June 15, 2008

By Ted Belman

Kathy Shaidle, a fellow Torontonian and a gifted writer, takes on Haroon Siddiqui who writes a regular column for The Star, Canada’s largest circulation paper, which is decidedly on the left. Siddiqui is as anti-Israel as you can get. He wrote Free speech cannot be an excuse for hate which attracted Shaidle’s attention.

Go to Five Feet of Fury to read the original of what follows with the links.

Dear Mr. Siddiqui

The difference between what the Nazis said about the Jews and what people today are saying about radical Muslims is…

What we’re saying about radical Muslims is true.

To pretend otherwise is to perform the intellectual equivalent of hiding Nazis in your attic during World War II.

Whereas The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a proven hoax (something millions of your fellow Muslims seem too stupid to figure out or too stubborn to admit), the many declarations of radical Muslims of their intent to take over the world are all too true — they uttered those words themselves; have been doing so before your favourite punching bag, George Bush, was even born; and have been captured doing so on video.

Please present me with similar statements by Jews — let alone Baha’i (that’s the correct spelling btw).

You can’t, can you?

(And an aside to Mr. Farber, assuming he really said what you claim he did — should the unlikely day dawn when Baha’i fly stolen planes into buildings and incinerate 3000 people alive, or mutilate the genitals of millions of women, or slice up their little boys as part of “religious festivals”, or take over a school and rape pre-pubescent girls in front of their classmates, then shoot them in the back as they try to run away, then plenty of us will be more than willing to hate them for it, and we won’t be silenced either, especially not by an out of touch, would-be bully like Mr. Farber.)

Millions of us want to know: why do so many Muslims do things like that, Mr. Siddiqui?

And why don’t more of your fellow Muslims condemn them, loudly, publicly and without the usual “buts” about Israel’s or America’s mostly imaginary equivalence? Now that would be a column worth writing.

You work from a false assumption, Mr. Siddiqui: that hate is bad.

Sometimes hatred is justified, even a duty.

If people hate Muslims, blame the likes of admitted terrorism supporter Mohammed Elmasry and his three law students dupes, who brought Maclean’s to court, and, among other things, condemned Mark Steyn’s use of “sarcasm” and “subtle intellectual arguments.”

It’s a sad commentary when even the so-called educated members of your “community” — three law school graduates — can’t appreciate basic English literary devices that date back to Chaucer.

But then again, Muslims don’t care much for books, do they?

Except for the Koran, which contains more hate speech than every issue of Maclean’s published in the last hundred years put together.

(Now THAT would be an interesting case for the Human Rights Commission. I’m a free speech absolutist, but I’d love to see how a case calling the Koran “hate speech” would play out, what with all its calls to violence against “apes and pigs” , i.e. Christians and Jews.)

PS: you foolishly cited professor John “Who?” Miller’s tedious, cliche ridden screed against Steyn. Speaking of “riddled with errors”: did you know that the great journalism professor Miller accused Steyn of not “arguing in food [sic] faith”? (Have someone else in the newsroom explain his mistake to you…)

As well, the best critic Miller could find to slag Steyn is Johann Hari, a reporter who has previously written glowing essays about his casual homosexual encounters with neo-Nazis.

Here’s what really going on here, Mr. Siddiqui:

Were you or your fellow hacks Mr. Miller and Mr. Hari to spend an entire day in the effort, neither of you could write a sentence comparable to one that Mr. Steyn is capable of tossing off with no effort.

Unlike him, neither of you will ever be invited to the White House, or to meet with EU heads of state, who’ve made Steyn’s book required reading for their Cabinets. You will never write bestselling books or sell out $500 dollar a plate events.

Had Mohammed Elmasry and his jumped up little Sockpuppets tried to hijack an airplane instead of Canada’s oldest magazine, they couldn’t have tainted the average Canadian’s view of Muslims more than they already have.

They are the cause of whatever “Islamophobia” exists in Canada, Mr. Siddiqui. And so are you, with your weekly excretions of Marxist claptrap of the sort that’s been past its “best before” date since the Berlin Wall came down.

In order to be intellectually honest and consistent, you would all charge yourselves with committing hate crimes and spreading “Islamophobia” throughout Canada and the world. Then take yourselves to court, fine each other and go to jail.

Maybe then my fellow Canadians and I could finally get a break from the constant seditious whining we’re obliged to endure from you and your fellow ungrateful, foreign born belligerent victocrats.

UPDATE:

Siddiqui writes back:
U r entitled to your views.

Thanks for reading.

I respond:

Actually Mr. Siddiqui, I am NOT entitled to my views, according to Canada’s Human Rights Commissions, and according to you yourself, in the column you just typed.

I can be fined tens of thousands of dollars for my views — just ask Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. That is a funny kind of “entitlement.”

God, you’re an dimwit.

If that is the best you can do in terms of reply, it really does make me wonder why you still have a column in the Star and I do not.