8 May 2008 @ 10:01PM >> The Associated Press reports:

A Malaysian Islamic court allowed a Muslim convert Thursday to return to her original faith of Buddhism, setting a precedent that could ease religious minorities’ worries about their legal rights.

Lawyers said the Shariah High Court’s verdict in the northern state of Penang was the first time in recent memory that a convert has been permitted to legally renounce Islam in this Muslim-majority nation.

A rising number of disputes about religious conversions has sparked anxiety among minorities — predominantly Buddhist, Christian and Hindu — because in the past courts virtually always ruled against people seeking to leave Islam.

Penang’s Shariah court, however, granted Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah’s request to be declared a non-Muslim. She embraced Islam in 1998 because she wanted to marry an Iranian, but claimed she never truly practiced the religion.

“I am very happy,” Siti, a 39-year-old ethnic Chinese cake seller, told The Associated Press by telephone. “I want to go to the temple to pray and give thanks.”

The Shariah court, which governs Muslims’ personal conduct and religious lives, ruled that Siti’s husband and Islamic authorities failed to give her proper religious advice.

“So you can’t blame her for her ignorance of the teachings and wanting to convert out,” said Ahmad Munawir Abdul Aziz, a lawyer for the Islamic Affairs Council in Penang.

1 May 2008 @ 9:11PM >> Get ready to start surrendering more of your rights to government. You knew the Nannycrats wouldn’t stop at smoking, fast food and foie gras. Now they’ve got their crosshairs zeroed in on that modern-day horror, the thing most of us dread and fear... you guessed it...

Plastic bags:

[Baltimore City Councilman James Kraft] equated using plastic bags with Nazi extermination tactics at a City Council meeting earlier this week.

“We don’t want to be criticized by future generations for not doing enough now as were those who dealt with the Germans then,” Kraft said.

So what follows? Should those who use plastic bags be charged with murder? Genocide?

No one can claim plastic bags help the environment. But he hurts his cause by outsizing their danger by orders of magnitude - especially when similar plans have failed throughout the rest of [Maryland].

Bills in both Anne Arundel County and the state legislature failed to make it into law in the past year. And studies show plastic bags are cheaper and require less energy to make than paper bags.

They are also much less environmentally-unfriendly than people like Councilman Kraft believe, according to the London Times:

Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.

The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds.

[...]

Campaigners say that plastic bags pollute coastlines and waterways, killing or injuring birds and livestock on land and, in the oceans, destroying vast numbers of seabirds, seals, turtles and whales. However, The Times has established that there is no scientific evidence to show that the bags pose any direct threat to marine mammals.

They “don’t figure” in the majority of cases where animals die from marine debris, said David Laist, the author of a seminal 1997 study on the subject. Most deaths were caused when creatures became caught up in waste produce. “Plastic bags don’t figure in entanglement,” he said. “The main culprits are fishing gear, ropes, lines and strapping bands. Most mammals are too big to get caught up in a plastic bag.”

[...]

The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.

Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to “plastic bags”.

The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the “typo” remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing “plastic bags” with “plastic debris”.

Oops.

Nevertheless, knowledge of this error will not quell the Nannies’ desires to meddle more.

Bored people seeking the tingle of power are drawn to becoming Nannies because they get to feel morally superior while also controlling the behavior of others. It’s a win-win.

So I predict, the campaign against plastic bags will continue.

27 April 2008 @ 11:49AM >> Senator Barack Obama’s “spiritual advisor” and pastor of 20 years is the gift that keeps on giving... to the Senator’s opponents:

We cannot see how what we are doing is the same thing al-Qaeda is doing under a different color flag, calling on the name a different God to sanction and approve our murder and our mayhem.-Reverend Jeremiah Wright

(Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt.)

22 April 2008 @ 8:16PM >> Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri seems upset that conspiracy theorists are robbing his terrorist network of the recognition it deserves.

CNN reports:

Al-Zawahiri also denied a conspiracy theory that Israel carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., and he blamed Iran and Shiite Hezbollah for spreading the idea to discredit the Sunni al Qaeda’s achievement.

Hey, Ayman! Don’t forget that the Western left has a stake in promoting the al-Qaeda-didn’t-do-it theory. After all, if they’re forced to acknowledge that the attack was perpetrated by al Qaeda, then they can’t also claim it was an “inside job” orchestrated by the U.S. government.

Al-Zawahiri accused Hezbollah’s al-Manar television of starting the rumor.

“The purpose of this lie is clear — (to suggest) that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no else did in history. Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it,” he said.

And plenty of Westerners have bought into it, too.

13 April 2008 @ 5:01AM >> A lack of action in Iraq leads to a pretty funny conversation in this video.

(Hat tip: Peter Mertz.)

8 April 2008 @ 12:13AM >> In the 1980s and ’90s, many schools began adding children’s books to the curriculum that portrayed gay relationships. At the time, some people objected, but the people who objected did not outrank gays in the Multicultural Hierarchy, so the books stayed in the classroom.

