Visible Minorities in the Greater Toronto Area

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What's the Difference Between Levant and the HRCs?

I wonder if Ezra Levant reads this blog? Or if he's just too busy doing his book tours and op-eds for the Toronto Star - yes, the leftist newspaper of Toronto (and Canada, really).

I admire fighters; it takes energy and commitment to go after your enemies, and to correct the wrong being done.

But, at the same time, it is important to understand what you're fighting for, and why.

I've always held Levant's freedom of speech and freedom of the press stand for his fight against the HRCs to be inadequate. It is understandable where he is coming from since he was attacked as a journalist, and for what he chose to publish in his magazine. But he has admitted that he doesn't find the HRC principles fundamentally wrong, except that they went over-board with their current cases. 

Here is an excerpt from a piece Levant recently posted on his website titled, "Human rights activist speaks to multicultural forum on behalf of Metis host" which tells us more of his position:

I don't think about the ethnic or racial details of my friends -- unless it specifically comes up for some reason. And it generally doesn't come up -- unless some foolish political correctness demands that it come up, in the form of racial quotas or the like.

[H]uman rights commissions judge everyone based on those irrelevant criteria. They immediately assign you your political and legal status based on your race, sex, sexual orientation, etc. They ignore Martin Luther King's call to be judged by the "content of our character, not the colour of our skin".

The problem isn't that the HRCs are racist (they may well be, I don't know the inner workings of their staff and supporters). The problem is that the cases filed with the HRCs are categorized by groups deemed to be vulnerable to discrimination. The whole point of the HRCs is to protect such "minority" groups from majority group discrimination. They are set up to rule on differences, or at least complaints made by those "different" who want to be treated the same as everyone else.

So, what makes Levant any different from the HRCs? Both seem to believe in a neutral, equal society, where men and women, black and whites, Muslims and Christians, gays and straights, the old and the young, are all equal, and live in the multicultural harmony that Levant hopes is Canada.

As I pointed out in my previous post, about one half of those protected groups are visible minorities. They are protected against discrimination from equal access to employment, housing, services, and a host of other things.

Ontario's minorities filed about 1/3 more complaints to the HRC than did Alberta between 2007 and 2008.The highest number of complaints in Ontario came from visible minorities (39% vs. 18% for Alberta). Ontario has also almost twice the number of visible minorities as Alberta.

Immigrants contribute large numbers to the visible minorities' pool, as I showed in my previous posts [1, 2]. With the increasing acceptance of immigrants , there will be an increasing number of visible minorities, and an increasing number of HRC cases. 

Visible minorities, those people that he doesn’t want to put into "racial quotas", are changing Ezra Levant’s Canada. They are not beholden to the founders and creators of Canada, unlike Levant. The fair and just society that Levant makes speeches about is changing through the unfair and vindictive HRCs that he’s trying to reform.

Part of the fuel that keeps the HRCs burning are people whose entry into Canada Levant, and Jason Kenney, need to find ways to reduce to avoid the inevitable, negative changes to society and culture that Levant is already bemoaning. This includes his cherished freedom of speech, which allows him to still speak the way he does, but which could change for the worse.

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Here are some facts about the Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia HRC cases between 2007 and 2008:

Ontario New Complaints to the HRC:
3,491 (filed by 0.03% of the total population)
A 49% increase from previous year

% Breakdown of complaints
- Visible minority: (an amalgam of race, place of origin, ethnicity, ancestry and creed): 38.8%
Race being highest at 18.2%

- Disability: 27.6%

Ontario visible minorities: 22.8% of Ontario population
Toronto visible minorities: 46.9% of Toronto population

Source: Ontario Human Rights Commission 2007-2008 Annual Report
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Alberta New Complaints to the HRC:
680 (filed by 0.02% of the total population)
A 4% increase from previous year

% Breakdown of complaints
- Visible minority: (an amalgam of race, place of origin, ethnicity, ancestry and creed): 18%
Race & Ancestry highest at 8% each

