Since 9/11 it is transparently clear the assault against the West by Islamists is not limited to indiscriminate violence.
Islamists also are “using our own legal system as a weapon against us” as Professor John Yoo at the law faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, recently noted.
Islamism is Janus-faced with one face bearing the dreadful visage of Osama bin Laden and the unholy fanatics of the Arab-Muslim world. The other face bears the likeness of “everyman,” making it indistinguishable everywhere.
Islamists with their ideological fellow travellers and apologists wearing the Everyman’s mask have adopted “lawfare” – a term coined by Yoo – as “another dimension of warfare” against the West.
The case brought to the federal and provincial (Ontario and British Columbia) Human Rights Commissions against Maclean’s magazine for publishing Mark Steyn’s essay on the future belonging to Islam, a growing faith, is an example of “lawfare” being used to undermine the fundamental values of liberal democracy.
The case was brought by Mohamed Elmasry and the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC).
Elmasry and the CIC are well known to Canadians keeping track of them, and the case against Maclean’s reflects their political hucksterism and notoriety as apologists for Islamism.
As once noted about the Holy Roman Empire for being neither holy, nor Roman, Elmasry’s CIC is neither Canadian, nor Islamic. It speaks only for that segment of Canadian Muslims who publicly or privately support the Islamist agenda of global jihad.
Elmasry’s complaint that Maclean’s discriminated against him as a Muslim and the Muslim community at large by publishing Steyn’s essay, described as “flagrantly anti-Muslim” is frivolous and false.
Elmasry is incapable of grasping what freedom means – he is on public record for insisting all adult Israelis are legitimate targets for Palestinian suicide bombers, only apologizing under duress – since he comes from a culture where freedom is mostly non-existent.
But it is outrageous that the HRCs are willing to entertain such frivolous complaints as Alberta’s did in accepting a similar complaint against Ezra Levant, the publisher of Western Standard, now out of business.
The objection of Islamists that discussions of Islam and Islamism – the latter being a totalitarian ideology – is offensive deserves contemptuous dismissal, not an investigation by the HRC at taxpayers’ expense.
The complaint by anyone – least of all Islamists as determined foes of liberal democracy – of being offended by the general robustness of free speech would be indicative that the complainant cannot distinguish between speech that could be construed as maliciously directed at an individual, or a group, and speech in all its variety and vigour that makes for free discourse in the media and academia.
Freedom comes with cost, and the cost of freedom of expression enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms is finding someone occasionally offended, yet this cannot be the basis for bridging or censoring the most fundamental right of an open society.
It will not be surprising to learn the HRC bureaucrats find incomprehensible the observation made by Ronald Dworkin, a highly respected legal philosopher, “the only right you don’t have in a democracy is the right not to be offended.”
Federal and provincial legislators bear heavy responsibility in protecting our democracy and safeguarding our freedoms.
The HRC’s function urgently needs confinement by statute to its original purpose, while denying it authority to entertain frivolous complaints – as is Elmasry’s case against Maclean’s – that would subvert rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Charter.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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