A More Redeemable Post at Gates of Vienna - But Not Quite There Yet

After my previous posts on Dymphna's reactions to inane comments made by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which I still think are embedded in Dymphna's psyche and something that needs working out, Baron Bodissey has a post on rounding up the various "Counter-Jihad" groups. It is clear that there are many perspectives and many proposed solutions to the problems, and the comments on that post display such an array of ideas.

I think that the time for discussion is over. The immediate problem is clear:

- How to reduce the number of Muslims that are already in our countries so they do not continue to influence the directions of our societies.

- How to eradicate (or reduce as much as possible) the Muslim stronghold that has already taken place.

I am beginning to form the opinion that writers are just all about talk. They love to discuss options, possibilities, wrong moves, right perspectives, historical precedents, prophecies on the future, the many variations of Islam, their moderate Muslim friends. But their actions seem limited to attending meetings and joining-up with their international co-bloggers and writers, and founding a society here or an association there.

It is time to propose concrete actions, clear strategies and manageable proposals, in order to remove the problems I've listed above. I think everyone agrees on at least those two scenarios. 

Why not take the example of Geert Wilders? He constructed a clear, concise and manageable proposition. And his party has mobilized a large number of ordinary Dutch people. His heroism stems from his action. It is as simple as that. If his method works, great. If it falters, then I am sure he will come up with a different strategy.

The point is to start. Not just to talk.

Non-discrimination and Egalitarianism at the Heart of Silencing (Free) Speech

Paul Belien of the Brussels Journal has written a devastating article on the European Union’s plans to implement a common hate crime legislation. As a preliminary to this, the EU approved the Equal Treatment Directive last spring. The Directive works towards:

[I]mplementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation... The directive applies to social protection and health care, social benefits, education and access to goods and services, including housing…

Under the directive, harassment – defined as conduct “with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person and of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment” – is deemed a form of discrimination.

Which is exactly what the Canadian Human Rights Act implemented back in 1977. From the website MapleleafWeb.com:

The Canadian Human Rights Act was introduced by the federal government in 1977. In addition to prohibiting discrimination at the federal level, the Act also established a human rights commission system, which included the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT)…

The Act also prohibits the communication of hate messages. This includes messages that encourage discrimination, hatred of a group, or which involve comments that are demeaning to a group. Initially, this prohibition was reserved only for the communication of hate messages through the telephone. In 2001, the Act was amended to explicitly include the Internet, making it unlawful to communicate hate messages on a website or via email. The Act does not apply to communications through other mediums, such as television, radio, or print media (these mediums are, instead, covered by the Canadian Broadcasting Act).

So if one Act doesn’t cover it, another one springs up conveniently.

But, more is in the machinations. The Criminal Code of Canada has a specific “Hate Propaganda” section. This from ReligiousTolerance.org:

[T]he "Hate Propaganda" section of the Criminal Code of Canada (Section 318 & 319) prohibited the expression of hatred against -- or the advocacy of genocide of -- four "identifiable groups:" people distinguished by their "color, race, religion or ethnic origin."…
Bill C-250 added sexual orientation to the list of "identifiable groups" when it was signed into law on 2004-APR-29.

Thus, anti-discriminatory measures loom big in Canadian society as a basic "Canadian Right" and as part of the Criminal Code. And they clearly are going to become a large part of European life. Restricting free speech and freedom of expression is just one of the outcomes of these policies of non-discrimination and egalitarianism. They have become our modern worldview, our mantra, and they are changing the very nature of the Western world in profoundly unexpected ways.

I have written about it extensively in my posts on the HRCs, and especially in a long post titled: "Section 13 Is Not All About Censorship, But It’s All About Prohibiting Discrimination." I have even challenged Ezra Levant to open up his perspectives on free speech. And, it bears repeating, that the immediate problem involves Muslims, who were the complainants in the dramatic nationally and internationally covered cases involving Levant, Mark Steyn and MacLeans magazine.

