Last week I commented on the outrageousness of the Human Rights Commissions in Canada accepting frivolous complaints as is the one brought by the Canadian Islamic Congress against Maclean’s magazine.
The greater shame than the HRC bureaucrats’ putting chill on free speech is, however, the lack of outrage in the mainstream media, and public apathy on an issue that strikes at the heart of Canadian democracy.
In a free society it is not surprising that organizations and individuals occasionally take umbrage over discussions of a general nature on any subject surrounded with controversy, and complain they have been injured or victimized.
For every Muslim the CIC and its head Mohamed Elmasry presume to represent in complaining to the HRC of offence caused by Maclean’s publishing of Mark Steyn’s essay on the future of Islam, there are countless Muslims dismissive of such a complaint as frivolous and false.
Muslims are not monolithic in their views on any matter, including faith and politics. In treating Muslims as of having one mind on most issues most of the time would be for me, as a Muslim, more offensive than the complaint of the CIC against Maclean’s.
It is proper to ask what is the pretext of Elmasry’s complaint and whether the HRCs are naively contributing to the advancement of the CIC’s political agenda?
CIC is a political organization, and it pushes its agenda of being seen and accepted by the Canadian state as the dominant if not the only voice of Muslims in Canada.
In this role the CIC sees itself as the main intermediary between the growing Muslim population and the representatives of the federal and provincial governments, organizing and delivering Muslims as a voting bloc or at least seen to be doing so, and by the public perception of possessing such electoral clout acquiring influence in directing Canadian politics when it comes to issues concerning Muslims domestically and in relations to the Arab-Muslim world.
But the politics of the CIC is in large measure parallel to that of the Islamists at war (jihad) against the West, as it has pushed for introducing “sharia” (Islamic laws) in Ontario and opposes the U.S. led war against Islamist terror.
It is essential for Canadians to understand that Islamism is a political ideology distinct from Islam as a religion, and most Muslims have nothing to do with Islamism, except they are not organized politically to effectively counter the Islamists.
A crucial element of the Islamist jihad in the West is to intimidate Muslim opponents of Islamism and turn advantageously liberal institutions against their Western critics.
If the HRCs rule in favour of the complainant against Maclean’s, the political agenda of the CIC to silence critics of Islamism will be greatly advanced.
The question then for HRCs would be can they distinguish between critical discussions of Islamism and Islam if some likely future complaint is brought against a publisher and an author such as Bernard Lewis, an eminent yet controversial scholar of the Middle East.
The HRC bureaucrats have shown in accepting complaints such as the one brought by the CIC that they remain ignorant of the tactics used by Islamists since the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran notoriously demanded Salman Rushdie’s murder for publishing the novel, The Satanic Verses.
It is time the mainstream media and the public vigorously defended free speech, while HRC bureaucrats displayed wisdom by turning down the CIC and Elmasry’s complaint, noting the best antidote to any harm from free speech is free speech itself.
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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