Are Muslim Women Apostates the Same as Sharia-touting Muslims?

Stills from Shirin Neshat's videos: Rapture and Turbulence, from
my article "Islam's Missionary Women"

Jihad Watch (Robert Spencer), Altas Shrugs (Pamela Geller), Frontpage Magazine (Phyllis Chesler), and other anti-jihad sites have been covering extensively the death threat that is hanging over the head of the young Muslim apostate Rifqa Bary, who converted to Christianity. This is, of course, strictly within the mandates of Islam – "Kill the Apostates," it declares, and will do it.

More interesting to me is how Muslims apostates especially in the U.S. and Canada are reacting to this.

Nonie Darwish is a convert from Islam to evangelical Christianity, who emigrated to the U.S. from Egypt. She has an article at the Hudson New York with stringent demands that "The US government…protect its citizens not only from the terrorism of jihad, but also from Islamic Laws condemning Muslims to death and that encourage vigilante street justice."

Here are more quotes from that article:

There is no peace for the apostate, not even in the West. The above threat [on Rifqa Bary's life] is real and will increase exponentially with the growth of the Muslim population and those who demand Sharia as a religious right...

In Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and so on, the majority of the population believe that apostates must be killed and that jihad against non-Muslim countries a badge of honor. I do not wish to see the same desensitization happen in the West, but the silence of Western media is deafening.

Former Muslims need protection now from the US government and court system. We need protection from Sharia Islamic Law.

Notice how Darwish mentions in passing the growing Muslim population in the West, which is directly responsible for the increasing Muslim-related problems, but never mentions it again, let alone propose measures to solve it.

A while ago, before I started Our Changing Landscape, I was writing full-length articles for Camera Lucida, to include more detailed, researched information (and longer posts) that I didn't think a blog was good for.

Here is what I said in 2006 in my article "Islam's Missionary Women" for Camera Lucida (now a revised version of this article is on Camera Lucida and Our Chaning Landscape):

With their frenetic and wholehearted immersion into Islamic reform, these Muslim women are actually changing the laws and regulations which have served their adopted countries for decades, if not for centuries. They have expanded their original intention of culling allies, and instead appear to be ready for a takeover. Since they are beginning to realize that the West’s apprehension toward Islam is very different from theirs, they seem to think that one expedient option might be to usurp the institutions and organizations into performing their mission for them.

This article was later revised for Chronwatch, and published in October 2008.

I revised the above strong words from my 2006 article for the one in Chronwatch to:

But our duty as Westerners is not to reform Islam, nor to accommodate Muslim women - those very women who will have male and female Muslim off-spring, thereby turning our countries into what they left behind. Our responsibility is to make sure that Islam is kept at a distance, which includes Muslims. This may be a harsh rejection of the pleas made by the Hirsi Alis and Wafta Sultans, but they more than anyone else should understand our predicament. And if they don’t, how different are they from their male counterparts, who are aggressively pushing into our societies to change the West into an Islamified entity? We can never be sure if our assistance to these multitudes of Muslim women would alleviate their plight, but making drastic changes in our own societies in response to their grievances will only damage us.

My point remains the same now in 2009. The more Muslims we let into our countries, the more they, in their righteous and often correct indignation, are going to make demands on our systems to accommodate their needs.

This holds equally true for sharia proponents as well as for Muslim apostates and "moderates," who want to change laws and policies for problems that have nothing to do with Canada or the U.S.

No HRCs In The U.S. But Look At Greeley, Colorado and Dearborn, Michigan

Here's a story about the Somali meatpackers in Greeley, Colorado's Swift & Co. meatpacking plant, who walked off the job, and 100 of whom were fired last year, because their supervisors wouldn't let them pray at sunset during Ramadan.

