than “in a few years” I may add)?"
I vote for the latter, and I thank Abe for drawing attention to this predicament.
Anonymous
When someone accuses you of being a bigot there's not much you can say in your defense except, "no I'm not." No I'm not.
Of course you don't consider yourself a bigot, you're just defending civilization against a bunch of menacing crafty savages. Just like Julius Streicher thought he did.
Anonymous
Sorry, Abe, I'm new here having been directed from Mark Steyn's site.
I'm unsure of the focus of your site: Is it your intention to attract all the neo-Nazis and other anti-semites to your site, so that they don't clutter up all of the other blogs out there? :)
Anonymous
To a certain ill-developed mind it is considered clever - in 2007, no less - to compare someone one doesn't like to Julius Streicher. Why Streicher? Well, because 'Hitler' is played out, while 'Julius Streicher' makes one seem relatively literate.
My guess is that Streicher was never challenged about his bigotry. I'd need to see a source for that...
Anyway, good article, I'll have to stop in more and see what you have to say.
-a new reader
Anonymous
Right, buddy. Analyze me, not the guys who make a career of writing that in a few years Muslim teenagers will turn Europe into Nigeria.
Abe Greenwald
Anonymous
Given the widespread P.C infection amongst the North American population, I am not optimistic over the chances of Western Civilization surviving. The comments reveal an inability to even recognize the lethal threat to freedom posed by the most hateful religious ideology on the planet. The populace has been conditioned to accept the coming Dhimmitude. I would say that the comments only buttress Mr. Greenwald's and Mr. Steyn's point. God Help Us.
Anonymous
The best way to defeat bad thinking is to introduce good thinking.
So if Steyn's work is so obviously flawed as some people continue to say, then I suggest someone get
to the simple task of presenting the obvious and facile rebuttal instead of this endless bleating about ethnic sensitivities. The appeals to whatever half-cocked collection of well-intentioned libertarians will lend an ear in order to silence a free man's voice indicate that the issue is not so "obvious" and the rebuttal not so "simple" to assemble.
Turning attention to this blog then, for all the lofty intellect required to hurl insults, and name-drop Streicher, you'd think someone would be able to propose an alternate interpretation of Steyn's "scary" numbers. Perhaps someone could give us all a preview of some of the points that will be made in this proposed rebuttal in Maclean's. Do something... this is getting as bad as coming up with Gore or Kerry in order to beat Bush. Why go for the limpest of minimalist responses when everyone agrees that the matter is so clear?
It would seem to this observer that humans naturally peer ahead using what indicators they can find, to see the world their children will inherit. The developed world is no different, and our governments record statistics by the terabyte in order to (among other things good and evil) guide planning and investment. Among these numbers are birth rates from which Mark Steyn has extrapolated a thesis. What is your counter-thesis? If you want to publish it in Maclean's magazine I suggest you do what Mark did. Hone your writing skills and write something of adequate substance to be noticed. Speech may be free (for now), but readership is not.
P
Anonymous
I love it when a bunch of Jew hating Muslims who deny the Holocaust, read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and support the elimination of the Jewish State compare themeselves to the persecuted Jews of Europe.
Of course they forget that Jews were also being persecuted in the Arab world.
Read this story by the former Attorney General of Canada:
"The Forgotten Exodus" by
Irwin Cotler, National Post Published: Wednesday, November 28, 2007
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=127843&p=1
From the article:
"Indeed, evidence contained in a recent report, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights And Redress, documents for the first time a pattern of state-sanctioned repression and persecution in Arab countries -- including Nuremberg-like laws -- that targeted Jews, and resulted in denationalization, forced expulsions, illegal sequestration of property, arbitrary arrest and detention and the like."
Anonymous
behavior of Muslims.