Category Archives: ezra levant

The dishonour of honour: how a Canadian courtroom has supplanted it’s vitrue with sharia.

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I’m certain many by now are familiar with the ongoing trial of Hasibullah Sidiqi, the now 23 year old man charged with two counts of first degree murder for the brutal slaying of his sister Khatera and her fiance in September of 2006. After a night out of dinner and a movie, the pair were gunned down as they sat in her car at the Elmvale Shopping Centre. Khatera was pronounced dead at the scene and Feroz Mangul died ten days later in hospital.

Hasibullah Sadiqi has been accused of the crimes and is on trial in a Canadian courtroom. This case is not one to determine Sadiqi’s guilt or innocence but one rather to determine whether or not his charge(s) could be whittled down to manslaughter, a ruling which would carry a lighter sentence. The defense will argue the complex issue of provocation on Mr. Sadiqi’s behalf essentially bringing forward sharia as a defensive measure, while the Crown will advance these murders as honour killings.

It is not unusual for a defense team to bring forward what many would deem repugnant defense arguments; in fact it is their job to defend their client to the best of their ability including introducing outrageous platforms. It is also not unusual to advance religious ideology or cultural tradition as a defensive measure to attempt to mitigate a sentence. In 2004 the B.C Court of Appeal heard a similar case of a man who murdered his wife for defying Sikh principles, ultimately to his loss. So then, we should not be entirely surprised that a Canadian court could now be entertained by such an open defense of sharia.

But having said that and not long ago, we were assured that sharia law in Ontario ( and by extension Canada) would be squashed. The provincial government loudly condemned such an outrageous prospect, an outcome guided mainly by Muslim women. Yet here we find a case before the court in full, frontal swing. While Mr. Sadiqi’s defense will attempt to deliver the notion of provocation, the Crown will denounce honour killing as morally bankrupt; a foreign practice anathema to Canadian values.  Underlying both arguments is the core issue which we can no longer stretch to avoid: sharia law is at play in Canada. Have we somehow normalized sharia by simply allowing the legal argument to proceed as a valid, defensive measure in the courtroom? Have we somehow legitimized a cultural absurdity and allowed a foreign ill to compete en par with our set values? Is this another awful end-result of a failing and out-dated multicultural project?

Consider this: Hasibullah Sadiqi came to Canada in 1986 with his parents from Afghanistan when he was five months old. Yet despite being raised in an environment of opportunity, equality and tolerance, he assumed the misogynistic watch-man post over his two sisters at the apparent grooming of his father. What was happening in Canada in 1986?– the World Exposition opened in Vancouver, Brian Mulroney was Canada’s 18th Prime Minister, Top Gun was the highest grossing film of the year and Madonna and the Vatican were at odds over Papa Don’t Preach. Pretty benign stuff. What was happening in Afghanistan in 1986? The continuation of age-old tribal feuding, war, corruption, oppression, violence, religious intolerance and the never-ending subjucation of women. Same old stuff.

Is this the proud heritage and loving legacy that Hasibullah’s father imported and imparted to his Canadian son? Is this the pious model by which Sadiqi chose to valiantly defend on September 19 only to end his sister’s life in it’s honour? Why didn’t Hasibullah assimilate to a country that would have gladly provided him every avenue for success, enrichment and freedom? Why would he betroth himself to a distant nation he never knew? Why was his sister’s healthy independance considered such a profound mark of distain to the family’s good sensibility that she would have to pay recompense with a bullet in her head?

Many questions, but perhaps all things considered it is time to ask. After all, it was this same “profound attachment to his heritage” as he has claimed, that was the motivating factor which led him to confront his ‘shameful’ sister and her fiance with a loaded .44 magnum. And it is this same attachment to cultural heritage that lawyers now find themselves either courting or denouncing in an Ottawa courtroom and the same imported legacy by which the public has the right and duty to openly scrutinize. If Mr. Sadiqi calls upon sharia as a cultural defense in a Canadian court, then surely Canadians would be within their purview to alternatively denounce sharia as a cultural offence.