There are no Human Rights Commissions in the United States. Yet, there are enough loopholes for minority groups to make cases for their discontent at work (or at schools, as the University of Michigan foot-washing sinks for Muslims demonstrates). Also, see my previous story about a Hate Crimes Bill H.R. 254 that is underway in the U.S.: 

Pending Hate Crimes Legislation

On January 5, 2007, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee introduced H.R. 254. The definition of "hate crime" remains the same as passed in 1994, but this bill goes much further than the enhanced sentencing provided by the 1994 legislation. H.R. 254 establishes a new federal offense for hate crimes and mandates a separate federal criminal prosecution for state offenses with the possibility of life imprisonment for crimes motivated by "the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or disability of any person."

Here's another story from Dearborn Michigan, where an Arab Christian proselytizer was prohibited from handing out Christian literature during the Dearbon Arab Festival. From Creeping Sharia:

The Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Dearborn’s policy and seeking a court order allowing the group to wander the festival grounds freely to pass out literature. U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds denied the Law Center’s motion on behalf of the Christian group.

No HRCs in the U.S., but Muslim groups, amongst others, are having no difficulty curtailing the freedoms of other groups through regular court proceedings. This is exactly what Levant recommends: use the court system to fight your battles, and get judges like Nancy Edmunds to favor the aggressive, freedom quenching groups.

Ezra Levant, who managed to untangle the corrupt HRCs, is merely working on the surface. His latest post is that the new leader for the Progressive Conservatives, Tim Hudak, put the dismantling of the HRCs on his political platform.

The National Post had this to say about Hudak:

Mr. Hudak is not without his flaws either. His attempt to have it both ways with the HRC (keep the commission, but abolish the tribunal) will probably satisfy no one.

To be fair, Hudak, according to an interview he did recently, just wants to keep the educational component of the HRCs, rather than any part of the fraudulent court. But why even keep that seemingly harmless component?

Hudak evidently believes in the principles of the HRCs, which is to fight the dual demons of discrimination and inequality at various levels in someone’s life – from the workplace to acquiring housing and even to eating in a restaurant.

Even without the HRCs, given Canada’s Multiculturalism Act and the Canadian Human Rights Act, there are infinite venues for people to voice their grievances.

It is easy to get all indignant about false courts and the guilty-until-proven-innocent charges of the HRCs, let alone the exorbitant costs they incur on the poor recipients of these filed cases.

But, not one dismantler of the HRCs, from Hudak to Levant, has talked about their underlying problems.

They just saw an unfair system, run by government monies, and said that real courts are where such cases should be filed.

The question is:

Why should such cases be filed anywhere, at a bona fide court or a  fraudulent one like the HRCs? Why should a group of people like, say, the Somali Muslims in Greeley, have the option to file their ridiculous claims that their supervisors were mistreating them? This meatpacking plant has already its established workplace traditions, which have obviously helped build the plant very successfully over time. Yet a new set of people is setting up its own traditions which are obviously disrupting the plant and its workers. A sane supervisor should indeed fire them.

Levant is saying that the Muslims who complained about his Mohammed cartoons, and later filed a suit at the HRCs against him, should go to real courts.

They very well might, in the near future. And they might win their cases, causing him yet another six-figure cost for his defence. There are many ways his opponents can save money, including using the government-subsidized legal aid centers which furnish people with lawyers based on income, but which subtly favor minorities and immigrants.  So, its back full circle to the beginning. 

To put it bluntly, the problem is not fully that of the HRCs. The problem is the kinds of people who are filing these cases, as I have discussed in detail in my previous posts.

Hate Crimes in Australia and America

The International Free Press Society has a video up entitled: "Australia, exactly as Canada does, criminalizes opinion of Islam."

As far as I can tell, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal in Australia is similar to the Provincial Human Rights Commissions in Canada.

An Australian pastor has already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending himself against a Muslim group which says he vilified Islam. The Muslim group took him to court based on the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act.

His only crime was to read quotes directly from the Koran during a seminar on Islam.

His conviction has since been overturned by the Australian Supreme Court, and several states in Australia have dropped this law, but Victoria has only made amendments.