- Disability: 38%

- Gender: 20%

Alberta visible minorities: 13.9%

Source: Alberta Human Rights Commission, Annual Review, April 1 2007 - March 31 2008 (pdf)
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British Columbia New Complaints to the HRC:
1,053 (filed by 0.02% of the total population)

% Breakdown of complaints
- Visible minority (an amalgam of race, place of origin, ethnicity, ancestry and creed): 41%
Race highest at 12%

- Disability - 20%

B.C. Visible Minorities: 24.8%

Source: B.C. Human Rights Tribunal Annual Report, 2007-2008 (pdf)
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Update on Immigration and Visible Minorities

Here is a report by the Bellissimo Law group (immigration lawyers, so they should be happy) about the commitment to immigration by Jason Kenney, minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, for 2009:

Canadian minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, has great plans to welcome between 240,000 and 265,000 new permanent residents.

On November 28, 2008, Minister Kenney announced that he is committed to his immigration program to balance Canadian's [sic] economic, humanitarian and family reunification goals. Minister Kenney plans to include up to 156,600 immigrants in the economic category; 71,000 in the family category; and 37,400 in the humanitarian category.

In 2007, projecting for 2008, another law firm, the Campell Cohen law firm, announced that:

Citizenship and Immigration Canada announced...that the target for permanent residents will increase by 15000 in the upcoming year [of 2008]...

In 2007 Canada plans to admit between 240 000 to 265 000 permanent residents, up from a range of 225 000 to 250 000 this calendar year.

So, the projected acceptance went up for 2008, and remained high for 2009 (higher than for 2006), despite a more conservative government, and a minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism who plans to rewrite the citizenship test because Canada "can't afford to be passive about the challenges of integration."

If Jason Kenney is still concerned about the integration of immigrants, after so many years of immigration, shouldn't he be questioning what it is about these newer immigrants that makes them less likely to integrate, rather than rewriting the citizenship test? 

I hope Ezral Levant is also able to help out Kenney with these questions.

My Question to Ezra Levant

I have high regard for Ezra Levant's battle against the overbearing Human Rights Commissions. I'm sure he has put his life on hold for the last few years to pursue this. But then, his life was put on hold with his three-year case and thousands of dollars spent fighting the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

My question to him is this:

In view of my short report below about visible minorities and the Human Rights codes which specifically attempt to defend their grievances, and the increasing number of visible minorities in Toronto mostly due to immigration, is it enough for Levant to ask for the removal of the HRCs without doing something about the group that is propping them up?

Increased immigration only adds more potential cases for the HRC, and as immigrants’ numbers increase, so does their power to influence HRC for their benefit.

Shouldn’t Levant be talking about reducing immigration and the dismantling of the HRCs at the same time?

Immigration and Visible Minorities

In my last post, I ruled that the HRCs are here to stay. My argument is that as long as there are high levels of immigration mostly from non-Western countries, of immigrants who are unaccustomed or unable to participate in the traditional Canadian culture and society, more and more strong-arm techniques will be used to enforce equality. 

One of the ways this is achieved is through the HRCs. According to The Agenda's most recent panel "Ontario's human rights tribunals: adjudicating injustice ... or hurt feelings?" (now available on video), the Ontario Human Rights code, which is enforced by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, protects individuals from discrimination against:   

- Race
- Ancestry
- Place of origin 
- Color
- Ethnic origin
- Citizenship
- Creed
- Sex
- Sexual orientation
- Age
- Record of offence
- Marital status
- Family status
- Disability

A full half of these potentially involves the kind of immigrants that are predominantly being accepted into Canada. Here are some statistics from the 2006 census:
 
Percent of visible minorities in Toronto[1]:
Total - 46.9%

Highlights:
Arab - 0.9%
Black - 8.4%
Chinese - 11.4 %
Filipino - 4.1 %
Korean - 1.4%
Latin American: 2.6%
South Asian - 12%
West Asian - 1.7%

Percent change in visible minorities in Toronto between 2001 and 2006 (mostly due to immigration)[1]:
Total: + 11%
Latin American: + 19%
Filipino: + 19%
South Asian: + 18%
Chinese: + 9%
Black: + 2%
 
My point, therefore was, as long as such large numbers of immigrants are entering the country and are allowed to live, work and eventually hold citizenship here, then the Human Rights code will invariably be abused (or over-used), and there will be a perennial stream of complaints  and cases, in increasing numbers, made to the HRCs. 

