The Canadian Islamic Congress has decided to use Canada’s hate speech legislation to go after the Canadian magazine Macleans for publishing an extract from columnist Mark Steyn’s book America Alone.
Here’s a video of Steyn himself talking about the issue on Canadian television:
Glenn Greenwald has some interesting thoughts on the subject in Salon magazine:
People like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant are some of the most pernicious commentators around. But equally pernicious, at least, are those who advocate laws that would proscribe and punish political expression, and those who exploit those laws to try use the power of the State to impose penalties on those expressing “offensive” or “insulting” or “wrong” political ideas. The mere existence of the “investigation,” interrogation, and proceeding itself is a grotesque affront to every basic liberty.
For those unable to think past the (well-deserved) animosity one has for the specific targets in question here, all one needs to do instead is imagine these proceedings directed at opinions and groups that one likes. If Muslim groups can trigger government investigations due to commentary they find offensive, so, too, can conservative Christian or right-wing Jewish groups, or conservative or neoconservative groups, or any other political faction seeking to restrict and punish speech it dislikes.
He concludes:
Empowering the State to proscribe and punish speech is not only the most dangerous step a society can take — though it is that — it’s also the most senseless. It never achieves its intended effect of suppressing or eliminating a particular view. If anything, it has the opposite effect, by driving it underground, thus preventing debate and exposure. Worse, it converts its advocates into martyrs — as one sees from the hero-worship now surrounding people like Levant and Steyn, who now become self-glorifying symbols of individual liberty rather than what they are: hateful purveyors of a bitter, destructive, authoritarian ideology. There are numerous ways to combat advocacy of rancid ideas. Using the power of the Government to force people to “justify” their opinions to government tribunals and face punishment for them is, by far, the most malevolent — far more dangerous than the expression of any particular idea could ever be.
11 comments ↓
There is something really disgusting about people using the government to silence other people. It’s just words!!
You can see from the video how Dtein is loving the publicity this case has given him. Ezra can’t stop talking about his own case too.
The fact that Steyn can get away with writing and saying what he does is largely the product of a generation of lazy Western Muslim leaders who regarded communicating their faith as having little or no importance.
Had they recognised that their primary religious duty was to communicate their values (as opposed to manufacturing cultural relics of their home countries), and to do this in a culturally appropriate manner, imbecilic-theatre-critics-turned-bush-social-commentators like Steyn could not have entered mainstream discourse the way they have.
Or am I being too nasty?
“It’s just words”…or pictures, in the case of the cartoons. The quran, too, is “just words”; the problem there is the source of the words. It would be perfectly reasonable to demand that muslims stop citing those passages in the quran that claim other religions have distorted the supposed message of god because they are offensive to them.
It would also be reasonable to demand that Christians throw out the entire Gospel of John which many Jews regard as containing deeply anti-Semitic messages that have frequently been used to justify slaughter of Jews.
“It’s just words”
A careless word can have a human being enter the hellfire for seventy years (more or less). It was just words that immortalised the punishment of one poet alluded to in surah al-Kawthar. What about the fate of ibn Khatal for sining songs that slandered the Prophet of God :saws:?
Actually Cinna what is reasonable is for people to be able to say whatever they want even if it upsets or offends other people. Nobody has a right not to be insulted or offended.
Abdul Rahman, it’s still just words. Do you think the government should stop people saying careless or nasty words?
I don’t really care much what these kaffir governments do, what concerns me more is how we respond to different situations. As to the ravings of this particular nut, labelleing them as such is as much notice as I want to give them.
We need to stop ennervating ourselves with the liberal ideology of “its just words” or whatever other permutation you care to make on it. It leads to us accepting things that should disgust us. Or worse, participating in them.
What really counts is our relationship with Allah, and a sure measure of that is our love for the Sharia. Not some watered down kaffir acceptable sharia so beloved among our chattering classes, but that which has been transmitted to us through an unbroken chain of salih people from the time of the Prophet.
Abdul Rahman, do you think that sharia as a whole must be implemented in Australia? Or does sharia set its own jurisdictional limits?
And how does sharia affect how Canadian Muslims should respond to Mark Steyn? Can you point to any clear guidance, as opposed to the watered-down sharia of the chattering class Muslims?
I think I have made myself clear on what our response should be to Steyn, he is peripheral to my concerns.
My issue is with Muslims who get caught up in non-muslim frames of reference to the detriment of the their deen. Which is why I limited my comments to the “its just words” mentality. Words matter to Muslims, the Quran is afterall “just words”. How many of us in advocating this free for of all free speech lose that last connection with our iman by forgeting to hate what is batil in our hearts, even if we can or should do no more?
How I think the Sharia should function here is not really relevant, it is what the ulema think that counts. They are the best ones to determine the “limits”. The Sharia should be our main point of reference in all things, and it is remarkably flexible. All one needs to do is look at a shining example of those who understand how to apply the Sharia like Sheikh Naeem Abdul Wali to get a proper understanding of what I mean. May Allah increase us in the benefit we derive from him and those like him. People who understand the problems we face in this society and look for solutions within the sacred framework that has been bequeathed to us instead of throwing it out and following the corruption of our diseased nafs with a few poorly understood ahadith to justify our whims. Not much between that way of doing things and joining the GIYC or whatever other bunch of letters you want to string together that are just different ways of spelling wahhabi.
Glenn Greenwald is right:
“If Muslim groups can trigger government investigations due to commentary they find offensive, so, too, can conservative Christian or right-wing Jewish groups, or conservative or neoconservative groups, or any other political faction seeking to restrict and punish speech it dislikes.”
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