He talks with Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network and says the United States is in danger of such "hate crimes" laws. A "hate crimes" Bill HR 254 has been introduced to Congress, and is now just a matter of votes. 

As I keep saying, as long as Ezra Levant fights the symptoms (the HRCs) rather than the causes, which I have identified as high immigration and the concomitant multiculturalism (and especially Muslims), then a few decades down the road he will wonder what went wrong with his valiant fight.

Green Pundits

There's not much room for humor at Our Changing Landscape, but here is something that made me laugh. Writes Diana West:

At what point do said pundits change the color of their Twitter avatars (Joe Scarborough) and their blog backgrounds (Andrew Sullivan) back from Islam green? And will they ever apologize for the fuss?

Both these "pundits" have added the color green to their sites in solidarity with the Iranian "revolution." Diana West's article debunks all that by saying that what's happening in Iran isn't so much a revolution as an intra-Islamic power struggle.

Also, green is the color of Islam. There is nothing revolutionary about that. I remember asking myself why Mousavi's party was using the color green if he was staging a revolution. The answer is, he isn't staging a revolution.

Even If The HRCs are Dismantled, There Is Much More Work To Be Done

In my previous post I wrote:

As long as high levels of immigration from non-Western countries is the norm in Canada, I argue that there will be an endless stream of visible minorities who are potential HRC case filers, and will thus keep the HRCs going.

I should qualify that. Even if the HRCs are successfully dismantled with Levant's incessant activities, systems and institutions which do the work of the HRCs (affirmative action is one example) will still exist as long as there is the population group that demands these kinds of services.

That is what I meant by "underlying problems." If Levant doesn't address these problems, then dismantling the HRCs will have become a futile exercise.

Congratulations to Ezra Levant

Congratulations to Ezra Levant on the birth of his new baby this past weekend. This must come at an especially happy time for him, given his enormously successful book Shakedown, and the continuous screw-ups by the major players of the HRCs .

I hope Levant does read this blog, and takes note of my slant on all of this, which is that the HRCs are just a symptom of the underlying problems. Almost all my posts at Our Changing Landscape from May 16, 2009 onwards have been a detailed analysis of these underlying problems, with my moment of epiphany on May 28th which I titled: "The Human Rights Commissions Are Here To Stay." As long as high levels of immigration from non-Western countries is the norm in Canada, I argue that there will be an endless stream of visible minorities who are potential HRC case filers, and will thus keep the HRCs going.

Levant has made a courageous start to make Canada a better place for his infant child. I hope he goes a step further by attacking this underlying problem as well. As I've said, he is the ideal candidate for this.

Prime Stoppers of Free Speech Are Muslims

Here is a great speech given by Diana West, who as a journalist is understandably concerned about free speech issues. She is the Vice President of the International Free Press Society, and was recently in Copenhagen for a conference on "Free Speech and Islam."

As I've been saying all along, Levant cannot ignore the main reason that he had to spend three years fighting the HRCs is because he published the Mohammed cartoons, and Muslims took him to the HRCs.

The multicultural/immigration link that I have been writing about was succinctly and eloquently addressed by Diana West in her speech. And especially the Muslim link.

Also, I can't believe that this discussion has been going on for almost twenty years, and Levant, immersed as he is in a multicultural and immigrant affair, still hasn't caught on.

He thinks that free speech denunciations just come out of thin air. But, there is a history behind all this. Something I have been recommending he study for a while now, if he wants to have lasting effect in his battles against those trying to stop free speech.

Levant's Quixotic Battle

Ezra Levant started his personal journey to fight the HRCs because he got caught in their machinery.

As I kept writing over the last few week, a mere observer like me (who’s not a politician or even a political analyst) managed to pick up on the salient points of the HRCs, whereas Levant still doesn't get it.

This is what I wrote about my moment of epiphany on the HRCs while watching a debating panel on the HRCs:

[T]here was nothing new or insightful that this group brought [to the debate].

