There is a controversy in Montreal where Jordanian cleric Sheikh Muhammad bin Musa Al Nasr was invited to speak at the Dar Al-Arqam Mosque and quoted a version calling for the killing of Jews. The imam recited in Arabic the verse: “O Muslim, O servant of Allah, O Muslim, O servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” People have called for his prosecution for hate speech, rekindling the debate over Canada’s roll back of free speech with hate speech and discrimination laws.
The address only recently surfaced even though it was given on Dec. 23, 2016. He is reciting a passage from a hadith, which interprets the words and actions by Muhammad.
B’nai Brith Canada has filed a complaint with Montreal police on the basis that his comments incite violence and radicalization.
We have seen some alarming examples of how Canada has rolled back on free speech, particularly in cases of alleged discrimination (here and here). While there have been rulings in defense of free speech in Canada, the country has plunged deeply into speech controls and criminalization.
I despise the words of this cleric who strikes me as another hate-spewing, ignorant extremist. However, there is much in religious texts of various religions that can be viewed as radicalizing or supporting violence. For example, in the Book of 1 Samuel God orders King Saul to attack the Amalekites: “And utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” Saul does not carry out the massacre and for that he loses his kingdom.
I have serious free speech concerns if we are going to see the criminalization of repeating such passages, even with support for their content. It risks the type of slippery slope that Canada is already on when it comes to the regulation of speech. I remain an old fashioned free speech advocate. I believe that the solution of bad speech is more speech. This cleric has been identified as a hateful and disgraceful figure. The mosque has been identified as a forum for hate by inviting such a person. The alternative is to have the government regulate religious speech and allow the same prosecutions that we have seen of political speech around the world. That is a dangerous prospects given the high tensions over religious differences in the world.
What do you think? Should the Canadian government start to prosecute religious speech deemed inciteful?
Finally, an honest Muslim! The truth is, most Muslims are anti-Jew, and in fact, Hitler is kind of an heroic figure to them. But political correctness prohibits them from coming right out and saying it. If you doubt me, go into a Muslim eatery of some sort, and offhandedly say some bad about the Jews, like “Damn Jew Bankers! Give me one percent interest on my savings and charge 10% to whoever borrows the money! Damn shylocking SOBS!!!”
I am betting if you do, you will get some agreement from them, and an earful about how Mossad launched the 9-11 attacks on NYC.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
You’ll get the blather about ‘false flag’ operations from the usual kooks. There’s more of a propensity to take an antagonistic stance toward the Jews in Muslim populations, but some of the psychological phenomena are familiar in non-Muslim populations.
juliabarrett was clearly referring to the Biblical reference Professor Turley used in his posting. Why do you fixate on the literal existence of “Amalekites”? Why not address her point?
My bad. He’s a troll. That’s why he’s not addressing my point. Stupid me for assuming he was asking a legitimate question.
The broader point is that Turley’s reference is not appropriate in the first place. God’s decree that Amalek be obliterated was a one-time injunction, for a specific purpose. It was not then, and never has been, taken to be a general principle. Even if Amalekites were still around, as Jews are, no one outside a lunatic asylum would think that God wants the Jews to kill them in the 21st century.
Islam, on the other hand, enjoins its subjects to keep on murdering the infidel until there are no opponents left. If you are a Jew, it doesn’t matter if there is still an Amalek in the world today, because it’s no longer a relevant issue. For Islam, it is never that way.
Patrick, you are far too educated and far too sensible for most of the dimwits here who would only react, negatively, to calls for murder, if they, personally, felt in danger. Not unlike their comrades, in Nazi Germany, they defend free speech when the lives of Jews are the target. Quiet complicity. Wonder how JT, a purported Catholic, would react if mosques encouraged their congregants to seek out Catholics for murder? To slay them where they see them? Trust me, his reaction would take a 180. Free speech doesn’t encompass the calls for murder, and he darn well knows that. He just likes that the suggested target happens to be Jews.