Levant Finally Admits the Root Problems of the Human Rights Commissions

Levant is finally admitting clearly and unequivocally who and what the root problems are in the HRCs. Here he is quoted in the Canadian Jewish News:

Levant [says the] human rights commissions...have fostered a climate of censorship, media chill and political correctness that’s now being exploited by those he calls enemies of the West, Israel and the Jewish People.

"The Jews should have known better,” Levant said. “We know about the ‘hard jihad,’ but the ‘soft jihad’ is far more effective and clever – it says to find the weakness in the law."

At the commission, however, Soharwardy [the Muslim complainant] found a far more sympathetic ear – in Levant’s view because he is Muslim.

Because of the pervasive climate of political correctness that infuses human rights commissions, Levant asserts, little heed is paid to Jewish or Christian complainants...

Regarding Muslim groups that file complaints with human rights tribunals, "the Canadian Islamic Congress did far more to destroy western freedom than 9/11 did,” Levant said. “Nine/11 did not change how we live, but [the Canadian Islamic Congress] got editors to censor ourselves."

Levant quibbles a little with the reporter - that it isn't the CIC that did the damage but the cartoon threats in general. But he is using heavy language to talk about a specific group and their specific modus operandi to shut him and others up in the name of their religion (I've bolded these emphatic words).

After Levant has clearly identified the problematic group, labeled it as an enemy of the West, described its strategy, and the force of its destruction, what more does he have to say? Nothing.

He surely has read enough online views, blogs and immigration restriction advocates to realize what the remedy is, even if he couldn't come up with it himself? What use is someone telling me that there is a wolf in the neighborhood ready to eat small children and pet dogs if I, and the neighborhood, don't lay out strategies to get rid of this intruder?

Perhaps Levant's next battle will be with himself, to pull out these logical conclusions from of his arguments.

The Impatient Muslims

If Muslims had any sense, they would be working out their take-over in stealth, creeping along with their sharia, and adding numbers and influence through immigration. They have been very successful so far. In fact, things are going much faster than expected. If one counts open mass immigration from non-Western countries to have started around 1965, that's a tremendous amount of work they've done in less than fifty years.

But, I've always maintained that they are impatient. But, it is not them that have this restless blood, it is the Koran that mandates it. They don’t trust their stealth strategy, unlike liberalism, which has taken over whole societies without even firing a bullet.

These recent events of terror plots (read jihad) in Detroit indicates that no matter how successful they may be with stealth sharia and immigration, or the hijra (as Sam Solomon has written about), it is inadequate to think of their strategy as simply these peaceful ones. If Mohammed had been smarter, he would have told Muslims to use violence very sparingly. The funny thing is that they've waited over five hundred years to make their come-back conquest of the West. If it seems to them that fifty years are an eternity, I wonder what these five hundred years were like?

Why Dymphna Is Seriously Mistaken

My previous post was about the Gates of Vienna co-blogger Dymphna, who accepted immigrant Hirsi Ali's comments on the cliched (and self-serving) view that America is an "idea."

It could be that Dymphna just went along with this because she likes Ali, since she starts her post praising Ali and her: "[I]ncisive intelligence [and] her willingness to take politically incorrect positions."

She should read Ali's interview carefully, since there are parts where Ali is tediously conventional and at times incoherent, especially when she critiques Christianity and when she vacillates between radical and moderate Islam.

I won't go into the interview, since I have discussed Ali's mixed messages several times on both this blog and at Camera Lucida. Rather, I would just like to mention Dymphna's (and I assume her co-blogger Baron Bodissey 's) error.

If America is just an idea, devoid of a culture, a history and a specific ethnic people which built and developed it into the America even Ali can identify (she differentiates it easily from France, for example), here is the problem. How can Dymphna and Bodissey believe in Muslims’ peculiarities of religion and culture – which they report daily on their anti-jiahd blog - if they accept that America is none of that, and is merely an abstract idea? Why one set of criteria for Muslims, and another for America? Muslims themselves have rejected that America is cultureless or a mere idea. They must believe in the concreteness of America’s people, religion culture and certainly ethnicity, since they are working so hard to be rid of it.

