Canadian MP pisses off muslim group with brochure

A conservative Canadian MP, Rob Anders, has ticked off a muslim group after publishing a brochure which stated that it is "illegal to hold opinions that offend radical muslim activists". The Muslim Council of Calgary claim that Anders is spreading disinformation. Tell that to Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. Canada.com

CALGARY — A political pamphlet from a Conservative MP that urges changes to federal human rights legislation has raised the ire of Calgary’s largest Muslim organization, which views the dispatch to residents as inflammatory and divisive.

David Liepert, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Calgary, contends Calgary West’s Rob Anders crossed the line and made inaccurate statements unfairly targeting the Muslim community in a pamphlet that arrived earlier this month at some homes in the riding. The longtime MP, however, disputes the contention that his pamphlet is inflammatory.

In an Anders’ communique, one of 10 different versions mailed out, he claims: “It is now illegal to hold opinions that offend radical Muslim activists,” and “under Section 13 of the so-called ‘human rights’ code, Canadians have been prosecuted for holding personal beliefs which offend radical Muslim imams and liberal activists.”

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Canadian Human Rights Tribunal: Hate speech laws unconstitutional

F**k You! I can say what I want to say.

Good news for Canadians like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. Calgary Herald via Jihad Watch

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ruled that Section 13, Canada's much-criticized human rights hate speech law, is an unconstitutional violation of the Charter right to free expression because of its penalty provisions.

The decision released Wednesday morning by tribunal chair Athanasios Hadjis appears to strip the Canadian Human Rights Commission of its controversial legal mandate to pursue hate on the Internet, which it has strenuously defended against complaints of censorship.

It also marks the first major failure of Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, an anti-hate law that was conceived in the 1960s to target racist telephone hotlines, then expanded in 2001 to the include the entire Internet, and for the last decade used almost exclusively by one complainant, activist Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman....

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Rights complaint against imam rejected

The Canadian human rights commission has rejected a case against a Quebec based imam. The imam, Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Dameus Al Hayit, published a book L'Islam ou l'Integrisme? A la lumière du Qor’an et de la Sounnah (Islam or Fundamentalism? In light of the Qur’an and the Sunna).

A few excerpts from the book include:

Elsewhere, the imam wrote that democracy is contrary to Islam and that Muslims should overthrow “infidel” rulers whenever they are strong enough to do so.

In an Islamic state, Jews and Christians would keep their religion but pay a fee called the jizyah. “The purpose of the jizyah is to humiliate and punish infidels to encourage them to accept Islam,” Lebuis quotes from the book.

Those of other faiths or atheists must accept Islam or “be killed.”

The author also calls for the extermination of homosexuals.

The case was rejected becausemost references within the book refer to women, westerns or infidels and these are not "identifiable group" under section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

So muslims are free to incite hatred to anyone who happens to be a woman, or infidel and nothing will happen to them. But publish a cartoon and watch out, the Canadian human rights commission will be on you like Oprah on baked ham.
Canadian Jewish News

MONTREAL — The Canadian Human Rights Commission won’t investigate a complaint against a Montreal imam who allegedly wrote disparagingly, and sometimes with violent intent, about Jews, Christians and other “infidels,” as well as homosexuals, women and democracy in general.

The complaint was lodged in April by Marc Lebuis, publisher of a Quebec-based website Point de Bascule (Tipping Point), which aims to raise awareness of what its creators perceive as the threat to western values posed by radical Islam.

Lebuis claimed Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Dameus Al-Hayit disseminated hate propaganda in his book L’Islam ou l’Intégrisme? A la lumière du Qor’an et de la Sounnah (Islam or Fundamentalism? In light of the Qur’an and the Sunna) in the book’s third edition, which was published in 2006-07 on the Internet.

The commission found that the writings are not likely to expose members of any identifiable group to hatred or contempt, according to the law.

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Mosque fights for rights, but slurs Jews and West

The 8 Somali women who took UPS to the Canadian human rights commission on grounds of religous discrimination go to a mosque in Toronto Canada that spews hatred for Western culture. Toronto Star

Canadian workplaces respect a strict Muslim dress code is at the same time disseminating slurs against Jews and Western societies, and warning members against social integration.

The Khalid Bin Al-Walid Mosque near Kipling Ave. and Rexdale Blvd. serves as the religious authority for eight Somali women complaining to the Canadian Human Rights Commission that UPS Canada Ltd. violated their religious rights at a sorting plant. The mosque, founded in 1990 and serving upwards of 10,000 people, preaches strict adherence to sharia, or Islamic law, and no compromise with the West.