I take your point, but it reveals a bigger picture. American Jews are mostly worshippers of the religion of Leftism, primarily because there have never been pogroms here–so they feel absolutely free to reject the existential fears of their cousins in Israel. American Jews can feel comfortable prancing about, denouncing the Prime Ministership of a man whose primary agenda concern is the security of Israel’s people. It embarrasses them amongst their Lefty friends, who wish Israel could just cease to exist because it’s too troubling to face the dark realities the rest of the world has to take deadly seriously.
American Catholics are a lot like that. For the first 300-or-so years, America had almost no Catholics. America was settled, after all, by Protestants who thought that Elizabeth’s protestant England was still too Catholic–and everyone remembered how her sister, Bloody Mary, burned so many at the stake, just for refusing to be Catholics. None of that history is real to families like Turley’s, because it never happened here. Catholics were allowed to come here in the mid 19th century in large numbers, and we never burned them at the stake for being heretics. It took a while for the rest of us to get used to their peculiarities, but today, no one can tell the difference between them and any other bunch of Americans. Yet for most of that time, in England or Ireland, a friendly chat down the pub could fast escalate to murder if one Irishman found out the other one was not Catholic (or Protestant).
So these things are just abstractions for Americans. We are insouciant, because we have that luck of history that makes it possible. Islam never invaded our land and enslaved our men and put all our women into sexual bondage. The Caribbean Sea was not infested with Moslem pirates for centuries, as the Mediterranean had been. We have no idea how lucky we have been, being separated from history as we have been. Or, were we actually lucky about that, after all? Were we like a man who has spent years in an iron lung, and has no muscle strength remaining?
For the first 300-or-so years, America had almost no Catholics.
Actually, the primal see was founded in 1789, and there was already a Catholic population of note in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Mass immigration of Irish Catholics dates from 1845.
Isn’t that exactly what I said? Oops! America was founded in 1622-1623. 225-or-so years. Such loose talk is going to damage my reputation, I’m guessing.
Maryland WAS in fact founded by Catholics (it’s named after Bloody Mary), but that didn’t last; it wasn’t an ongoing Catholic outpost.
Otherwise, there were indeed some German Catholics in the colonial period, but they had essentially no contribution to the cultural life of the country. We were 100% culturally Protestant, all the way up to the 20th century.
The foundation of British North America was in 1604, so, no, that wasn’t what you said.
Why would someone want to seek you, let alone desperately? Just curious.
Well, if you want to be snippy, you can go all the way back to Roanoke, in 1588. Or Jamestown, in 1607.
I don’t know where you get 1604. A lost colony I am unaware of, Madonna? Tell me about it.
Anyway, both Roanoke and Jamestown failed, and thus have no bearing on the culture of America. It’s best to say that America was founded by Puritans, in 1620, with the Mayflower Compact. Our history is continuous since then. Off by a couple of years, I was. Writing by memory.
Jamestown did not fail. Virginia has been continuously occupied since 1607. British settlement at Nova Scotia dates from 1604
Islam, on the other hand, enjoins its subjects to keep on murdering the infidel until there are no opponents left.
Muslim and non-Muslim populations live side-by-side in Malaysia, in India, in Lebanon, in a string of African countries. You’ve had bouts of political and social violence in these loci, but these are circumscribed crises. It’s not that unusual that populations work out a rough-and-ready modus vivendi.
That is true. It speaks to the fact that human beings have within them a basic decency that can even overcome the perfectly evil political ideology. Except in places like Pakistan and Egypt, where the Moslem invaders completely replaced the culture of those they stole the country from, places like the ones you mention retain some of the human decency of the peoples the invaders conquered and forced to convert.
But in Egypt, for example, when Allah’s demon-infested soldiers arrived, they cut out the tongues of everyone they heard speaking their native language. It was a complete replacement of culture. (They even attempted to tear down the Pyramids, to obliterate the memory of what came before.)
And where Islam is 90%+ of the culture, and their is no cultural memory of what existed before, the true nature of Islam is freely expressed.
But in Egypt, for example, when Allah’s demon-infested soldiers arrived, they cut out the tongues of everyone they heard speaking their native language.
