First of all, I would like to thank the defense lawyer for suspected terrorist Said Namouh. He unwittingly, or perhaps with full knowledge and likely so, is doing the western world a massive service. He is doing something that urgently needs doing. His defense argument, that this accused terrorist is merely observing his religious rights, is forcing the western world to examine its legal and cultural axioms. To be clear….
I believe that this may well be the most important civil trial on the matter of terrorism; multiculturalism; immigration and western law that has ever taken place.
The defense is not saying this man has not done what he is accused of. On the contrary, he is quite plainly admitting it and is challenging the notion of religious freedom. This lawyer and his defendant is in fact admitting plainly that terrorism, hatred of the west and freedom, killing of innocents and the advocating and planning of same is intrinsic to Islam and therefore is covered under his right to religious freedom.
The implications of this are staggering. If the judge finds in his favour, it means anyone can dream up as vile an ethos imaginable (although it would tax my imagination beyond its limits to think of a more vile one than Islam) create a basis for it in a holy book and claim a right to behave according to that ethos on the basis of Canadian guarantees of freedom of religion.
Let me quote from the National Post article on the defense argument:
Over the past three weeks, a Quebec court has heard that Mr. Namouh worked tirelessly to ensure these images were widely available on the Internet to the global jihadi community, in some cases doing the editing and adding subtitles himself. Mr. Namouh’s work showed that he had “devoted his life to spreading the ideology of al-Qaeda and encouraging others to join the jihadist movement,” said Rita Katz, a Crown expert at the terrorism trial. What Quebec Court Judge Claude Leblond will have to establish is whether those actions contravened Canada’s Criminal Code.
His defence lawyer, René Duval, is not contesting that Mr. Namouh was the user named Ashraf, who was so active on online jihadi forums that he earned praise for his “good work in the service of the [Global Islamic Media] Front, jihad and the mujahedeen.” But Mr. Duval argues that what his client did, while perhaps repugnant to some, was simply an exercise of his freedoms of expression and religion. “Where do you draw the line?” he asked outside the court.
Evidence before the court shows that Mr. Namouh was driven by a fervent faith, one that saw as enemies Christians, Jews and even Muslims who did not share a desire for the creation of pan-Islamic rule.
This is staggering. Not that the defendant felt this way, I’m sure by now no reader of vladtepesblog is unaware of the jihadi mind set, but that the defense would argue religious freedom for these actions. I cannot express my gratitude strongly enough. Canada and the western world as a whole needs urgently to examine some of the more faulty premises upon which it operates.
When the notion of religious freedom was introduced concepts of moral and cultural relativism where centuries away from infecting policy. The purpose, was to guarantee rights to various flavours of benign Christians and Jews to practice their religions free of fear of persecution from the state merely for having the wrong name on a church. It was never intended to be a cloak from which people could attempt to destroy the west and its laws and values hidden behind the feeble excuse of religious practice but to be a shield for religion from state persecution.
The very idea that this kind of defence could be used is startling. It can only be brought in to a serious criminal trial because liberal democracies have become inured with the notion that all ideologies have equal rights so long as they have an irrational basis. That is to say, if jihadi’s had science as a reason for doing what they do, an argument would be presented to show they are wrong. As they use axioms of ancient superstitions and instructions from god’s and their messengers none of which are or have ever been in evidence suddenly they have the right to promote genocide against those who do not share their views.
Canada like the rest of the post Christian world urgently needs to examine its basis for existence. Re invigorate its values and laws, and its questions of what true rights are at core levels rather than the trivial yet dangerous rights not to be offended. Or to impose repugnant restrictions on the rest of society to accommodate those cultures which find our ways of life unacceptable to them.
This lawyer has opened a can of ham that so desperately needs examination that win or lose I thank him. If he wins his case, the rest of Canada will have had its most strident klaxon alerting us to the dangers of moral and cultural relativism. If we fail to hear this one, we deserve what we are getting.