But because multiculturalism depends more on faddish following than coherent philosophy, today’s politically correct darlings can be quickly cast aside as more exotic and fashionable groups are anointed with Victim Status.

In the schools of one British town, gays are now being looked on as no better than those rapacious Dead White Males who, because they fanned out from Europe over centuries past to destroy everything good in the world, needed to be purged from the curriculum.

Say hello to multiculturalism’s new power constituency:

Two primary schools have withdrawn storybooks about same-sex relationships after objections from Muslim parents.

Up to 90 gathered at the schools to complain about the books which are aimed at pupils as young as five.

One story, titled King & King, is a fairytale about a prince who turns down three princesses before marrying one of their brothers.

Another named And Tango Makes Three features two male penguins who fall in love at a New York zoo.

Bristol City Council said the two schools had been using the books to ensure they complied with gay rights laws which came into force last April.

They were intended to help prevent homophobic bullying, it said.

But the council has since removed the books from Easton Primary School and Bannerman Road Community School, both in Bristol.

A book and DVD titled That’s a Family!, which teaches children about different family set-ups including gay or lesbian parents, has also been withdrawn.

The decision was made to enable the schools to “operate safely” after parents voiced their concerns at meetings.

[...]

Members of the Bristol Muslim Cultural Society said parents were upset at the lack of consultation over the use of the materials.

Farooq Siddique, community development officer for the society and a governor at Bannerman Road, said there were also concerns about whether the stories were appropriate for young children.

[...]

He added: “In Islam homosexual relationships are not acceptable, as they are not in Christianity and many other religions but the main issue is that they didn’t bother to consult with parents.”

15 March 2008 @ 1:56PM >> The Associated Press reports on the latest attempt to impose Sharia standards on Western civilization:

The Muslim world has created a battle plan to defend its religion from political cartoonists and bigots.

Concerned about what they see as a rise in the defamation of Islam, leaders of the world’s Muslim nations are considering taking legal action against those that slight their religion or its sacred symbols. It was a key issue during a two-day summit that ended Friday in this western Africa capital.

The Muslim leaders are attempting to demand redress from nations like Denmark, which allowed the publication of cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in 2006 and again last month, to the fury of the Muslim world.

Though the legal measures being considered have not been spelled out, the idea pits many Muslims against principles of freedom of speech enshrined in the constitutions of numerous Western governments.

“I don’t think freedom of expression should mean freedom from blasphemy,” said Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade, the chairman of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference. “There can be no freedom without limits.”

[...]

“Muslims are being targeted by a campaign of defamation, denigration, stereotyping, intolerance and discrimination,” charged Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the secretary general of the group.

The report urges the creation of a “legal instrument” to crack down on defamation of Islam. Some delegates point to laws in Europe criminalizing the denial of the Holocaust and other anti-Semitic rhetoric. They also point to articles within various U.N. charters that condemn discrimination based on religion and argue that these should be ramped up.

“In our relation with the western world, we are going through a difficult time,” Ihsanoglu told the summit’s general assembly. “Islamophobia cannot be dealt with only through cultural activities but (through) a robust political engagement.”

[...]

Hemayet Uddin, the lead author of the OIC report and head of cultural affairs for the group said legal action is needed because “this Islamophobia that we see in the world has gone far beyond a phobia. It is now at the level of hatred, of xenophobia, and we need to act.”

A new charter drafted by the OIC commits the Muslim body “to protect and defend the true image of Islam” and “to combat the defamation of Islam.”

The image if Islam isn’t damaged by people criticizing the excesses of the Jihadists, it is damaged by people who commit murder and other atrocities in the name of Islam. If the OIC spent as much time trying to stamp out the extremism in their own ranks, maybe the world’s perception of Islam would be a little better. But instead of trying to rein in the extremists who kill in the name of Islam, the OIC wants to prevent anyone from even discussing it.

The West has a long tradition of allowing very strong and sometimes quite pungent criticism of religion. Here in America, we’re so tolerant that if you want to put a Christian cross in a jar of urine, you can get a government grant as long as you call it “art.” If you smear elephant dung on an image of the Virgin Mary, we’ll feature it in one of our nation’s most prominent museums. But if the OIC and their multicultural enablers in the West had their way, legitimate commentary on the state of the world—such as a cartoon depicting Muhammad with a bomb in his turban—would be illegal.

If the OIC wants respect, they should start by focusing their anger at the people who really are tarnishing Islam by killing in its name. And stop demanding that the West carve out a special exemption for Islam that no other religion enjoys.

7 March 2008 @ 8:13AM >> Separate but equal, in the name of multiculturalism:

Six times a week, Harvard kicks all the guys out of the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center at the request of the Harvard Islamic Society. This is to accommodate those female Muslim students whose faith won’t let them work out in front of men.