I think you’ve been reading the equivalent of Jack Chick pamphlets.
And where Islam is 90%+ of the culture, and their is no cultural memory of what existed before, the true nature of Islam is freely expressed.
If you fancy the worst this world has to offer is to be found in Morocco or Jordan, you’re sadly misinformed.
I don’t think there are any Amalekites around to kill, so I’m failing to see the analogy.
Maybe it’s different in Canada, but our Constitution allows hate speech but court rulings make an exception if you’re inciting someone to commit violence on others. These hardline Islamist preachers take their Koran and hadiths both seriously and literally because, after all, they believe that the Koran is the word of their god, breathed onto the pages of that book, and if you destroy that book, you’re committing a serious offense. So when al Nusr is reading from that text, he is not speaking figuratively or metaphorically or in parables. He is exhorting his followers to physically kill Jews, and not with kindness.
WarrenPeese – maybe Canada has a small Amalekite community at risk of being wiped out by Jews.
but our Constitution allows hate speech but court rulings make an exception if you’re inciting someone to commit violence on others.
Chuckles. See the experiences of Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, and others contending with Canada’s group libel laws and with their ‘Human Rights’ star chambers.
As a Jew, his words chill me to my very soul. However I do believe in freedom of speech. In this case it depends upon the context. Was he merely reading a passage from the Koran, as Jews read passages from the Torah? We do not take them literally and run out to slaughter the Amalekites. Or was he inciting violence and murder? Perhaps Muslims hearing his reading might take such words as encouragement to kill Jews. I don’t know. I do suspect he won’t be prosecuted. Canada, like many Western nations, seems to bend over backwards to protect freedom of speech for Muslims while enforcing speech codes on everyone else. I’m not Islamophobic, I’m observing.
juliabarrett – as a matter of intellectual curiosity, are there any Amalekites still alive? If not, it was a bad analogy.
I don’t know… Possibly their genetic relatives still exist. The Amalekites are sort of symbolic ‘bad guys’. So in that sense the Amalekites are universal. An archetype if you will.
juliabarrett – the comparison does not stand. You cannot compare something that does not exist with something that does exist.
I didn’t make the initial comparison. It’s in the article.
juliabarret – I agree with. It is just a bad comparison. 😉
I think laws of general applicability in the US should encompass religious speech if that speech is intended to incite violence or any other illegal activity. It’s a no-brainer.
If we’re not going to prosecute illegal activity under the cloak of religion, I’ll see you around the sweat lodge and have a peyote tea waiting for you.
This man isn’t Rap Brown in Cambridge, and that’s perfectly obvious.
Were Canada sensible, there would be a list of about 25 countries to whose residents settler’s visas are issued only to families with children or to older married couples and never to individuals unless they could demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that they hailed from a cultural minority in said country (e.g. Egyptian Copts). Were Canada sensible, any aspirant immigrant over the age of 14 would have to pass a written and oral proficiency test in English (or in French) before receiving a spot in a queue for the issuance of settler’s visa or temporary residency visas. Were Canada sensible, the only consulates they’d have to administer the test in the Near East, Central Asia, or North Africa would be in cities where Christians or Jews are concentrated. Were Canada sensible, this man’s biometrics would be recorded and he’d be put on a watch list. Any future visa application from him would be refused.
Instigation and sedition are properly crimes. The question at hand is whether the man’s remarks qualify as either. The answer is no.
A different question is whether this cretin’s presence in the Dominion of Canada is in the public interest. The answer is also no. So why was he issued a visa?
I know that I probably sound like a broken record on this subject, but my answer to the question posed at the end is an emphatic no.
appleton, agreed. Canada has gotten into the business of regulating thoughtcrimes, It can’t end well.
The question comes down to this, “is the Quran a living document or is it to be interpreted in the words that were in use at the time it was written”
Attributing this to Gorsuch.
Maybe he and Scalea are responsible for the strict interpretation of the Quran.
You’re confused. They are judges dealing in US statutes and the constitution, not theologians.
test
Montreal is already having a violence problem. Hate speech should not be added to it. Given the hyper-sensitivity of speech these days, I think calling on the death of Jews needs to be nipped at the bud.
