“The love of justice in most men is simply the fear of suffering injustice.” – La Rochefoucauld
A CBC Calgary headline reads: “Calgary among 6 Canadian cities to sign charter against Islamophobia.” As a Canadian, I am concerned that this same charter will inevitably be used to silence all criticism of Islam the religion for its imperialistic narrative, and to indict Canadian citizens for defending their Canadian heritage and traditions against the goal of “political Islam,” which is to transmogrify the Canadian identity altogether.
Let’s be honest, the purpose of this charter is not to negate “Islamophobia,” but rather to censor any criticism, honest or otherwise, of Islam the religion and its connection to those Muslims who have “hijacked” Islam from its as-yet unrealized peaceful coexistence with other religions. The so-called “scourge” of Islamophobia is nothing more than the rational and prudent concerns of non-Muslim citizens for their personal safety and the future of their children, in the face of what seems to be an unending assault by Muslim zealots on the security of the Western world.
Kacem El Ghazzalli writes in the Huffington Post, “This ‘Islamophobia’ reaction, which is commonplace among many Western non-Muslim academics and young people who embrace tolerance and multiculturalism, stems from an implicit cultural relativism. The assumption seems to be that the behaviour and mindset of an individual are relative to her or his culture of origin, and should be judged only within that context, implying that principles like human rights may not be universal or should not be considered as such.” The myth of Islamophobia is the product of realpolitik and nothing else. The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote of Stalin’s passionate belief in his many and imagined intrigues, that they were “politically necessary, which was better than mere truth.”
The only way for journalists and apologists to exculpate Islam from its egregious obtrusion into Western societies is to force the illusion upon those of us who dissent from the multiculturalist ideal, that Islam and its angry adherents have done nothing that should require exculpation. Mere truth today is taking a backseat to religiously motivated propaganda. These journalists and apologists have become imperviously dictatorial in purveying their reckless and accommodationist summations about Islamic jihad and its political activists. As Stalin put it to one of his underlings, “We ourselves will be able to determine what is true and what is not.”
My point here is not so much about the incomprehensibly foolish notion that “Islamophobia” is actually a phobia, because it’s not: our subject here is a rational and justifiable fear of Islam and Muslims because of the intolerance and behavioural anomalies most often associated with Islam and Muslims the world over. My point here is rather about, as Robert Spencer once put it, “these unrealities forced upon us,” in this case the fallacious idea that Western apprehensions about Islam and Muslims are unjustified and that we must displace these fears from our very being, whether we like it or not.
Years ago we were told that any apprehensions we felt about Islam and Muslims – whether our dislike of their anti-Jewish rhetoric or our being offended by their inciteful and shamelessly anti-Western excoriations – were nothing short of bigotry and racism — in short, Islamophobia. Today we are being told that this same Islamophobia, like Al Gore’s “global warming,” is something we must accept as fact, and that we are denied any measure of dissent.
Back on July 21, 2014, the Algemeiner published a story about the “Paris Intifada” and how “hundreds of mostly Arab and North African youths marched through the streets wielding bars and clubs while shouting, ‘Death to Israel.'” The article goes on to note how, only a week before, “an anti-Israel demonstration at Paris’s Bastille Square quickly turned violent with protesters seeking out and attacking Jewish targets and screaming ‘death to the Jews’ and ‘Hitler was right.'” Roger Cukierman, president of CRIF, an organization representative of all French Jewry, remarked during an interview with Le Monde Juif: “This new anti-Semitism can lead to the departure of all the Jews if Sharia becomes their state religion and we let ourselves be invaded by people who do not respect the government.”
Now, could this statement by the Frenchman Roger Cukierman regarding a mass departure of all Jews from France because of violent anti-Semitism be deemed “Islamophobic” according to our new Canadian “charter against Islamophobia”? Will this charter against Islamophobia inculpate Canadian citizens for voicing their concerns about personal safety and national security? If so, if we are to be found guilty of such “crimes,” then Canadians will have become the subjugated people of an Arab Muslim theocracy, our love of justice be damned.
Marcel Proust wrote, “People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.” Advocates of this “charter against Islamophobia” intend to prevent dissenting Canadians our one foot on the ground. We are being forcibly tossed into Justin Trudeau’s roiling ocean of “multiculturalism” – without debate, without discussion, and without our consent. Our Canadian traditions and fidelities, even our national security, are to be bowled over by the perverse Liberal Party of Canada dictate that a 7th century, imperialist religious ideology should displace and redefine those same traditions and fidelities and national security. Canada is to become (and America too, if Donald Trump is not elected) just another country on a long list of unremarkable countries raging against Jews and Judaism and the State of Israel. This government, with its Syrian refugee program, and now this charter that proscribes criticism of the religiously motivated, anti-Jewish politics these Syrian refugees bring with them, will eventually force our Jewish Canadians to leave Canada, just as the violent behaviour of those Arabs and North Africans are forcing French Jews to leave France.
Montefiore wrote, “The measure of any tyranny is its defiance of time.” So true. Today, in the year 2016, when computer technology and medical science are progressing by leaps and bounds, we are now living in a country where denouncing one’s neighbors to the civil authorities will be an everyday occurrence, just as it was in Stalin’s Soviet Union, just as it was in Hitler’s Nazi Germany. And all for the sake of a religion whose tenets command its adherents to cling malefically and obstinately to 7th century imperialist edicts, heedless of the humanistic disciplines and modernity obsolescing those same edicts. If, as we’re so often told by Western journalists and apologists, fear of Islam is irrational, then, to follow the same argument, Islam’s and the Muslim tendency to willfully forfeit the consolidating wisdom of progress and human advancement is form of insanity.