Canadian law is specific; first degree murder requires a sentence of life in prison. We can argue as we have time time and again, that the system may be unjust through the provision of leniency via common plea bargaining. But we cannot afford to alter so readily the constitutional guarantee that all people are considered equal before the law, nor can we dismiss the disastrous outcome this specific case may indeed secure in it’s potential of creating a two-tier system. If the defense is successful on behalf of Sadiqi, our most cherished of values will have been demoted in a backward step toward a primitive rank.

Mr. Sadiqi’s attachment to  his Afghani cultural heritage does not deserve special consideration in a Canadian court any more than my Irish heritage does. If we are to uphold this most important of Canadian values, we can do nothing less than judge Sadiqi as we would any other Canadian. Khatera Sidiqi, Feroz Mangul and Canada deserve nothing less.

For more in-depth coverage please follow daily articles at Ottawa Citizen.com and other posts related to this story on Vlad.

Trailer for ‘The Stoning’

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I found this trailer on Ezra Levant’s excellent blog. I will be looking for this movie as soon as it’s out and recommend that all amateur film clubs seek licenses for this movie to show it to crowds who I am certain will not get the chance to see it in nations where Muslim activist groups block this film from getting into theaters. Rent this movie and invite friends over to watch it. Serve beer and ham sandwiches.

Kathy Shaidle, Ezra Levant, Salim Mansur speak in London on the HRC’s brilliantly

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Kathy is insightful, funny and lucid speaking in London Ontario April 13th 2009 but most of all, deadly accurate. I hope everyone watches this entertaining and important speech. Not to take away anything from the other equally excellent speakers.

Human Rights Commissions: Useful or Obsolete? Part 1: Intro & Kathy Shaidle from josephinejosephine on Vimeo.
Below, part two. With Salim Mansur and Ezra Levant

Human Rights Commissions: Useful or Obsolete? Part 2: Salim Mansur and Ezra Levant from josephinejosephine on Vimeo.
Questions and answers:

Human Rights Commissions: Useful or Obsolete? Part 3: Audience Q&A from josephinejosephine on Vimeo.

Northern Discomfort, Shame on Canada’s thought police

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In this most excellent article below the author didn’t mention perhaps the most bizarre HRC decision, that to find a plastic surgeon guilty of discrimination for refusing to perform a labiaplasty on a man.

By Mark Hemingway National Review Online

It’s hard to describe Ezra Levant’s splendid new volume, Shakedown: How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights, as an enjoyable read — because the book is a chronicle of injustice, with outrage on every page.

On opening this slim volume, I was transported to early last year, when I first heard that Levant — formerly the publisher of the Canadian conservative magazine The Western Standard — was being hauled before the Alberta Human Rights Commission for having the temerity to publish something a radical imam didn’t approve of.

As I began to read the facts of Levant’s case, I came to the sad realization that Canada no longer has freedom of speech. The “human rights” commissions (HRCs) all over Canada, staffed by bureaucrats and not following normal legal procedures, had originally been set up to deal with blatant cases of discrimination; they had morphed into star chambers weighing in on what the press could print, what pastors could say from the pulpit, whether certain Bible verses could be displayed publicly, and so on.

Later in the year, when National Review’s own Mark Steyn was ensnared by both Canada’s national and the British Columbia HRC for an article he published, I ended up covering Steyn’s case, as well as Canada’s kangaroo courts more broadly. (Steyn has written a foreword to Shakedown.) Every rock I turned over revealed the HRCs to be even more pernicious then they appeared, and they looked Orwellian to begin with. These commissions have the power to impose financial and legal penalties, and yet they don’t adhere to the most basic protections of due process found in a real court of law.

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India, Islam and freedom of speech.

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It is important for we in the west who see our most fundamental freedoms slipping away exponentially faster than it took to earn them in the first place to remember that India has the same problem and primarily for the same reasons. Islam. John McCain when he ran for president of the United states suggested scrapping the UN in favour of the G8 plus India and Brazil. Like most brilliant ideas, it is too far ahead of the general knowledge curve to seem reasonable but is exactly what is called for. Like relativity, Einstein’s universe shaking concepts of time and gravity, not one of Einstein’s generation accepted it but all of the following one did. The question is whether or not we have the time to wait for the next generation to adopt McCain’s theory of a union of free states. Not to take the physics analogy too far but perhaps we cant afford any uncertainty principle for very long on this one.