In the old days, Harvard would have laughed if some Catholic or evangelical mother urged “girls-only” campus workouts in the name of modesty. Today, Harvard happily implements Sharia swim times in the name of Mohammed.

At Harvard, that’s called progress.

When I asked Harvard spokesman Bob Mitchell about this new Sharia-friendly policy, he denied that they were banning anyone. “No, no,” he told me, “we’re permitting women to work out in an environment that accommodates their religion.”

By banning all men from the facility, right?

“It’s not ‘banning,’” he insisted. “We’re allowing, we’re accommodating people.”

Mark Steyn comments:

In Minneapolis last year, the airport licensing authority, faced with a mainly Muslim crew of cab drivers refusing to carry the blind, persons with six-packs of Bud, slatternly women, etc, proposed instituting two types of taxis with differently colored lights, one of which would indicate the driver was prepared to carry members of identity groups that offend Islam. Forty years ago, advocating separate drinking fountains made you a racist. Today, advocating separate taxi cabs or separate swimming sessions makes you a multiculturalist.

And Glenn Reynolds adds, “Meanwhile, some readers wonder if Harvard will close its gyms to openly gay men at certain hours, so that straight men who are made uncomfortable by gays can work out without being uncomfortable. It appears that they’re in sync with Islamic thought.”

3 March 2008 @ 7:49AM >> Sharia law now governs the content of art exhibits in Germany:

A Berlin gallery has closed an exhibition of satirical art by the controversial Danish group Surrend after receiving threats from a group of Muslims. The men were objecting to a picture of the Kaaba at Mecca under the title “Dumb Stone.”

Eighteen months ago, the severed head of Muhammad was enough to get an opera temporarily cancelled in Berlin. This time around, it’s an irreverent image of the Kaaba in Mecca that has caused an exhibition in the German capital to shut its doors.

But there is one major difference between the two incidents: Whereas the mere spectre of possible attacks was enough to get the Deutsche Oper to put the kibosh on a Mozart opera in 2006, Berlin’s Galerie Nord closed its doors this week after a group of Muslims walked into the gallery and threatened staff with violence.

“It was a very explosive situation,” Jan Egesborg, whose satirical art group Surrend created the Galerie Nord exhibition, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “We don’t want to be part of the current Islamophobic tendency in Europe. We weren’t trying to provoke Muslims.”

The exhibition, called “ZOG — Surrend,” opened last Friday and was scheduled to run until the end of March. Conceived by the controversial Danish satirical art group, it included a picture of the black, cube-shaped Kaaba in the Muslim holy city of Mecca. Above the image, a headline read “Dumb Stone.” Gallery manager Ralf Hartmann decided on Tuesday to shut down the show after six men believed to have been Muslims turned up demanding that the image be removed. The men reportedly threatened the staff with violence should they not comply.

The president of Berlin’s influential Academy of Arts, Klaus Staeck, who opened the exhibition last week, expressed his support for the Danish group Friday. “I extend my solidarity to all artists ... whose work is threatened by violent people who hold different beliefs,” Staeck said, adding that he hoped the exhibition could re-open soon.

Egesborg, one of the four artists who created the works in the exhibition, said that the exhibition was intended to satirize the far-right “Zionist Occupied Government” (ZOG) conspiracy theory, which holds that groups of Jews are secretly running certain countries. “If we were trying to provoke anyone, then it was the neo-Nazis,” Egesborg said.

He explained that Surrend “could not make good satirical art about the ZOG theme without making fun of radical Islam,” given that such anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are popular in the Middle East. He described the exhibition, which also satirizes Jewish extremists, as “very balanced,” adding: “That’s why the attack is so ignorant. We are surprised as a group by the reaction.”

Silly Europeans. Haven’t they figured out by now that you can’t criticize radical Islam?

23 February 2008 @ 10:03AM >> It no longer matters whether you live in a Western country that respects free speech. If you dare say anything critical of radical Islam, the long arm of Sharia law will still try to reach out and choke you:

Iran has urged the Netherlands to block a planned anti-Koran film, citing Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights as the legal basis for doing so. [...] Iran’s Justice Minister Gholamhossein Elham asked his Dutch counterpart Ernst Hirsch Ballin to use European human rights law to stop a European from exercising one of those most basic rights. Freedom of expression has been the rallying cry of those who defended the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten for publishing the Mohammad cartoons - and republishing the most controversial one (the turban bomb) this week after a death threat against the artist who drew it.

[...]

On Friday, Iran’s news agency IRNA reported on the letter, which the Dutch government told NRC Handelsblad it had not yet received. IRNA wrote the following [...]:

“You can stop the process of this satanic and highly intriguing move resorting to articles in European Convention on Human Rights ... We, too, know and respect the freedom of expression, but insulting the sanctities and ethical values on that pretext is totally unacceptable.”