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.

The black woman, with her strong Caribbean accent, was clearly an immigrant.

The main purpose of the HRCs is not to silence free speech, which is the battle that Levant is immersed in. Their main point is to follow the mandates of the Multiculturalism Act.

The Ontario Multiculturalism Act is responsible for:

Recognizing the pluralistic nature of Ontario society, to stress the full participation of all Ontarians as equal members of the community, encouraging the sharing of cultural heritage while affirming those elements held in common by all residents.

What the government-controlled HRCs are doing is simply fulfilling the mandates of this Act, and specifically the "participation of all [Canadians] as equal members of the community."

But, there is a second twist to this. While the Multiculturalism Act protects the "pluralistic" nature of Canada, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act continues to provide an unremitting source of people who make up this "pluralistic" society, and especially those who would require these government-mandated controls that ensures they participate as equal members of society; i.e. visible minorities.

Perhaps it is too much to ask Levant to take on these two behemoths: Immigration and Multiculturalism, both of which are ingrained in the government's laws and polices.

But, it is far better to be truthful about the problem, than to live in some kind of euphoria and excitement doing a Don Quixote-type of battle.

If (I still don’t think the HRCs will go anywhere) the HRCs are dismantled, other instituions will still stay in place, doing exactly what the HRCs are doing but in more subtle ways.

One very recent issue that has come up in a study by a diversity-promoting organization, DiverseCity:The Greater Toronto Leadership Project, is the under representation of minority leaders in Toronto’s public and private sectors. DiverseCity is calling for measures to rectify this problem.

This sounds innocuous enough, not like the hard-line HRCs. But the aim is the same: to change, by diversifying, an existing natural distribution of leaders.

DiverseCity’s funders include the Government of Ontario (and also other governmental bodies indirectly through their partner Toronto City Summit Alliance).

Levant is just scratching the surface with his HRC battles, and not only that, his focus on freedoms of speech and expression (and hate speech) is extremely narrow.

Maybe in five, six or ten years time, Levant will be sued by an HRC-type institution, again. Maybe this time, it will be some visible minority co-worker, who feels he got bypassed for a leadership position because of his ethnic and racial makeup, which Levant received. Of course, Levant says he is a minority (Jewish), but blacks, Asians and Hispanics will always trump Jewish in these battles. And institutions such as DiverseCity will be ready to fight for them to the bitter end.

Here is an interview with Pajamas Media where Levant, breezily, talks about "getting along, regardless of race, sex, etc.." and "life's little grievances and setbacks." The HRCs and their quieter sister organizations certainly don't think their cases are "life's little grievances and setbacks." Their grievances are so big, to them, that they are willing to bully a whole country and its institutions to get their way.

Toronto: Fourth Most Livable City in the World

Toronto was deemed the fourth most livable city in the world, according to a recent survey. This may very well be, but I was curious to find what the survey questions were.

The detailed report is available from the Economist Intelligence Unit for a hefty $250, so I had to make do with what the news media was reporting.

Some of the criteria used to come to this conclusion include: health care, education, infrastructure, culture and environment.

My short take on this is that all of these require large amounts of public funds to function. Even culture (museum construction, film festivals, etc.) has become a major government-funded affair.

Vancouver topped the list and Calgary tied fifth with Perth (Australia), so that’s three Canadian cities in the top five. All there, I would wager, for similar reasons that Toronto made the top five.

I don’t know how Vienna (second) and Melbourne (third) fare in terms of big government, but I would think there is quite a lot of it in Vienna, being a European city.

So, I would say the survey was biased in terms of finding more socialistic, big government trends (without explicitly saying so).

But, more on this later.

The Patron Activist of this Site

I took a while trying to find a succinct phrase to head this blog. In the end, I decided anything I said would be insignificant, and why not have a patron saint of sorts, or as I call it in this post's title, a patron activist.