A blogger from India has been sending me some links about the erosion of freedom of speech there as well and for the same reasons. Muslims demand that no person or agency should be able to say anything critical of Islam and perhaps worse, no one may even reproduce things Muslim leaders say which may cast Islam in a poor light even if 100% factually correct. Horrifyingly, the odd Christian Jewish and Hindu leader senses a political opportunity and will back the Islamic stance imagining perhaps that stopping religious criticism might be good for the authority of their respective churches as well.

These people need to study history and perhaps more importantly the wording of currently debated binding resolutions now in front of the UN general assembly.

Islam will not be used as anyone’s strong man. Jews Christians and Hindus will enjoy as much protection from blasphemy as the stone Buddha’s did in Afghanistan and as churches and synagogues and temples that have been on lands bordering large Muslim populations.

A few weeks ago on VTB we blogged about an Indian editor who was fired from his job from a major Indian daily newspaper for publishing a fairly innocuous piece on freedom of speech and specifically from irrational religious authority. The author of the article did a reprint saying that no matter what riots and demonstrations take place based on what he said, he stands by every word of it and while that should be allowed to be true in all cases, this was a very good article and all of us need to stand behind it in any case.

Now Indian blogger’s find themselves in danger from the law if they challenge irrational religious authority. I do wonder if the people of the early dark ages saw the creeping draconian and arbitrary rule of the western church as not to be believed in much the way all my day to day acquaintances see the current challenge to secular freedoms. But knowing the likely answer to that question is not nearly as interesting as one might think. Not only did they probably not see it coming as an unimaginable and unlikely event but we will know similar restrictions as handed down by bodies like the U.N. The E.U. and any other social policy body infected with Islamist organizations such as the Organization of Islamic Countries.

From the Times of India:

NEW DELHI: A 19-year-old blogger’s case could forever change the ground rules of blogging. Bloggers may no longer express their uninhibited views

on everything under the sun, for the Supreme Court said they may face libel and even prosecution for the blog content.

[…]

This chilling warning emerged as a Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice P Sathasivam refused to protect a 19-year-old Kerala boy, who had started a community on Orkut against Shiv Sena, from protection against summons received from a Maharashtra court on a criminal case filed against him.

Petitioner Ajith D had started a community on Orkut against Shiv Sena. In this community, there were several posts and discussions by anonymous persons who alleged that Shiv Sena was trying to divide the country on region and caste basis.

Reacting to these posts, the Shiv Sena youth wing’s state secretary registered a criminal complaint at Thane police station in August 2008 based on which FIR was registered against Ajith under Sections 506 and 295A pertaining to hurting public sentiment.

Hurting public sentiment. This sounds a lot like the threat to public safety the British used to prevent Geert Wilders from speaking in the UK. or the Canadian section thirteen of the ‘hate crimes act’ where something which is said is likely to expose a person or group to hatred or contempt under which countless Canadians have been charged most famously Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. It seems as if nations which once stood proud and defiant in the face of religious intolerance now have created special rules which those very intolerant groups use against us. These laws go from the frightening to the ridiculous which in fact are more frightening. When they pass laws about not speaking out against their religion directly at least at one level of reason we understand it. When they pass a law saying no one may use an elephant as a symbol as it offends worshipers of the Hindu god Ganesh we now are hamstrung in anything we may say or represent for fear of any religious authority finding offense in it, and as there is now great power in being offended, you can bank on an objection from the funny hat crowd.

Thought crimes laws are like a machine gun in the sense that we like them when we are holding them but we like them less when someone else is pointing them at us. They are unlike a machine gun in another way however. Whenever you create a law which abrogates free speech no matter how noble the initial purpose may be for that law, its not a matter of if but of when someone else will take control of it and destroy its original intent and we as a free people along with it.

This has clearly happened at the U.N. in Canada, India and Holland. Do not imagine this will not effect you. It already has. It just may take a while to notice. Cancer is like that.