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1. Release of the 2006 Census on Ethnic Origin and Visible Minorities, City of Toronto (pdf)

Now For a Bit of Humor

From the BBC website:

A Muslim chef who accused the Metropolitan Police [he worked in the police training college in Henden, North London as the catering manager] of religious discrimination when told he must handle pork has lost his tribunal case.

The Human Rights Commissions Are Here To Stay

There must be something going on in TVO these days, and especially with Steve Paiken's program The Agenda. He is consistently producing programs relating to Toronto's (and Canada's) multicultural and immigrant society.

This evening, he hosted a panel on the Human Rights Commission entitled: "Ontario's human rights tribunals: adjudicating injustice ... or hurt feelings?"

All his guests were lawyers, except for one who is a clinical psychologist. One, as well as being a lawyer was also chair of the Human Rights Legal Support Centre.

There will be a video or an audio coming out soon (usually a day after the program), but there was nothing new or insightful that this group brought to the picture. In fact, for bona fide lawyers, one would have thought that at least one of them would have talked about the pseudo-justice system that the HRCs have set up, as Ezra Levant has demonstrated.

The only thing that happened was that I had an epiphany.

The HRCs are not going anywhere. If anything, they will just be fine-tuned to avoid the wrath of ordinary folks who may have realized their fraudulent nature from Levant's and others' exposures .

I got this affirmation when an older black woman, in all sincerity, asked when Canada was going to change the underlying problems of inequality and barriers to minorities, since the HRCs are only there to report the problems that this unequal society produces.

Canada is a multicultural society. Not only that, it is an officially multicultural society, with a Multicultural Act introduced in 1988. It also is not letting up on immigration any time soon. And the majority of immigrants are still coming from non-Western countries.

This means that Canada's society has a built in unequal structure. This inequality, which manifests itself if allowed to run its own course, is forever being reined in by various forces, usually governmental, at times simply social and psychological. The HRCs are the forceful, governmental arm of squaring this circle, of making everyone equal, or at least appear equal. And these strong-arm procedures will continue as long as there is this multicultural society, and as long as 250,000 immigrants, the majority of which will feel part of the stigmatized groups, are let into the country annually.

The HRCs are here to stay.

Duplicity Through Design

A very Arab looking crowd holding Keith Ellison signs

Blogger Creeping Sharia  comments that Congressman Keith Ellison's website has the "Hamas green and yellow colors" rather than the customary red, white and blue.

I started Our Changing Landscape because of visual influences. "Landscape" is after all a visual term. As I was looking around me, both in the real and virtual landscape, I started to notice that what was around us was slowly changing from the familiar to the unfamiliar. There are many contributors to this change (which I think stems from the cultural mix that has become our cities and towns), but the biggest culprits are Muslims.

What Creeping Sharia was referring to was Ellison’s campaign website, not his official congressional one. It does indeed have green as the predominant color, with pale yellow as a secondary color. The main photo is of a group of people holding green signs with Ellison’s name. Most of these people look non-white, some look Arab, and one man is wearing a small white Islamic cap (taqiyah) while a woman is wearing a hijab. This could be a scene somewhere in the Middle East.

There is no American flag, no seal of the House of Representatives, no map of America, on Ellison’s campaign website. There is nothing to indicate that this is an American website other than the script under his name (written in smaller yellow script and therefore less noticeable) which says, "for U.S. Congress." There are two yellow stars framing this yellow script. The yellow stars don’t necessarily indicate that they are symbols from the American flag. The star (with the crescent) is featured regularly in Islam. Over ten Islamic countries use the star, with the crescent, on their flags.

Green is the color most associated with Islam. Here is a wikipedia reference for the significance of green in Islam:

Green is considered the traditional color of Islam, likewise because of its association with nature. This is for several reasons. First, Muhammad is reliably quoted in a hadith as saying that “water, greenery, and a beautiful face” were three universally good things. In the Quran, sura Al-Insan, believers in God in Paradise wear fine green silk. Also, Al-Khidr ("The Green One"), is a Qur’anic figure who met and traveled with Moses. The flag of Hamas, as well as the flag of Iran, is green, symbolizing their Islamist ideology.