Elham reminded Balin of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, where it states, “...On this basis, observing freedom of expression, keeping in mind the responsibilities thereof, can be restricted in order to avoid the occurrence of chaotic social conditions, commiting crimes, safeguarding ethical values, or the others’ rights.”

Iran’s Justice Minister at the end of his letter to his Dutch counterpart considers the movie insulting against the most sacred sanctity of the world Muslims, a satanic move that can intrigue social unrest, and violating the rights of the entire world Muslims, asking for immediate halting of the blasphemous film’s production.

If you assume that complaints like this won’t go anywhere, you haven’t been paying attention.

8 February 2008 @ 9:24AM >> That’s what you’d have to say if the Archbishop of Canterbury had his way:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has today said that the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the UK is “unavoidable” and that it would help maintain social cohesion.

Rowan Williams told BBC Radio 4’s World At One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

He says that Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court. He added Muslims should not have to choose between “the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty”.

Great idea. Let Sharia law govern marital disputes. If that happens, Britain is one step closer to legalizing the killing of Muslim women, as long as the murderers are male relatives.

Thankfully, the misguided Archbishop doesn’t go quite so far as to suggest that British law should never apply to Muslims, and therefore under his scheme there would be a right to “appeal” to British common law:

“It would be quite wrong to say that we could ever license a system of law for some community which gave people no right of appeal, no way of exercising the rights that are guaranteed to them as citizens in general.

But still, setting up parallel rules of law for different communities is a great way to ensure the eventual disintegration of a society. With honor killings already occurring in Western societies, granting legitimacy to separate judicial systems is a further signal that Muslims in Western countries will not be held to Western standards.

If such a plan is instituted, eventually, someone will argue that this partial accommodation of Sharia law is insufficient and that by putting British law above Sharia law, Muslim are in effect second-class citizens. And the multicultural enablers in Britain will be convinced that this is true, that Sharia law should not take a back seat to British law. They will say that bigotry is the reason that Sharia law is subordinate to British law, and the only way to end the bigotry is for Muslims communities to have full control over policing their own affairs.

In the long run, there is no way to partially apply Sharia law. Either it applies, or it does not. And if it applies, then Muslims in Britain would have no more rights than Muslims in Iran or Saudi Arabia.

1 February 2008 @ 8:34AM >> In Canada, reviewing a fictional book can be considered evidence of a hate crime.

Mark Steyn, who is currently being brought up on hate speech charges by an extrajudicial government arm inappropriately called a “Human Rights Commission,” once reviewed a novel depicting a future in which America succumbs to Sharia law by the year 2040.

Steyn’s description of the book’s plot points is now being cited as evidence of “blatant Islamophobia,” to which he responds:

But the plaintiffs, and presumably the "human rights investigators" to whom they took their complaint, apparently believe that describing the plot of a novel should be actionable. I wonder how, say, Margaret Atwood feels about that. A few years back, she wrote her own dystopian theocratic fantasy about an America renamed the Republic of Gilead and under the thumb of a Falwell-Schlaflyesque Christian tyranny. What's to stop a Christian group taking a doting Atwood reviewer - or maybe the author herself - to a Canadian "human rights" kangaroo court? C'mon, you leftie novelists, what do you think there’ll be left for you to write about once the plot of a work of fiction becomes a recognized “hate crime”?

Of course, the “leftie novelists” probably aren’t worried. They’re in on the joke, and they know that hate speech laws will never be applied to them as long as their invective is directed at the right targets.

30 January 2008 @ 9:15AM >> “The international media hasn’t been reporting it prominently, so you may or may not know that rockets have been raining down on southern Israel regularly over the past few months — as many as fifty a day.”

25 January 2008 @ 4:53AM >> According to an upcoming 60 Minutes report, Saddam Hussein lied about weapons of mass destruction:

Saddam Hussein initially didn’t think the U.S. would invade Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction, so he kept the fact that he had none a secret to prevent an Iranian invasion he believed could happen. The Iraqi dictator revealed this thinking to George Piro, the FBI agent assigned to interrogate him after his capture.

[...]

“He told me he initially miscalculated... President Bush’s intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998...a four-day aerial attack,” says Piro. “He survived that one and he was willing to accept that type of attack.” “He didn’t believe the U.S. would invade?” asks Pelley, “No, not initially,” answers Piro.

[...]

Saddam still wouldn’t admit he had no weapons of mass destruction, even when it was obvious there would be military action against him because of the perception he did. Because, says Piro, “For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam. He thought that [faking having the weapons] would prevent the Iranians from reinvading Iraq,” he tells Pelley.

He also intended and had the wherewithal to restart the weapons program. “Saddam] still had the engineers. The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there,” says Piro. “He wanted to pursue all of WMD...to reconstitute his entire WMD program.” This included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Piro says.