Links for Sunday March 1 2009

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First of all, I would like to mention that today is VTB’s 1st birthday. We have been doggedly blogging for one year today. I wish to take this opportunity to thank especially Grace who researches tirelessly every day for stories especially of Canadian interest that has often caught the attention of the general blogosphere. We started out happy to have four or five readers a day and now are enjoying what I am told, is a good readership for a blog only one year old on a daily basis.

Also the readers of this blog. Because you come and read and comment, it is the juice that keeps us working. Thank you for making this a space you visit. It really does mean a great deal to us especially when you leave a comment.

Also through this blog I have had the chance to meet some truly wonderful thoughtful and dedicated people who have committed themselves to the cause of freedom of the individual usually at great expense to themselves both financially (as this is a very time consuming vocation) as well as no small amount of personal risks as there most certainly are groups out there in pretty much every city in the western world and beyond now, who would do harm to those interfering with the agenda of the various kinds of fascism now threatening all of us.

I would like to particularly thank The Gates of Vienna as well as The Religion of Peace for their support in terms of information as well as general insight and the amazing amount of hard work they do for the cause of raising awareness of the imminent dangers that face us all.

There are dozens of other blogs however from which we have drawn information and inspiration not least of which is Ezra Levant who is a tireless fighter for freedom of speech, One of the corner stones of the anti jihad. As it has been said,

“Take away all my rights and just leave me freedom of speech and I will win the rest back with just that one”.

Many more can be found in our blogroll to the right.

On to some links:

I like all of us I’m sure, have concerns about various political parties who claim to wish to work for the maintenance of indigenous European peoples and cultures. How can we know they are not secretly fascist parties working for a sinister agenda?

As we have seen, many parties in Europe who are in fact classically liberal have been so maligned as an attempt to discredit them by those who are indeed truly fascist. Geert Wilders is constantly referred to by the European press as being ‘a far right Dutch politician’ when of course nothing can be farther from the truth.  I enjoy pointing out to anyone who views him that way that if they can find any far right politician in world history who has been a vocal supporter of homosexual rights, of minority and most importantly individual rights such as to smoke marijuana (A stupid choice but not anyone else’s to make for you) and a staunch supporter of Israel and Jewish minorities than OK Geert is far right.

No one yet has found such an example.

Even so, I have had my concerns about the BNP in the UK. They are often accused of being a front for a kind of neo-nazi movement. I still am not sure but I did find this video from the BNP to be very instructive:

There are other examples of classically liberal parties in Europe which are painted with the labels of fascism. This is a dangerous tactic. It likely will backfire on all of us. Notably the German Pro-Köln. To quote from the Gates of Vienna:

Pro-Köln Gets the Vlaams Belang Treatment

by Baron Bodissey

Under the suffocating strictures of politically correct Multiculturalism, any conservative nationalist party in Europe is certain to be demonized as “neo-Nazi”. In some countries it is all but impossible for a truly conservative party to emerge. Anyone who publicly admits to right-wing convictions is instantly vilified by the political establishment and set upon by the hounds of the media. For this reason, European electoral choices usually amount to Socialism, More Socialism, Extra-Strength Socialism, and — just for variety’s sake — Socialism With Added Environmentalism.

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Ezra Levant on politically incorrect history

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Ezra Levant was in Ottawa this week to deliver a speech to various museum officials on the problems surrounding presenting history, as it was, when those views are shall we say, out of fashion. Ill post a few paragraphs of it but do click through to his blog and have a look at his own speech there. Political correctness, once a kind of near hollow rhetorical phrase meaning changing a word for another word to mean the same thing and while not entirly harmless was at least not fear inducing, is now policy. Now to the extent that one can no longer trust anything presented by governments, (if you ever could) or by any agent licensed by governments such as broadcast media, or even any agency which has assets which a government or ‘activist’ group may attack through ‘lawfare’.

The days therefore, of bloggers such as we here at VTB are clearly limited as Europe seeks to limit what bloggers may do, and Australia already has, North America cannot be far behind. While the ‘fairness doctrine’ may be sufficiently vague to not appear to be a threat to freedom, you can bet that like all other similar tools throughout history it will be selectively enforced to favour the political dogma of the day.