Just to give Congressman Ellison the benefit of the doubt, I went to his official congressional website listed under "United States House of Representatives" to see how he represents himself officially.

Once again, there is nothing to indicate that this is the website of a U.S. congressman. It does indeed have the requisite red, white and blue, but dark green conspicuously fills the background.

Here is the image that appears on top of his official website:

Left: High rises and bridge from Ellison's official website
Right: High rises in Dubai

These high rises could be from any country.  

To compare how his fellow-congressmen represented themselves, I clicked randomly on names from the list of representatives (three or four names from each alphabetical category). The majority of these websites had red or blue as the predominant color. They had an American flag, the seal of the House of Representatives, or a distinct American architectural structure, usually a state capitol cupola, visible at the top.

Jim Jordan, congressman from Ohio, had none of those images, but his large red barn is of a distinctly American rural scene. Carolyn Maloney from New York had typical, recognizable New York photos of the Statue of Liberty and the Chrysler building amongst others. Many others who didn’t put clearly identifiable American governmental icons on their websites nonetheless showed American sceneries such as light houses, snow-covered mountains and desert rock formations (which we all know from beloved Westerns).

This very subtle, and certainly quite legal, representation (or misrepresentation) of Ellison's office is how Muslims in the West slowly and determinedly enter and overwhelm our societies. Without realizing it, we become subjected to unaccustomed colors, undecipherable script and foreign faces.

As Creeping Sharia's blog post shows, even the substance of Ellison's official congressional website is suspect. He has posted a map of Iraq with possible information about troop deployment from Iraq for all to see. 

Al Jazeera (English) Coming to a Station Near You!

Former editor-in-chief of CBC News Tony Burman was interviewed recently by the ever-adroit Steve Paikin of TVO (who I doubt will ever go to a Qatar station to make his point, and his career) about his new position of managing editor for Al Jazeera English. 

Burman is working on a possible new presence of Al Jazeera English on Canadian television. He appeared on the defensive during the whole interview, as though he was on an up hill battle to convince the Canadian public, and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, to include this channel on their viewing list. His anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Canadian stance is evident in these quotes I have provided from the interview.

But, what else would one expect from a former CBC employee?

Here are the quotes:

Anything [i.e. the Al Jazeera network] that is detested so much by Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney must have some redeeming merit to it.

**************

Our feeling is that we serve a wider interest than simply fawning after what the U.S. government does.

**************

We bring to the table a far more global, less parochial, less Western perspective.

**************

It was only after 9/11, when Al Jazeera had the temerity to actually report, that contrary to what was being claimed by the Americans, that civilians were being killed in Afghanistan, that Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney turned on it.

**************

That whole myth of an inappropriate relationship between Al Qaeda and Al Jazeera is nonsense.

**************

[Al Jazeera English’s] lens is very much of the perspective of the developing world. It tries to bring to the stage the voiceless, the peripheral part of the world, dare I say the majority of humanity, who often get ignored and marginalized by the centers of power.

**************

What it means…to a Canadian, or to an American, is that you have a far more comprehensive, a far more balanced view of the issues in front of us.

**************

It’s not biased, it is not ideological, but what it is is it is a greater reflection of the totality of this planet than you get in a narrow Western-centric, American-centric coverage that most of has have had in front of us for years.

I have to add that Burman's speaking style is mediocre and his words are at times undecipherable (just compare him to Paiken). And this is someone who spent the past 35 years or so as a leader in a national television and radio broadcasting service.

Muslims and Typhoid Mary

A reader sent me this link which compares Muslims with Typhoid Mary. It sounds like a harsh comparison, but this long article is actually a way the writer is trying to understands Muslim presence in Western countries.

Typhoid Mary, who tried to live a productive and useful life despite her illness, became a liability and a danger because she continued to infect people with this invisible disease.