I think I found just the right phrase, and right person, in Geert Wilders.

Wilders has been in the news a lot these few months, and has been traveling quite a bit.

Of course, the most promising and hopeful news of all is how well his party did in the recent EU elections.

Below is the video of a recent interview he gave to an irritating Danish journalist, who asks him what he would do to with all the Muslims in the Netherlands. The interviewer asks this question twice. It seems he didn’t hear Wilders's response (or listen) the first time.

The kindness that shines through in true leaders is evident in Wilders. Besides giving all the conditions that would merit Muslim deportation from the Netherlands, he says that those who are genuine about assimilating into Dutch culture would be welcome to stay.

In fact, says Wilders, he (and the Dutch) would help them as much as possible, giving them money for education etc…

Now, in comparison, what Muslim leader would make such generous efforts to have non-Muslims (and particularly Christians and Jews) integrate into his society?

The first time the interviewer asks Wilders the above question is around the 6:11 point in the video. The second time, it is around the 7:35 point.

Which HRC Cases Had the Biggest National Coverage?

In my recent post on Ezra Levant's interview on CTV, I didn't mention the content of the interviews and concentrated on the farce of a live censorship, and my arguments as to why Levant was even invited by CTV in the first place.

One interesting point is Levant's mention of three high profile HRC cases of homosexuals going after Christian individuals or organizations.

The HRC cases that caused the biggest national stir were not the homosexual ones.

There is of course the case involving the Mohammed cartoons (against him), and the case against MacLeans for publishing an article by Mark Steyn.

And who filed these cases? Muslims.

How did Muslims get into Canada, a traditionally Christian country?

As I've been saying, the most important link that Levant can make during his fight to dismantle the HRCs is the one between the HRCs and immigration, and more specifically, between multiculturalism and immigration.

Ezra Levant’s Non-Debate with the Chief Commissar of the HRCs

The recent CTV interview of Ezra Levant posted at his website, as well as at the International Free Press Society website, was beautifully and inevitably ironic.

The Chief Commissar of the of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Jennifer Lynch, said she would not appear on CTV if it also had Levant on the show, as planned. CTV invited Levant anyway, and kept open its invitation for Lynch to debate him. Lynch still refused, but sent someone from her office instead, with the condition that Levant and he not speak at the same time. Yes, censorship from the censors.

Levant obliged, Tom Clark, the CTV interviewer, went along with the separate interviews, but you could see the sparkle in his eyes at the comedy-farce of it all, and Levant came out winning.

CTV of course disagreed with Lynch's demands based on its journalistic precepts of freedom of expression and freedom of speech. CTV is a private broadcaster, so it is independent enough to make decisions like this. Still, it is to be commended because it could have come up with any excuse to avoid controversy by having Levant on the show.

But, what if Levant had come to CTV with a different focus?

What if he said that the HRCs are there because they are trying to correct discrimination and inequality in Canada? And that the primary reason for this increased perception of discrimination is the high immigration rates into Canada of visible minorities, who are demanding governmental coercion to correct inequalities?

Steve Paiken was going in that direction in his interview with Levant a few days ago, when he asked Levant repeatedly what was wrong with trying not to offend different peoples, and punishing those who do. Levant doggedly responded by saying the HRCs are not the way.

But, the government has (and will find) other, subtle, ways to make people “nice”.

If Levant had come with that angle, I doubt even CTV would have been open enough to accept him as its guest.

That is why Levant's argument to get rid of the HRCs based on their obstruction of our freedoms of expression and speech is winning him allies in the left, and in the media.

But, once he starts getting into the sticky issues of how Canada’s very policies and fundamental institutions support the HRCs and other bodies which behave like them, primarily the immigration and multicultural ones, then everyone will do a Steve Paiken and say – Canadians just must be nice.

This is the real fight for Levant. This is the real challenge, which first he has to understand (and believe), and then embark on. It is a far less popular and a far more arduous journey, but one which will help Canada become really free again.