Museums are rightfully worried about this as hell, the amount of materials you would have to throw away and rebuild on an hourly basis would be staggering trying to appease every offense to any group. Think of the wasted carbon alone. Displays would change faster than the Canadian National anthem, whatever that is.

Even once-neutral symbols, like the flag, are symbolic weapons in this fight to deracinate our military history. Even our national anthem has become a football in this fight. You might recall headlines last month that a New Brunswick school teacher shut down the daily singing of the anthem, which had been championed by two schoolgirls, who led the singing as an act of remembrance for their cousin, who died in Afghanistan. The teacher… had spoken out on many occasions as an opponent of the war in particular, and all wars in general. His unilateral decision to ban the anthem created a backlash, but one wonders how much longer before [that] view becomes the new normal.

Unlike in previous generations, the question is no longer does Canada – or indeed any Western ally – have the military might to win a war; that’s beyond dispute. The question is now can the popular culture sustain such a war in the face of even a handful of casualties? Our politicians know it; our generals know it. And our enemies certainly know it. We live in an era where terrorist groups like Hezbollah have media relations units, complete with bilingual business cards. That’s the battlefield now.

Which is all the more reason why we need to know why we’re fighting. Which means we need to know who we are, as a country and as a culture. What are the values we prize so highly that we would kill for them and die for them?

That means knowing why we have fought before.

Please go to Ezra’s blog and read his whole article. This really does matter. Remember, the important victories are thought of as having been made on the battlefields. The truth is, they are made in dull office cubicles and dreary corridors by stodgy bureaucrats with agendas which are a total mystery to people in the real world. When we lose these battles, we seldom get to even fight the ones on the fields. The ones we actually hear about. The ones which are easy to understand.

Canada’s ‘human rights commissions’ seek more power

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Here is a collection of links dealing with the new request by the quite literally fascist ‘Human Rights Commissions’ asking for power to criminalize blogs. It is of course craftily worded asking that web sites which are ‘news oriented’ come under their pervue and of course, they will selectively enforce against Islam critical sites if their history is any indicator (and it most certainly is Chrystal clear that this is their agenda) while ignoring any ‘news oriented site’ which attacks maliciously or otherwise out of fashion groups such as Jews Israelis and conservatives. The trend in the west is becoming clear enough that maybe a few people will fight back. Wouldn’t that be lovely.

The National Post:

The Ontario Human Rights Commission is calling for Parliament to force all Canadian magazines, newspapers and “media services” Web sites to join a national press council with the power to adjudicate breaches of professional standards and complaints of discrimination.

The council would have the power to order the publication of its decisions and “would help bring about more consistency across all jurisdictions in Canada,” reads an OHRC report to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The media’s freedom of expression comes with a duty to “address issues of hate expression, and [media] should do so either voluntarily through provincial press councils, or through statutory creation of a national press council with compulsory membership,” the report reads.

Do not let any soothing wording fool you. Check the HRC history and its quite clear that they mean to destroy people who do not have the means to fight them and do not carry the ‘right’ opinions and with all the resources of the state behind them.

Next, Weasel Zippers blog:

There have been countless abuses by these HRCs including investigators unlawfully pirating the Internet connections of unsuspecting citizens, investigators logging onto Internet forums and posting offensive content in order to bait people into committing “thought crimes” and there was even a case of an Alberta pastor “convicted” over a letter to the editor of a newspaper who was effectively ordered to renounce his personal religious faith.

Now, the Ontario Human Rights Commission is lobbying parliament to enact legislation forcing all media in Canada – news websites included –  to join a “media watchdog council” that would have the power to review content (censor content) and order newspapers, magazines, television stations and even websites not to publish certain articles.  This is being spearheaded by Barbara Hall – the failed former mayor of Toronto who is now head of the Ontario HRC and who, without benefit of a trial, condemned MacLean’s Magazine and Mark Steyn over their articles over which the HRC didn’t even have jurisdiction.

The quote above I believe is from this source: Mississauga Blogs:

And of course no post on Canadian Human Rights Commissions could be complete without a link to Ezra, Canada’s most powerful  voice for free speech still actually living here.