Like Mary, Muslims have this invisible and dangerous disease, which is transferred to us by their presence here. They may be nice individuals, hard working people, pleasant friends. But, ultimately, everything that their religion brings with them will cause us harm, and even death.

The article is a little long, but it is worth reading for the unusual analogy.

Now Magazine's Unreliable Allies

Now's "Think Free" sign in the parking
lot across from Starbucks.
This was an unusual photo op.
Now's main office is just a few blocks up.

Ezra Levant's book, "Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights" is now fourth on the Globe and Mail hardcover best seller's list.

He writes about his first negative review, from Toronto's Now magazine entertainment writer Susan Cole. Her review admonishes him for publishing those infamous Mohammed cartoons, taking of course the standard "he hurt the feelings of Muslims" position which is what Human Rights Commissions were made for.

Now readers would have none of this, attacking Cole for attacking free speech. But, despite Now's slogan "Think Free", I still don't trust its readers (or its writers). If the HRC and the cartoon episode weren't such a blatant breach of journalistic integrity, Now readers would be as leftist as they come. "Think Free" really means, "Think Like Us Lefties".

Levant shouldn't be so pleased with their reaction. I doubt that in other issues, they would be on his side.

The Significance of the Cross

There are many ways to combat Islam. Some important strategies include: forming grass-roots and popular organizations; influencing government policies such as changing immigrations laws pertaining to Islam; writing about Islam both in an informative and analytic manner.

But, I don't think there has ever been a country that successfully defeated Islam without including religion into the equation. And of all the world's religions, Christianity has had the most success.

Western Europe, which only until a few decades ago was an unabashedly Christian entity, repelled Islam twice in its history. Even Islam occupied Spain managed to rid itself of all (at least superficial) Muslim influence. The East African Christian country of Ethiopia, after a devastating Muslim invasion, succeeded in regaining land and country in tact after only a few years of combat in the 15th century.

India, on the other hand, despite its valiant fight against Islam, is still overwhelmed by periodic internal invasions (or aggressions) by its resident Muslims. The Persians couldn't even sustain prolonged opposition to Islam and capitulated to the Muslims, even accepting Islam as their own religion. China seems to have been saved from constant Muslim aggression, unlike India, yet I would venture to say that their peace is brought about their very strict and stifling culture, which wouldn’t let any kind of dissent, let alone a religious one, into their country.

As well as using the many strategies to fight Islam I mentioned above, we cannot be ambiguous about the most successful one, which has been to include Christianity as a decisive force. That is why I have put the cross, the most recognizable and visible symbol of Christianity, on top of this blog. Even the Crusaders used it on their armor, their clothing, their shields and their flags. They knew they needed all the help they could get.

The Siege of Antioch, from a medieval
miniature painting, during the First Crusade.

ADDENDUM:
I should add that Muslims expressly use their relgious icons, symbols and texts in their mission to convert the whole world to Islam. I would think our correponding strenght would be to use our Christian symbols.

Muslim Immigrants (Again)

Upon re-reading my last post, I talk about immigrants (and specifically Muslim immigrants) in this manner:

That's the problem with immigration. We are forced to take people on a human level...

I should have written something like:

We are forced to behave towards immigrants in a humane way (meaning sympathetic, if not compassionate).

Of course all immigrants are human. But their very presence taxes our own human reflexes. Many people instinctively know, despite the MSM's assertion to the contrary, that Muslim immigrants are dangerous to our society. So, how should we behave towards individual Muslims, who are indeed many times nice people? Should we be antagonistic towards them? Sociable? Aloof? Generous? Tolerant?

This conflicting position in which they put us, negating our own humanness if we decide to treat them inhumanely, is brought about simply by their presence here. Our human nature tells us to be kind and respectful to people. Yet our survival instinct tells us that these are not people on par with us - they are not like us, and in fact they themselves wish our demise.

Responding to a Moderate Muslim's Arguments

I sent a link of my previous blog post Let's Get On With The Business Of Defending Ourselves Against Islam to Lawrence Auster with this email. I've posted his response, and my response to that.

KPA writes:

I spent a few days mulling over your debate with Supna.