In a strange way, Dymphna is behaving like the Muslims she daily denounces on her anti-jihad blog. While Muslims want everyone to be Muslim by hook or by crook (often by crook), she also has no qualms about anyone (everyone) being American through immigration. Dymphna’s abstract and idea-based America open to all is a mirror image of the universalist, yet religion-specific, violent ummah of Islam.

There's nothing wrong with bad ideas as long as they don't see the light of day. But Dymphna's convoluted views are commonly held, and their devastating consequence is that they will allow more of these Muslims (like any other immigrants) to enter this "idea-based" America through the generous and open immigration system. These Muslims will then escalate their activity of destroying America they have assessed as being very particular and certainly not an idea (nor Muslim), and engulfing it into their Islamic ummah. The happy universalism that Dymphna may have envisioned then turns rapidly into the Islamic purgatory she never expected.

I try to avoid commenting on Hirsi Ali's latest media pop-up. Because that's what she does. She shows up at some major national newspaper, makes her liberal statements on radical Islam, promotes yet another autobiography, then she resumes her post at the genrous American Enterprise Institute. Here is her interview on October 17, 2009 with the LA Times.

There are many things to critique in her interview. As I had thought a while ago, she seems to be focussing some of her energy on the treatment of Muslim women under Islam (and sharia). I wonder if this means that she will try to facilitate "abused" Muslim women refugees' entry in the U.S., as a sanctuary country? The article calls her "Feminism's freedom fighter." Feminism for whom? Although she may associate Islam with mysogyny, I wonder how many Muslim women really think so, and are content to follow their religion and mandates? These will be interesting developments to follow.

And I need to mention, that her bigoted view of all religion, and I think her equal dislike of Christianiyt, has her say these things to a public, American newspaper:

[M]ost people with a Christian background who are on that level of development [she means here educated] no longer defend Christianity in the same way that those who are born into Islam still defend it.

Her comparison of the Koran with the Bible is that Christians have "reformed" their religion over time, to "move away from less radical ideas." If Christians can do so, then surely Muslims can to.

Her final point, without analysing her points too much, is that Christians have changed, they have reinterprated the Bible to suit

More Proof that Conservatives Are Out to Lunch

Dymphna of the Gates of Vienna, who was one of the conservatives whose whereabouts I inquired about here, has given me - only a few days later - more reason (proof) for my concern. She has posted an interview Ayan Hirsi Ali recently had with the LA Times, and added her own commentary. It is an astonishing revelation by one of the most prominent anti-jihad conservative bloggers. There is nothing conservative about what Dymphna has written. Here a quote from Ali's interview that merited Dymphna 's commentary.

Ali, who is eligible for American citizenship in three years says:

America has the advantage that when you become a citizen, you pledge loyalty to a Constitution that’s about ideas and not about ethnicity. Because of that, Americans do not feel shy about teaching new Americans why citizenship is important, why patriotism is important, pride about the Founding Fathers. That’s an easier sell than taking pride in the history of France, for instance.

To which Dymphna adds:

Heh. Another Francophobe here.

That's it. A foreign ex-Muslim comes to her country, derides her country's history and culture, and reduces it to an abstract concept, and all Dymphna could do was agree with a chuckle.

In my recent trip to NYC, and even in my travels across New York State and Pennsylvania, I was struck by the uniqueness of what I saw. Nothing like NYC could grow out of a Canadian culture, try as people might with Toronto. All the farmlands at the bottom of hills and forests are so uniquely American (and admittedly Canadian – there are still a lot of resemblances between these two countries), with their distinct red barns, the tall round silos, and the carefully cultivated very large farms which are like comforting oases in valleys below the giant mountains. But the difference in size is still tremendous between Canada and the U.S., and the farmlands are a testament to this (and of course the NYC monoliths). Even the mountains are bigger!

I find it astonishing that immigrants to the U.S., and of course here in Canada, keep stressing - self-servingly, I am now sure - that there is no "culture" here, that everything is a blank slate up for grabs by anyone who crosses the shores.

I'm surprised that someone like Dymphna fell for this. But, wasn't that my point all along?