Ezra puts it quite beautifully….

“In healthy democracies, the media is a watchdog over the government.

In the soft tyranny of Canada’s human rights commissions, the government is the watchdog over the media“

That is a quote for the ages. Which at current rates of the movement of history toward a new age of theological tyranny, is about 15 more years.

As a final note, the trial of Geert Wilders clearly is a test case not just for Freedom of speech in Holland or even Europe. But is a beach head for all who wish to remove this central freedom from us world wide. If you are looking for a charity, I would consider giving to Geert Wilders. His fight is ours. If he looses this one, the choices we may have on all things will be dramatically limited hereafter. Even our choices of charities.

Eeyore for VTB

Ezra Levant on Calgary marches and instigators.

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Another must read from Ezra.

Calgary anti-Semites Nagah Hage and Syed Soharwardy have been leading the pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah hate marches in the Jewish neighbourhood of Calgary. Neither Hage nor Soharwardy live anywhere nearby, of course; they truck in their foul-mouthed supporters — who fly the flag of the criminal organization, Hezbollah — to chant “death to the Jews”, and wave swastikas in the face of the local citizens.

The mob comes week after week.

At the last hate march, one of Hage’s followers declared — within earshot of a policeman — that he was ready to become a suicide “martyr” in Canada or anywhere else. Another one spat at a Jewish rabbi on the way to the next-door synagogue.

Soharwardy himself wrote a proud letter to the Calgary Herald, wishing that Hamas could see their rally. Soharwardy tends to say things like that. After the tsunami, Soharwardy claimed that Western aid agencies were actually kidnapping little Muslim children, not helping them.

For the rest please visit Ezra’s site here.

Police break up peaceful legal pro Israel protest.

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Below is an article from Ynet news. I re post it here because it is such a blatant and unsubtle example of some of the articles and interviews that Ezra Levant has written and given recently. We have in Sweden, a situation where supporters of Israel have been given a legal permit to have a Raleigh (Demonstration simply inst the right word) and when they where attacked with eggs bottles and tear gas, the police made the  pro Israel people leave. Clearly there is a failure of due process and use of state force.

I fully understand how the police might in some circumstances ask pro Israel supporters to remove themselves where they might come to harm and the state cannot protect them due to absurdly lopsided numbers. But over and over again we see police treating peaceful pro Israel supporters treated as instigators and threatened with arrest while the pro Hamas protests are flagrantly breaking law after law in plain sight. This example below perhaps is merely beyond my ability to explain it away as anything other than state hostility to its Jewish members.


Pro-Israel rally crashed in Sweden

Protestors gathered to support Israel were pelted with eggs and bottles, then dispersed by police

01.25.09, 17:10 / A pro-Israel rally in Malmo, Sweden was torn apart Sunday by pro-Palestinian residents who arrived on the scene with eggs, bottles, and tear gas grenades which they threw at Israel’s supporters. Police dispersed the entire crowd.

Hundreds of people took part in the rally in support of Israel, which was held at the city’s main square. Elad Meier, a Bnei Akiva and Jewish Agency envoy to Sweden said it was organized by Malmo’s Jewish community and Sweden’s Democratic Party.

Pro-Israel demonstration in Malmo (Photo: Elad Meier)

Protesters carried signs that said ‘Stop eight years of Qassams’ and ‘Peace for children in Israel and Gaza’. The organizers received a police permit for the demonstration.
However, a number of pro-Palestinian protesters who did not have a permit to demonstrate took to the streets in retaliation to the approved rally. They were not dispersed by police despite lacking a permit.

“At some point, about a half an hour after the protest began, pro-Palestinian protesters began to throw eggs, bottles, and even a tear gas grenade,” Meier recounted.

He added that the lawless protesters disconnected the speakers brought to the square by the Jewish community while its leader was speaking. The act brought the pro-Israel rally to an end, as others could not speak.

At this point, Meier said, police stepped in and asked the unruly protestors to leave. Officers then proceeded to clear the square of all present, including those who had received permission to demonstrate

The Jewish community in Malmo was angered by the police’s conduct, and its president has lodged an official complaint stating that only those who had protested without a permit should have been dispersed.