The conclusion I came up with, which I have posted at my blog "Let's get on with the business of defending ourselves against Islam" is that like nominal Christians and reform/nominal Jews (maybe I should call them all cultural - add in the religion here), moderate/nominal/cultural Muslims are dangerous to society. All these groups almost always seem to be liberal, so besides promoting incorrect versions of their religions, they also push for liberal agendas.

I don't think Supna, despite her best intentions and pleasant personality, is able to bring anything forward in terms of moderate Muslims: no concrete and feasible ideas and no authoritative moderate group. As you say, most of her statements are wishful thinking, leading us down dangerous paths.

It is time to forfeit this group which has been called moderate, because even if it does exist, it is of no use to us, and is in fact dangerous in the long run in the fight against Islam.

I think this was the important insight I obtained from your debate.

Lawrence Auster replies:

Thanks for your thoughts on this. It's a tough issue. It's tough to say that the Supnas of the world are dangerous.

But two qualifications. First, Supna is doing something very positive in constantly bringing forward the true, negative aspects of Islam. For many people, hearing this message under the rubric that Islam itself is not bad may be the only way they can at present receive it. For observant audiences, her constant wishful thinking about the "good" Islam will not cancel out the negative things she says about Islam.

Second, we should understand there's nothing new or invidious in saying that certain people have a dangerous message. For example, Daniel Pipes, as I wrote at FrontPage in '05, is, at least half the time, an Islam apologist, meaning he's trying to make people believe that Islam is not the problem and threat that it really is. This makes him objectively dangerous. Supna works for Pipes and shares his basic outlook about Islam, so naturally she also is an Islam apologist.

Here is the section of my article (part one, second web page of four) in which I described Pipes as an apologist:

Pipes's ambivalence

Given Pipes's admission, in some articles, that moderate Islam has never existed as a concrete social and religious reality, and that "radical" Islam is therefore the historic norm of the faith after all, what explains his continuing insistence, in other articles, that radical Islam is only an extremist offshoot of the true, moderate Islam?

An opening into Pipes's contradictory thoughts on the subject can be found in remarks he wrote for an Islamic American magazine, The Minaret, in September 2000 (and which he repeated in the introduction of his 2002 book, Militant Islam Reaches America[2]). After praising Islam for the "extraordinary inner strength" it imbues in its followers and the great cultural achievements of its classical period, he said:

"I approach the religion of Islam in a neutral fashion, neither praising it nor attacking it but in a spirit of inquiry. Neither apologist nor booster, neither spokesman nor critic, I consider myself a student of this subject."

This is an odd comment for an intellectual to make. Since when does studying a subject preclude one from criticizing it? Since when does scholarship require non-judgmentalism? If Pipes were a student of, say, Soviet Communism, like his father the historian Richard Pipes, would he say that his scholarly approach to Marxism-Leninism prevented him from criticizing the Soviet Gulag, the millions of political murders, the enslavement of entire nations? Also, how can Pipes as a scholar expect his evaluations of Islam to be considered reliable if he announces up front that he will not render a negative judgment about it?

In any case, Pipes's personal motivations, whether for not wanting to be seen as a critic of Islam (which would be an understandable tactic of self-preservation given his exposed position), or for actually not wanting to be a critic of Islam (which would be harder to excuse), are not our concern. Pipes has already given us a meaningful and satisfactory explanation of his political motivations for avoiding a too searching critique of Islam: his fear that if we come to the conclusion that Islam is not and cannot be moderate, we will lose any basis for a constructive policy toward it and will be doomed to regard all Muslims as our eternal enemies. This is not a concern that can be lightly dismissed, and is probably shared by millions of Westerners. We will return to it in the second part of this essay.