Teachings on the mosque's website, khalidmosque.com, refer to non-Muslim Westerners as "wicked," "corrupt" and "our clear enemies."

Sometimes Jews are singled out.

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BC's HRT rules in favor of Mark Steyn and Maclean's Magazine

"For me the problem is not the book, the problem for me is Canada, and I will never think of the deranged dominion quite the same way again. It has made me understand just how easily and incrementally free societies, often for the most fluffy reasons, slip into a kind of soft, beguiling totalitarianism," he [Mark Steyn] said.National Post

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal ruled yesterday that a controversial article about Islam in Maclean's magazine did not violate the province's hate speech law, marking the third time this year the Canadian Islamic Congress has failed in its efforts to force the magazine to print a rebuttal.

In dismissing the complaint, the three-member tribunal ruled that the article by Mark Steyn, which was published in 2006 and described the demographic and ideological dangers posed by a growing Muslim population in the West, was not likely to expose Muslims to hatred or contempt.

It ruled that the article, an excerpt from Mr. Steyn's book America Alone, contained historical, religious and factual inaccuracies, relied on common Muslim stereotypes and tried to "rally public opinion by exaggeration and causing the reader to fear Muslims."

....

Faisal Joseph, lawyer for the CIC, said he is considering an appeal, and that the decision "sends the wrong message."

"Apparently it is now acceptable for some columnists and media in this country to cloak freedom to hate in the mantle of freedom of speech," he said in a statement.

Mr. Steyn, a conservative columnist who describes his acerbic style as "apocalyptic stand-up," said America Alone was widely excerpted in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere, and only became the subject of a legal fight in Canada.

"For me the problem is not the book, the problem for me is Canada, and I will never think of the deranged dominion quite the same way again. It has made me understand just how easily and incrementally free societies, often for the most fluffy reasons, slip into a kind of soft, beguiling totalitarianism," he said.

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Somali Women Charge UPS with Religious Discrimination

Eight women, of Somali background, who had worked for a UPS sorting center in Toronto have taken the company to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal because they feel they were discriminated on religious grounds. The 8 women worked for UPS through a temp agency and when the sorting facility became unionized the company told the women they would need to lose their flowing dresses or not come in to work.

What the article is missing is that the flowing dresses would present a health and safety hazard. Flowing dresses could easily get tangled up in the machinery of the sorting plant. Since the facility became unionized I'm sure the company became a lot more strick about health safety issues. CBC

The firing of eight Toronto women by the giant package delivery company UPS goes before a federal human rights tribunal on Monday.

The women, all of them of Somali origin, were working as temporary employees for the global delivery company. They claim UPS discriminated against them when it refused to hire them permanently.

....

Hagi, Yusuf and the other Somali women always wore ankle-length skirts to work.

Hagi said UPS never mentioned their clothing posed a safety hazard during the time she worked as a temp. But when a new union contract forced UPS to hire the women away from the temp agency and give them permanent jobs with better pay and benefits, Hagi says, everything changed.

Yusuf said her supervisor gave her an ultimatum: "You have to pull up your skirt above the knee, otherwise go out."

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Small Victory for Free Speech

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a complaint by a Muslim organization against Maclean’s and Mark Steyn. However, they are still facing the B.C. human rights commission. For a total victory, the human rights commisions/tribunals should be abolished. CBC
H/T: GM

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a complaint by a Muslim organization against Maclean’s, ruling that the views expressed in one of the magazine's articles were not “of an extreme nature.”

The Canadian Islamic Congress had alleged that the article written by Mark Steyn entitled "The Future Belongs to Islam" and posted on the magazine’s website in October 2006 discriminated and spread hatred against Muslims.

The article, an excerpt of a book authored by Steyn, talks about Islam being a threat to North American institutions and values. It used statistics to show higher birth rates plus immigration mean Muslims will outnumber followers of other religions in Western Europe.

....

"The writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike," wrote Lucie Veillette, secretary to the commission.

"Overall, however, the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature as defined by the Supreme Court."

The commission said there was "no reasonable basis in the evidence to warrant the appointment of a Tribunal."

On its website, Maclean's said it was pleased the complaint was dismissed and that the decision was in keeping with its position that the article "was a worthy piece of commentary on important geopolitical issues, entirely within the bounds of normal journalistic practice."

But it added that no human rights commission should have the mandate to monitor or assess the editorial decisions of the nation's media.

Exactly.

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