A while back, I wrote about how the HRC could be used to silence critics of Islam. The Canadian Islamic Congress, whose leader, Mohamed Elmasry, has said before that he seeks to silence critics of Islam, has done just that. It has launched a suit with the HRC that seeks to charge Maclean's magazine with something like "flagrantly Islamophobic" hate speech as a violation. Maclean's has been hosting articles by Mark Steyn, and they published an excerpt from his book America Alone, which is the "offending" material. You can read it for yourself, as it is still up at the Maclean's website here.
One may ask, why would they try to quash the web article, but not the book? Well, as I said in the article I mentioned, the Human Rights Code section 13 which deals with "telecommunicated" speech is different from all other sections of the Code. It prohibits any telecommunication "that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination." There's nothing similar for non-telecommunicated speech, such as in a book. Maybe they didn't want to be known as Canada's book-burners, which would be the eventual result of banning books. The removal of webpages isn't such a dramatic image of this contempt of free speech.
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3 comments:
The CIC wants the "thought police" to do their dirty work in Canada. Of course Islamic Mosques, Imam's and Islamic websites are to continue their message of hate against Canadians, Jews and Infidels. These people are experts in double standards.
CAIR, CIC, and their allies have been at the task of harassing authors and publishers for a long time. Rushdie was high profile, and they would love to shut down Steyn I suspect. Although the rants would not stand up in a real court, some authors and publishers capitulate to avoid the cost, and perhaps the image of being "---ist". This strategy of going to the human rights tribunals is troublesome, given the "lax" standards that these bodies function under, including the waffling on telecommuncations that you note.
Mike Savage, a radio talk host in the US, has turned around to sue CAIR. Perhaps someone should file a complaint with a human rights tribunal with regard to the hate speech in the Koran.
john...
That might be a good idea. It would have more grounds than, for example, the complaint against Ezra Levant for publishing the Danish cartoons with the Western Standard.
Take all the verses from the Quran or hadith that are "likely to expose" kafirs to "hatred or contempt" that have been posted, and file the complaint against the person who posted them. These verses have actually been used to justify violence against kafirs, as Robert Spencer documents so thoroughly. This seems like a cut and dry case if you ask me.
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