What matters to us here is not Pipes's motivations, but the truth of his statements about the nature of Islam and about his role as a student of it. For a scholar in a field so filled with bloody controversy, there can be no such thing as the non-judgmental neutrality that Pipes attributes to himself. For example, Communist regimes, according to the most authoritative book on the subject, The Black Book of Communism, killed upwards of 100 million unarmed civilians in the course of the 20th century. If I speak this true fact about Communism, I am, perforce, a critic of Communism. If, conversely, I choose not to be critic of Communism, I can only do that by ignoring or minimizing its crimes, in which case I have ceased to be its student and have become its apologist. Therefore Pipes's claim that he is neither a critic nor an apologist is not true. As we have seen, sometimes he is one, sometimes the other. When he tells us that militant Islam is a fearsomely dangerous movement that threatens us all, and when he tells us that reformist Muslims falsely imagine the historical existence of a moderate and liberal Islam, he is being a critic. But when he tells us that only modern Islamism—not historic Islam—is dangerous, and that moderate Islam is the solution to radical Islam, he is being an apologist.

The false distinction between Islamism and Islam

Insofar as Pipes is a protector of Islam, the chief way he protects it is through his distinction between modern Islamism, with which he associates everything bad about Islam, and traditional Islam, which he describes, not neutrally, but in respectful, glowing tones....

KPA replies:

Yes, your point about Supna's contributions is well taken, given the fact that it is HER religion she is criticizing. I think many Muslims do really just simply want to live their own lives, and follow their own culture and religion. Maybe these do qualify as moderates in Supna's eyes. We cannot fault them for that. That's the problem with immigration. We are forced to take people on a human level, even if we know that ultimately they are dangerous and destructive to us.

Let's Get On With The Business Of Defending Ourselves Against Islam

I have written with interest, here and here, Lawrence Auster's latest presentation on Islam, this time his debate with moderate Muslim Supna Zaidi. I mentioned in my comments that this was probably the first time a moderate Muslim has debated someone who doesn't accept that terminology of Muslims, or if they do exist, their importance as a group.

And it was worthwhile following that event, illuminating for me something of this "moderate" Muslim who has been the subject of so many Islamic experts and scholars, and a qualifier that many Muslims have taken on.

Despite a full afternoon of presentations, debates, questions and even audience participation that tried to convince Miss Zaidi to the contrary, she still left with the idea that moderate Muslims are an authoritative group, and an antidote to the "radicals" and "Islamists" out there, and that they are allies of Western societies in combating the harm that (radical) Islam is causing.

Ultimately, nominal Muslims (perhaps that is a better term than moderate) are dangerous. They appear to be like the nominal Christians (and reform/nominal Jews), who tend to quote parts of their holy books to make their points, but who invariably lead societies down dangerous paths. For example, it is nominal Christians and Jews who use the biblical verses about helping strangers to validate illegal immigrants’ presence, thereby putting society in all kinds of dangers, both life threatening and other slowly encroaching problems such as affecting the economy.

There is also something of an elitism amongst nominal Christians and Jews, who find that their "fundamental" counterparts are callous and unduly harsh and unrefined in their approach to their religion and lives, making these kinder, gentler nominal Christians and Jews superior.

Miss Zaidi, and I assume her association (still to be formed) of moderate Muslims, seems to just want to live an unencumbered life maintaining her culture and what she perceives to be her religion. She even talks several times that religion (Islam, in her case) should be practiced privately. This is a glaring contradiction in the face of the very public and aggressive religion that Islam is. She keeps contrasting the aggressive Arab Muslims with the quieter (more moderate?) South Asian Muslims, despite her inability to put Pakistan in that category. Her point being that her brand of Islam – moderate and South Asian - is superior and less aggressive, and hence more in-line with Western societies, than the more primitive "radical" Islam.

I think ultimately, these nominal religious groups, elitist and pushing liberal agendas, are a danger to society. They use wishful thinking – as Mr. Auster aptly put it – to promote their version of the world, ignoring the realities and dangers which, in Islam’s case, is out to destroy all non-Muslim societies.

I think that we have given moderate Muslims, and their notion of moderate Islam, enough time to prove their points. As this interesting debate has demonstrated, they have nothing to show for themselves. There are no moderate Muslim groups and whatever splinters there are, they have proven themselves incapable of fighting off aggressive "radical" Muslims. Ironically, they may even be as dangerous to us as the "radical" Muslims they speak against.

It is time to forget about moderate Muslims and moderate Islam, and to get to the business of defending our societies from Islam, pure and simple.