By the time the war began, Saddam Hussein had already been subverting the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food program for years. U.N. bureaucrats and foreign officials around the globe were being paid by Saddam to look the other way as he used the Oil-for-Food program as his own personal slush fund in one of the biggest financial scams in human history.

In other words, the U.N.’s sanctions against Saddam were far worse than completely ineffective; they were helping Saddam’s regime.

Without war, sanctions would have eventually gone away, and the rest of the world would have been in the position of hoping that the Saddam Hussein was completely reformed and that his talk never turned into action.

Given Saddam’s history of filling mass graves, only a fool would stake their safety on that wishful thinking.

21 January 2008 @ 10:40AM >> According to the Associated Press, “less than 1 percent” of the population of Belarus is Muslim. Nevertheless, it appears that Sharia law has been instituted in the former Soviet republic:

A Belarus court sentenced a newspaper editor Friday to three years in prison for reprinting a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked worldwide riots when it was initially published in a Danish newspaper.

[...]

Security officers in Belarus launched an investigation of Sdvizhkov in February 2006 when he published the caricatures which had originally appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

Fiery protests swept across Muslim countries in early 2006 in reaction to the Danish publication.

President Alexander Lukashenko ordered the paper shut the following month, calling the publication of the cartoon “a provocation against the state.” Sdvizhkov was arrested and charged with “inciting religious hatred” in November 2007 when he returned to Belarus following several months of living in Russia and Ukraine.

The Minsk City Court imposed its sentence Friday after a closed-door trial.

As Glenn Reynolds notes, “if you don’t want your religion dissed, you might as well start blowing people up. Obviously, it works. Nice incentive structure, there.”

13 January 2008 @ 12:20PM >> I got to know David French in producing Indoctrinate U. When I interviewed David, he was the head of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a non-partisan group that fights for the free speech and free thought rights of students and professors.

Recently, I got an update on David through a mutual friend, who pointed me to this, written by David’s wife Nancy:

I knew when my husband David French [...] watched the towers fall on 9/11 on his law firm’s television, he wanted to do something. Four years later, he did, by resigning from his role in the civil liberties arena and joining the Army Reserves. In 2007, he left the comfort of his home and family and went to Forward Operating Base Caldwell in Iraq where he serves as the Squadron Judge Advocate for Sabre (2d) Squadron, 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment.

At Camp Caldwell, he has joined over a thousand soldiers who share less than a dozen phones and computers, making it impossible to stay in touch with family and friends back home.

David feels strongly about this form of service. And we made this decision as a family. David’s deployment has certainly challenged our family’s life. But we’ve been able to remain somewhat connected by sending him care packages. And many of our friends sent David care packages just as soon as we knew his mailing address.

However, David noticed many of the young soldiers receive nothing. Some have dysfunctional or almost no family support back home. Others come from very low income backgrounds where the families cannot afford to send many items.

To address this need, David and Nancy were involved in starting Operation Send-a-box:

Operation Send-a-Box aspires to send two care packages to every soldier in the Sabre squadron by the end of February—ambitious since there are over a thousand soldiers serving in this strategic location. The squadron’s chaplain has agreed to distribute packages to soldiers who have not yet received mail from home, beginning with the lowest ranked soldiers.

29 December 2007 @ 1:13PM >> How did this Photoshopped picture make it from a satirical website run by some friends of mine to the Iranian Press TV website? For the hilarious story, visit The People’s Cube.

16 December 2007 @ 5:05PM >> One of my favorite writers is in trouble for speaking his mind—and speaking the truth—in Canada:

Celebrated author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges linked to his book “America Alone.”

The book, a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist imperialist threat. The fact that charges based on it are proceeding apace proves his point.

Steyn, who won the 2006 Eric Breindel Journalism Award (co-sponsored by The Post and its parent, News Corp), writes for dozens of publications on several continents. After the Canadian general-interest magazine Maclean’s reprinted a chapter from the book, five Muslim law-school students, acting through the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress, demanded that the magazine be punished for spreading “hatred and contempt” for Muslims.

The plaintiffs allege that Maclean’s advocated, among other things, the notion that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada’s liberalized, Western civilization. They insist such a notion is untrue and, in effect, want opinions like that banned from publication.

Two separate panels, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, have agreed to hear the case. These bodies are empowered to hear and rule on cases of purported “hate speech.”

Of course, a ban on opinions - even disagreeable ones - is the very antithesis of the Western tradition of free speech and freedom of the press.

Indeed, this whole process of dragging Steyn and the magazine before two separate human-rights bodies for the “crime” of expressing an opinion is a good illustration of precisely what he was talking about.

It doesn’t matter whether Steyn and Maclean’s win the case. The mere fact that they are forced to go to court to defend their free speech rights is punishment enough, and it will encourage others in Canada to keep quiet.

Not everyone who runs afoul of the Speech Police will have the time, resources or resolve to fight for what is an obviously basic right in any truly free society. So this action will immediately silence an unknowable number of people whose opinions run the risk of offending Members of an Anointed Group.

