Musings On Macleans, York U, and Islam's War on Words

Islam was thrust into the spotlight in 2001 when several religious zealots hijacked American planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It's one of those events where you can remember exactly where you were and what you were doing at the time. In the nearly seven years since then, I've had a lot of time to muse on the nature of terrorism and Islam. While not all Muslims are terrorists, all the terrorists involved in 9/11 and similar atrocities were Muslim. I ultimately believe that the West did not push the Middle-East towards this and the events were orchestrated by a mad man. However, the wars in Iraq and strained relations with Iran have done little to help the situation in recent years.

On the home front, Islam has been fighting a war of words against the West, or rather a war on words. The religion has found it very difficult to deal with Western styles and multiculturalism. Islam has taken an lesson from Scientology and is now using the legal system as a method to attack and ruin their critics. Currently, journalist Mark Steyn and Macleans magazine are being hauled in front of the BC Human Rights Tribunal for "smearing Islam." The Canadian Islamic Congress called the Steyn article hate speech. The article in question was called The Future Belongs to Islam. The article basically brings up the issue of a weakening Global North. Islamic youth, who are one of the fastest growing segments of the global population, are further becoming radicallized and will change the shape of the world. You can read it for yourself and make your own judgements. Islam certainly isn't the first religion to use the legal system to attempt to silence critics. I already mentioned Scientology, who is currently fighting with Wikileaks and internet group Anonymous. Christianity as well has a very long history of doing this. What makes Islam any different? The answer is nothing, but that still doesn't make it right.

Hate speech tends to be a very subjective thing. Who determines what is offensive? An individual, a group, or a government? Who determines how severe the offensive remark or piece is? That's the ultimate problem with this kind of censorship, it's a slippery slope. There is no set formula for determining hate speech, nor can there ever be. The government simply defines it as something that incites hatred, which is a very vague statement in itself. People need to realize that words are words, not weapons. In an open and civilized society, if someone makes a remark you disagree with, you are entirely free to counter that position. The issue at stake here is that interest groups can now use your own words as a weapon against you. The problem with human rights tribunals is they're nothing more than kangaroo courts. They are not proper courts of law but rather civilian bodies stocked with civil servants. They are considered the lowest rung of the legal ladder and they do answer to the higher courts. The fact that you are being put on trial by people who may or may not be trained and qualified justices is something disturbing. The tribunals can't really do much other than to smear your good name. There's no guarantee you're going to get a fair trial. They are not required to follow precedent. Much of what goes on gets twisted in legal babble and psychological warfare. If hate is against the law, why aren't the courts dealing with it? I suppose people would be up in arms if that happened. Canadians as a whole are less tolerant of censorship than Americans are, at least concerning the explicit variety. The tribunals present a more implicit form of censorship since they tend to fly under the radar of the media. Many Canadian news outlets have failed to even discuss these issues.

A double standard does exist when it comes to hate speech and how Canadians deal with human rights. Such cases of this can be seen at Canadian universities. I picked York University, located in northern Toronto as one case study since it happens to be one of the most pronounced local cases of this happening. It's student's union has made pushes to censor and dispel any debate on campus. Their basic argument is that you can have debates on issues, such as abortion, as long as you tow our line. The abortion debate was one of the more recent cases when the student's union met for an emergency meeting a couple weeks ago and decreed that pro-life groups on campus would no longer receive funding in an effort to silence them. I consider myself pro-choice but I find this to be an appalling case of deliberate censorship at an institution that is supposed to openly encourage unencumbered debate. Islam falls into this due to similar issues over the debate of Israel. To me, the whole Israel-Palestine conflict has seemed childish. The whole conflict has been over a small strip of land out in the dessert that people on both sides are willing to slaughter children for. To me the optimal solution would simply be to unite the two sides into a federal republic with two semi-autonomous provinces. This would certainly be the civilized way of doing things. While religion does play a role in the Israel issue, it is really over who controls what land. However, other Muslims have chosen to highlight religious tensions to distort what is really going on. Many universities have begun to hold "Israeli Apartheid" weeks in which Islamic students and their socialist comrades protest all things Jewish. These frequently turn into mini-riots with Jewish students being harassed. If these events involved white men adorned with Nazi tattoos and sheets over their heads, we would call this racism. If the students perpetrating these acts are Muslim, suddenly it becomes an expression of their beliefs. Sorry, but I'm going to have to call this out on what it is. Muslim students that participate in these events and the students unions that allow this to go on are racist and anti-Semitic. I suppose it's interesting to note though that Karl Marx, who students unions love, was an anti-Semite himself despite having Jewish ancestry. I'm hardly an appolegist for the Jews. I'm rather indifferent towards Israel. However, I do feel that these campus unions are so deeply hypocritical when campus hallways are adorned with posters that tell you to denounce racism and create a positive learning space. The problem is that most students do not vote in student council elections. I admit that I never did. The reason was because they all ran on nearly identical socialist platforms. I could vote for either Team Yellow or Team Orange but either way, I'm going to get the same thing. If I do not support that, I have nobody to vote for. It seems that everything on campus now is religion or ethnicity based. Things like the chess club of old have been replaced by the Chinese Students Club, or the Christian Club, or the Muslim Club. It seems to me that universities are becoming more exclusive rather than inclusive. The social engineers always proudly refer to Canadian multiculturalism as being the tossed salad compared to the United States' melting pot. However, I'm not sure this is really working to anybody's benefit. The universities are a shining example to the failure of this thinking.

The face of our country is changing, that's a given. Whether this has been a positive thing or a negative one is up to an individuals own interpretation. The issue is different groups essentially abusing the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the legal system to launch attacks at one another. This I think we can all agree is a very negative thing. The goal of the Charter was to encourage unity, not divisiveness. Canadians cannot let go of the values we've spent 130 years building simply because some group finds them offensive or incompatible with how they lived back in their old country. There should be a sign at every immigration line at the airport saying "Welcome to Canada, you're Canadian now, leave your past and current conflicts at the door". We badly need to adopt the US melting pot if we're going to survive in a multicultural society. Our current salad bowl policy is going to lead to disaster.