Ezra Levant interviewed on CFRA on the new normal of anti semitism. Audio only

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From Sunday January 19. Ignore the images. I basically just threw a bunch on till the audio ended as I can’t figure out how to get the audio to play without it showing pictures. While 2 of the images are actually from one of the Calgary ‘protests’ and one is Toronto, the rest are England or unrelated and one is just goofy. So you can ignore the images and just listen to the interview with Ezra Levant on Nick Vandergragt’s show CFRA AM Radio 580 Ottawa Canada

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Ezra Levant writes on Geert Wilders

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There are a number of excellent articles appearing online about Geert Wilders and the Dutch appeals court descision to try him on the criminal charge of offending Islam. Few on planet earth are more qualified to write on Geert’s situation than Canada’s Ezra Levant who faced his own very similar inquisition in Canada’s ‘human rights commission’.

This article by Ezra is a little longer than most of the others I will post or link to here but it is more than worth reading, it may be an obligation for those of us wishing to preserve any aspects of liberal democracy as opposed to the proxy sharia law more and more of the western world is now subject to. To be clear, many nations are now charging people who speak plain truth about the consequences of Islam in the west with thought crimes linked to inciting hatred. Yet none of the Muslims who advocate genocide, subjugation and beating of women, Islamic supremacy and the destruction of liberal democracy are being charged with these same crimes. Truly pointing out the hate speech of others is now the greater crime than the hate speech itself in more than just Canada but across an increasingly islamified Europe. This is sharia law. To make blasphemy of Islam a crime and no other form of blasphemy.

Below please find a few articles on Geert starting with this most excellent one by Ezra Levant.

Holland’s national suicide note

By Ezra Levant on January 21, 2009 11:52 PM |

The Dutch court of appeal has ruled that Geert Wilders, the Member of Parliament and anti-terrorism activist, must stand trial for hate speech.

You can read the English page of the court’s website announcing the decision here.

It is a national suicide note, a white flag of surrender flown by a once-great empire in the face of illiberal fascists and hoodlums. It is a homicide note, too — announcing the murder of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. And it is a warning note to other Western democracies. The warning is this: liberal democracy, multiculturalism and immigration — pick any two.

Holland has picked multiculturalism and immigration, and has heaved liberal democracy overboard.

The announcement is so eye-scratchingly stupid, it really must be read line for line. Here goes. (The spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors are from the court’s own English translation):

Amsterdam, 21 january 2009 – On 21 January 2009 the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam ordered the criminal prosecution of the member of parliament Geert Wilders for the incitement to hatred and discrimination based on his statements in various media about moslims and their belief.

Did you catch that? It’s just like the execrable section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Incitement to… what? Violence? Murder? Riot? No. Incitement to hatred.

Hatred is an emotion. And apparently in Holland, “making” someone feel that emotion is a crime. And inciting “discrimination” is, too. Not just discrimination itself, mind you. But inciting someone to discriminate. The Dutch court has not announced the prosecution of anyone who Wilders has “incited” to discriminate against someone else. But they’re still charging Wilders with discrimination, once removed — even if that discrimination hasn’t happened, and isn’t logically tied to his political criticisms of Islamic fascism. (Question: don’t we all have a duty to incite each other to discriminate against — or at least hate — fascists who would destroy our liberal way of life?)

In addition, the Court of Appeal considers criminal prosecution obvious for the insult of Islamic worshippers because of the comparisons made by Wilders of the islam with the nazism.

I appreciate the honesty. This is the criminalization of “insults”.

Of course, the comparison of radical Islam and Naziism can be found in their fascist, anti-democratic and illiberal streaks. And — something the Dutch should know — anti-Semitism. But, more practically, if comparing people to Nazis is now a crime, how about the countless comparisons of Jews to Nazis — comparisons ubiquitous at the United Nations conference in Durban, just to pick one big example?

The Court of Appeal rendered judgment as a consequence of a number of complaints about the non-prosecution of Wilders for his statements in various media about moslims and their belief. The complainants did not agree with the decision of the public prosecution which decided not to give effect to their report against Wilders.

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