Wednesday, June 04, 2008

It Just Gets Better - From more Coyne

The complainants are not going to testify! (Go hunt through macleans.ca, and subscribe to the print edition as you go).


Porter in on his feet: “If Habib and Elmasry are arraid to testify i don’t want them as my witnesses. They’re a pair of scaredy-pants, and…” I swear to God that’s what he said. The proceedings dissolve in even more confusion than usual…


This is too delightfully ridiculous for words.

It provokes yet another fine comment from an apparently Muslim commenter, one actually claiming to be in BC!

Naiyer Habib is not testifying, what a Joke! I’m from B.C. I’m a Muslim. MY TAX DOLLARS are paying for this joke of a trial…and these guys are claiming MUSLIMS IN BC were hurt…yet CANT FIND ONE MUSLIM IN BC to testify to it…not event the complainant!!!!

WHAT A JOKE.


My greatest fear is that this claim will just be dismissed. While this is what SHOULD happen, one would really like the process challenged.

As pointed out eloquently by David Warren in the morning in the Ottawa Citizen (PS - I think I disagree with a lof what he writes, but clearly not here):

A farce, but a farce that has huge consequences for Canada: for by such methods free speech and free press are being snuffed out. The Left may think they have found the ideal method to silence anyone who challenges their insane, "politically correct" ideas, but have instead created a monster that can as easily eat them next.

This is a disaster also for Canada's Muslims, for the views of fanatical Islamists are being presented as representative of all. No single person has done so much to advance contempt for Islam in this country as Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, the complainant in this case


While media attention to Mark Steyn's show trial is inadequate, it is nevertheless the best publicized case ever to come before our "human rights" bureaucracies. Most of the victims of these neo-Maoist tribunals have been "little people," with nothing like the resources Maclean's magazine has put in play to defend itself and Steyn, and no media reporting whatever. They have been persecuted, stripped of their livelihoods and savings, demonized among their neighbours, made to endure humiliating "re-education" programs - without lawyers, without assistance of any kind -- all for exercising rights that any Canadian would have taken for granted a mere generation ago.

I want justice for Mark Steyn. But I also want justice for all these little people, who have been crushed under the jackboot of "political correction."

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posted by Alan Adamson @ 7:19 PM 0 comments

Something Muslims Should have Pride In

Tarek Fatah has been commenting, and very helpfully, at Andrew Coyne's liveblogging, e.g. here, about the current witness. Non-brain-dead Muslims must be feeling embarrassed by this charade, that their image is currently captured in many places by Elmasry and the pathetic sock puppets.

Another good comment at that blog; I live in East Toronto near a mosque that at least once was Ismaili. This means the street nearby has lots of places offering "Halal Pizza" (a concept that makes me smile and feel really good about what I understand as multiculturalism), and is also often filled with all sorts of people who look as oddly dressed to me as I must to them in my beer-advertising T-shirt, Walmart-purchased Levis, white socks, and clearance slightly-out-of-date sneakers. As SillyWife commented recently as we drove through that stretch of town, (paraphrase) "the teenage boys' outfits here look a little different from the odd ones we are used to" (the ones we are used to are the ghetto or prison emulation mode).

I hope these utterly good citizens who happen to be Muslims do not even know about the jerks and, to quote Ezra again, "grievance-mongers" that lyingly claim to speak in their name.

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posted by Alan Adamson @ 6:01 PM 0 comments

The Library at Alexandria, part II

From Andrew Coyne's continued live-blogging:

Now on to the Amiel article. Talks about the burning of the library of Alexandria in the 4th century, allegedly ordered by the Muslim caliph at the time. Says it’s a “fiction,” though he says even some Muslims believe it.


Now I am baffled - there was no Islam in the 4th century!

Now today's testimony all seems to prove that there are several smart people who do not agree entirely with Mark Steyn, all gainfully employed in the academic world, so like, why is there a problem with respect to being able to argue against his silly article (to help my commenter Allan, I will simply start by saying I think what I have heard of his demographic arguments are weak, especially seeing all the strollers I have seen on European trips in the last few years).

And what qualifies the marsupials, as Ezra has called them (took me a while - goes from kangaroo court to kangaroo judge to marsupial - almost with Steyn in being glib and funny) to adjudicate on matters like this highly contested historical question? Why, even some Muslims believe there was Islam in the 4th century, apparently!

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posted by Alan Adamson @ 5:35 PM 2 comments