My wife bears the brunt of my emotional outbursts of frustration when I tell her stories like the one I wrote about earler in the week (Vancouver Muslim espouses jihad, calls Jews ‘monkeys and swine’)—and she agrees with me! I assure you what I wrote and what I said to her are quite different!
But as she always reminds me even though she knows I know, I would caution that we all agree it’s really just a small minority of extremists who ruin the reputation of an otherwise peaceful religion of Islam. Yes, that “small minority” could still, in practical terms, be pretty huge in number, but I would warn against branding all Muslims as being of the same mind as the savage depicted in this story.
(I always argue back to my wife that yes, she’s right to remind me, but I think that “minority” is bigger than you think it is…)
That being said, some of my most bitter outrage comes as a result of the lackadaisical attitude we all seem to have (well, you and I excepted), when stories like this come up. If that Muslim cleric were instead a conservative politician, speaking out against abortion or gay marriage or against all those massive social programs, there’d be mass protests, maybe a few threats against his life, and politicians especially from the left would be making grand speeches condemning him. You might even get a liberal calling him a member of a coalition of idiots or something.
Instead, as I read in the Vancouver Sun this morning, there was this paragraph:
On Friday, those comments triggered a confrontation outside the Dar al-Madinah mosque as a lone protester waved a sign at people going into the storefront doorway.
That is what fuels my outrage as much as anything. And it served to validate my initial outburst to my wife because that was exactly the theme of it when I explained the story to my wife the day before on our afternoon stroll which we take everyday to calm our nerves yeah right.
The story in the Sun went on to report: “B’Nai Brith Canada called on B.C. Attorney-General Geoff Plant to begin an immediate investigation. A spokeswoman for the ministry declined to comment.”
Declined to even bother to comment.
And then the story continues to set up my outrage for today’s afternoon stroll:
Some in the group tried to yank the placard from Karim and shove him from outside the mosque entrance but were restrained by others. Shaken by the ordeal, Karim, who left soon after, said he was appalled by their reaction—and by Kathrada’s comments.
“I’m saddened that this type of hate speech can be said in the name of Islam,” he said.
But he was shouted down by Muslims close to Kathrada. One man, who would not give his name, said of the anti-Semitic comments: “This is a minor issue. Do you know what the Palestinians are going through? You have no idea.”
Another man, who looked no older than 20, said: “We are an honest, peaceful people and who speak the truth. If it hurts, so be it. No Jew will be spared.”
Any lawyers out there? Any police officers? These words constitute a hate crime in Canada. No matter—it was only a bunch of Jew who are being victimized? It so unnerves me I can’t hardly hold in the anger.
And finally, this statement from a lawyer, which sheds some light at the end of the tunnel, maybe. And it could be very revealing from a political perspective, especially insofar as a comparison to how the gay lobby might expect society’s institutions to react if someone called a gay man a “fifi”:
David Matas, a lawyer for B’nai Brith, said Kathrada could be prosecuted under Canada’s hate crime laws against inciting hatred and/or genocide. Given that Kathrada’s comments are on tape and he has not denied them, any case against him would be “cut and dried,” he said.
The case against him and, apparently, a number of his followers.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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