Whatever the outcome, Canadians shouldn’t fear that they might lose their right to think freely. They should mourn, because that right is long gone.

16 December 2007 @ 10:36AM >> If Muslims like Hassan Askari and Mansoor Ijaz got more attention from the media—and more support from their fellow believers around the world—we would have much less reason to worry about the future of humanity.

13 December 2007 @ 12:05AM >> An “honor” killing among our neighbors to the north:

A 16-year-old girl died in hospital late Monday night, hours after police in Mississauga received a call from a man saying he had killed his daughter.

Muhammad Parvez, 57, has been charged with murder in connection with the death of his daughter, Aqsa Parvez. He will appear Tuesday in a Brampton court.

The victim’s 26-year-old brother, Waqas Parvez, has been charged with obstructing police.

Students at nearby Applewood Heights Secondary School in Mississauga said the teen had recently clashed with her family after ceasing to wear a hijab and adopting a more Western style of dress.

According to police, the chain of events began yesterday morning with a phone call from a home near Hurontario Street and Eglinton Avenue.

“At 7:55 a.m., we received a 911 call from a man claiming that he had just killed his daughter,” Constable J.P. Valade of Peel Police said.

11 December 2007 @ 6:56PM >> The headline above can be parsed in two different ways. A court in Iraq will soon try to determine which is more accurate.

Jim Hanson of Pajamas Media reports:

AP photographer Bilal Hussein was on the radar screen of US forces prior to his being detained in a chance encounter April 12, 2006. He was a stringer working in Fallujah who filed numerous reports and photos that seemed to need a high degree of cooperation from the terrorists. He has been in custody for 19 months and will soon face trial by the Iraqi government on charges related to his activities with Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and Ramadi. Evidence against him is expected to be given to the Iraqi government this week.

Hussein was in his house with Hamid Hamad Motib, a known al-Qaeda leader, last year when Marines wanted to use the house as an observation point. They determined Motib’s identity and status as a wanted terrorist and took both him and Hussein into custody. They also recovered a number of items that led them to believe that Hussein was involved in insurgent activities. The US will now provide the evidence it has to the Iraqi government.

[...]

Bilal Hussein had free reign [sic] to be anywhere and was often taking pictures in the company of insurgents and terrorists. He and the other stringers who made up AP’s Pulitzer Prize winning photo team managed to capture assassinations as they happened. They were on site at bombings within seconds to capture the carnage almost as it happened.

This access and the number of false reports of civilian deaths led the information operations staff to take note. They began monitoring Hussein more closely for two reasons: one they were tasked with countering or debunking false claims of civilian casualties and atrocities, second because Hussein’s very tight relations with the insurgents could be used against the Marines themselves.

The photo to the right was taken by Balil Hussein. It appears to show Italian hostage Salvatore Santoro shortly before he was executed. The Associated Press tries to defend Hussein by copping to a different journalistic no-no: that the photo was staged after Santoro’s execution.

Either way, Hussein had remarkable access to terrorists, and he routinely supplied photographs to AP that were useful propaganda for insurgents. By AP’s own admission, he dutifully waited while insurgents staged an execution scene, proving that he was an active participant in generating their propaganda.

So even if you give the Associated Press the benefit of the doubt, the best you can say is that their own evidence shows that Hussein was a willing tool of the insurgents.

Was he more than that?

Iraqi authorities will be seeking a verdict on that question soon enough.

9 December 2007 @ 11:48PM >> An imam in Great Britain is attempting to impose Sharia law—through the execution of his own daughter:

The daughter of a British imam is living under police protection after receiving death threats from her father for converting to Christianity.

The 31-year-old, whose father is the leader of a mosque in Lancashire, has moved house an astonishing 45 times after relatives pledged to hunt her down and kill her.

The British-born university graduate, who uses the pseudonym Hannah for her own safety, said she renounced the Muslim faith to escape being forced into an arranged marriage when she was 16.

She has been in hiding for more than a decade but called in police only a few months ago after receiving a text message from her brother.

In it, he said he would not be held responsible for his actions if she failed to return to Islam.

[...]

Hannah was born in Lancashire to Pakistani parents who raised her and her siblings as strict Sunni Muslims.

She prayed and read the Koran, wore traditional Muslim clothes and was sent to a madrassa, a religious Muslim school.

She ran away from home at 16 after overhearing her father organising her arranged marriage.

[...]

But when she opted to get baptised, while studying at Manchester University, her family were incensed and the death threats began.

Her father arrived at her home with 40 men and threatened to kill her for betraying Islam.

“I saw my uncle and around 40 men storming up the street clutching axes, hammers, knives and bits of wood,” she said.

“My dad was shouting through the letter box, “I’m going to kill you”, while the others smashed on the window and beat the door.

“They were shouting, ‘We’re going to kill you’ and ‘Traitor’.

And if that weren’t troubling enough, a significant share of young British Muslims apparently believe that this is entirely appropriate:

A study this year found that 36 per cent of British Muslims between 16 and 24 believe those who convert to another religion should be punished by death.

3 December 2007 @ 10:19AM >> BBC reporter Andrew Mynott exhibits the suicidal political correctness so common in the West. In describing the angry mobs that recently called for the execution of a teacher who committed the heinous crime of being present as her young students named a teddy bear Mohammed, Mynott characterizes the death mobs as “good natured.”

Yes, they were “good natured” as they marched for the execution of this teacher. (I’d hate to think of what a bad natured Jihadist mob would look like.)

Of course, according to the rules of Multicultural Hierarchy, using a negative term is a no-no when describing members of an Approved Group. So this reporter from the BBC is forced to tie himself into a logical pretzel to avoid violating the tenets of the Church of Multiculturalism.

I wonder how he would have described the mob if it had been his wife they wanted to kill.

26 November 2007 @ 11:21PM >> “The dogma of multiculturalism holds that all cultures are equal, except Western culture, which (unlike every other society on the planet) has a history of oppression and war is therefore worse. All religions are equal, except Christianity, which informed the beliefs of the capitalist bloodsuckers who founded America and is therefore worse. All races are equal, except Caucasians, who long ago went into business with black slave traders in Africa, and therefore they are worse. The genders, too, are equal, except for those paternalistic males, who with their testosterone and aggression have made this planet a polluted living hell, and therefore they are worse.” More >>

19 November 2007 @ 9:17AM >> On a recent airing of CNN’s The Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer attempts to explain why good news out of Iraq—such as the sharp decreases in violence seen over the last few months—goes unreported:

[TERRY] JEFFREY[, CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE]: You know, there’s sort of a catch-22. As the war starts to succeed, as the surge is working, violence is going down, U.S. casualties are going down in Iraq, it’s not news.

When Americans aren’t killed there, it’s not on the front pages of the newspaper. It’s not heavily in the cable news coverage. And people start to forget about it. They don’t realize necessarily that things are going well.

But to the degree that it’s not an issue, it’s good politically for Republicans.

[WOLF] BLITZER[, CNN CORRESPONDENT]: You know, I’m — I’m always reluctant to say things are going well. I hope they are going well in Iraq. Always reluctant to even say it, because I’m afraid of a jinx, because, the next morning...

[DONNA] BRAZILE[, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST]: Absolutely.

BLITZER: ... you could wake up and there could be a horrible, horrible disaster over there.

(Emphasis added.)

Blitzer’s admission came up in a discussion of poll numbers, which he kicked off by asking, “How are things going for the U.S. in Iraq? Thirty-four percent say it’s going well. Sixty-five percent say it’s going badly.”

The polls largely reflect the media’s reporting, so if positive trends go unreported—and by Blitzer’s own admission, they do—then those positive trends will not be reflected in the polls.

It’s really laughable that good news goes unreported because it might jinx the war effort. If that were the case, one would expect the media to hold back on bad news, too; after all, bad news has the effect of driving down public support for the war, which also damages the war effort.

But, of course, the media’s newfound reporting restraint only seems to apply when discussing positive developments out of Iraq.

18 November 2007 @ 12:26PM >> Jared Lapidus, who got his start in professional filmmaking shooting footage for Indoctrinate U, has just released a short film he directed called The Libel Tourist.

The film covers the abuses of exceedingly loose, plantiff-friendly libel laws in Britain, where American authors can now be sued for books never published there.

As long as a single after-market copy of a book is sold in Britain—such as on eBay or Amazon’s used books section—British courts can claim jurisdiction and rule against authors for things that would be protected First Amendment speech here in the U.S.

The Libel Tourist covers an issue that’s going to become increasingly important in a world where it’s next to impossible to contain the written word within a single country’s borders.

14 November 2007 @ 7:43AM >> Proposed speech regulation in Great Britain:

The right to crack jokes or be rude about homosexuals could fall victim to new government laws to stamp out “homophobic” behaviour, Rowan Atkinson, the Blackadder star warned yesterday.

Atkinson, who mounted a successful campaign in 2004 to water down legislation aimed at criminalising expressions of religious hatred, has returned to the fray to defend the art of gay leg-pulling.

His concern is that Labour ministers are so obsessed with creating laws to stop people being rude about each other that they are putting in danger the right to free speech and, equally dear to his heart, the comedian’s craft.

In a letter to a newspaper he accused ministers of filling their legislative programme with measures that have “serious implications for freedom of speech, humour and creative expression”.

[...]

Atkinson added: “The devil, as always, will be in the detail but the casual ease which some people move from finding something offensive to wishing to declare it criminal - and are then able to find factions within government to aid their ambitions - is truly depressing.”

The problem with regulating speech is, an awful lot of power is placed in the hands of the people charged with deciding what is and is not within bounds. Given how speech codes have been abused to punish political speech on college campuses, it’s even more chilling to think of government, with all of its various powers, trying to make these distinctions.

Do you trust that the right decision—as opposed to the politically expedient decision—would always be made in these cases?

If so, you have a hell of a lot more confidence in government than I do.

25 October 2007 @ 9:07AM >> Last night, David Horowitz came to speak at Emory University as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, an event created to highlight the human rights abuses committed in the name of Islam around the world. Horowitz started off by showing a picture of a woman being shot in the head for “sexual improprieties.” In some Muslim cultures, sexual impropriety includes being a victim of rape, something for which countless women have been killed in an attempt to restore the “honor” of the rape victim’s family.

It used to be that leftists would be outraged by such a thing. After all, they claim to sympathize with the oppressed. But these days, when women are killed for being the victims of rape, or when gays are executed for being who they are, leftists first must look into who is doing the killing. If it’s a Muslim doing the killing, then for some reason, it is excusable.

That’s because there is a hierarchy of political correctness, where one group’s rights can be superceded by another group’s rights depending on which group is viewed as more oppressed by Westerners. This leads to some rather strange double-standards: if a Christian opposes gay marriage on religious grounds, he’d be branded a bigot and would be blacklisted from campus. But if a Muslim leads a country that routinely executes gays, he would be welcomed with open arms.

This is the environment into which David Horowitz stepped when he tried to demonstrate the very real crimes against humanity that are committed in the name of Islam. So, naturally, the leftists at Emory University had to make sure that Horowitz’s speech got shut down: in today’s politically correct world, the “rights” of radical Muslims to murder women who run afoul of Sharia law apparently trumps the right of David Horowitz to criticize those murders. So, naturally, Horowitz needed to be silenced.

The Emory University College Republicans, which sponsored Horowitz’s speech, issued a press release describing what happened:

On Wednesday evening, the Emory University Chapter of the College Republicans hosted acclaimed author and activist David Horowitz for a lecture on radical Islam as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. From the beginning of Horowitz’s speech, rowdy protesters continually interrupted him and less than half an hour into the event, the crowd became so disruptive that police were called in and Horowitz had to be escorted off stage.

Over 300 people - a cross-section of students, professors, and Atlanta community members - packed into White Hall where the event was held. The audience included a wide range of Leftists from Amnesty International, Veterans for Peace, and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as Muslim groups such as the Muslim Student Association. In addition, members of “National Project to Defend Dissent & Critical Thinking in Academia,” an organization dedicated to opposing Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week events throughout the country, participated in the protests dressed in orange attire as a reference to Guantanamo Bay. There was also a sizable group of men and women dressed in traditional Muslim garb as well as students wearing Kafiyehs, a symbol of Arab solidarity.

“I’ve spoken at Emory University several times and I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Horowitz responding to the crowd as they shouted and jeered. “This is exactly what the fascists did in Germany in the 1930s.” Protesters began their efforts as soon as Horowitz was introduced with boos and chants of “Heil Hitler.” Despite the people who stood with their backs to Horowitz and the shouting of obscenities and other remarks from audience members, Horowitz attempted to deliver his speech that covered academic freedom and radical Islam. The loud chants, sign-waving, and disruptive gestures continued to escalate from audience members until the atmosphere was so chaotic that even the police present were unable to subdue the crowd. Horowitz was led off stage and left the campus under tight security, and the event came to an abrupt end.

Some of the disruption was caught on tape.

This is yet another example of how college campuses no longer have any tolerance for diversity of thought. Free speech is only welcome on campus if you say the right things.

Somebody ought to make a film about this sort of thing...

20 October 2007 @ 12:21PM >> Leave it to the media to figure out a way to turn dramatically declining death rates in Iraq into a negative story:

At what’s believed to be the world’s largest cemetery, where Shiite Muslims aspire to be buried and millions already have been, business isn’t good.

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that’s cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

Few people have a better sense of the death rate in Iraq.

“I always think of the increasing and decreasing of the dead,” said Sameer Shaaban, 23, one of more than 100 workers who specialize in ceremonially washing the corpses. “People want more and more money, and I am one of them, but most of the workers in this field don’t talk frankly, because they wish for more coffins, to earn more and more.”

[...]

“Certainly, when the number of dead increases I feel happy, like all workers in the graveyard,” said Basim Hameed , 30, a body washer. “This happiness comes from the increase in the amount of money we have.”

Death is something everyone must face, he noted. “My job demands death, and this is our fate, all of us.”

What’s next? A story on a recession in the Iraqi explosives market?

11 October 2007 @ 3:32PM >> Michael Totten brought his video camera along on a foot patrol in Ramadi, the capital of the once-violent Anbar province in Iraq. He returns with 18 minutes showing what happens when it’s time for the barbed wire to come down.