Again, you cannot trust the courts to define ‘hate speech’ in a non-sectarian fashion. In Canada, it will be used to harass evangelicals in the cross-hairs of Big Gay. Judges are not good people, by and large.
In 10 years people will be prosecuted in the United States for expressing the “wrong” opinion on marriage, immigration, climate change, IQ differences, etc. And people such as the previous writer will support it wholeheartedly.
Of course, they will have a well written justification for such prosecutions.
I’m betting they’ll forego penal codes and make use of bankrupting civil suits.
The $PLC is already notorious for outing and trying to get people fired people who hold such “wrong” opinions.
Of course, radical Islamic and left wing terrorist types never seem to make their “hate” lists.
The continuing weakness in Turley’s position fortunately includes a strength, a strength that Canada is illustrating. Either position taken to extremes encourages a decline in society. To take the ‘free speech’ position to the extreme to allow this sort of encouragement for violence without scrutiny is as dangerous as what Turley keeps accusing other countries as well as the US of doing. Society has the responsibility to head off potential harm that exhibits itself through crazies such as this mutt. We govern our selves individually as well as as a society. The one perishes without the other. The fact that Canada and other countries address this problem from both perspectives is the redeeming factor that seems to be missing from Turley’s posts. A radical leader comes into a country, lectures like radicals, and validates the killing of specific people. Compare Canada’s approach to that of the US in banning people because they come from a specific country only. If ever there was an example of hypocrisy, this is it. We can thank the dupes that voted for DDT for the heightened level of hypocrisy in this country, regardless of how free the speech. Now let’s observe our own crazy as he strips away environmental protection, the arts, etc. Yup, he and he alone, along with the other mindless.
“To take the ‘free speech’ position to the extreme to allow this sort of encouragement for violence without scrutiny…”
No one said scrutiny of speech shouldn’t occur. It should occur.
But beyond this particular case there is a problem with calls for prosecuting a person over whatever conceptually barfs out of his mouth.
Scrutiny, yes. Censorship, no.
Again with the semantics. In this case we have a context of terrorism, the source of that terrorism, the historical argument for that terrorism, the spreading of the argument for that terrorism, the essence of mindless followers that have had their terrorist exploits linked to mutts like this fat f*^k, etc. When it walks like a duck….
Society must always be vigilant and at the same time supervise that vigilance. The rights of the individual and the rights of society meet here in this case. The fact that the issue has been raised is a positive thing, perhaps the only positive thing to come out of this. Letting the a**hole off along with the a**holes that follow him is a risk in one direction. Banning him from coming back, surveilling the mosque, and other forms of scrutiny is a risk in the other. In the end the question is what does the freedom of speech represent, the freedom of expression or the freedom to incite to kill? This is where the society of the moment must determine which risk to take. Personally, I would see that this pr*k is never allowed back in the country, that other pr*cks like him are never allowed in the country, and that the goings on this this ‘house of worship’ be monitored, just as with any other sect, group, or mob protected by the society with the ultimate intention of protecting all individuals.
In the end, all the freedoms in the world mean nothing without constantly being addressed as to their application.
Of course countries wind up at war because their leaders have incited violence with their speech. Can inciting violence ever be justifiable?
The problem with hate crimes is it pushes you down a slippery slope of some people, some lives, etc., be more valuable than others. The problem with hate speech is you start already halfway down the slippery slope.
The eternal rule of unintended consequences beats the laws of political correctness. If you’re stupid and foolish enough to put these laws on the books they must be enforced. There is no reasonable justification not to prosecute the mosque, et.al.
This is nothing new.
The prevailing philosophy of these Clerics.is
destruction of the Infidel.
The world would be a great place without “Cults”.
That journalist named Who Flung Foo has written an article about the free speech rights of those who advocate killing all muslims over the age of 5. Perhaps a debate could be had between Foo and this so called Cleric. Maybe they could be armed with rifles for the debate.
How would you react, JT, if, instead of encouraging Muslims to kill Jews, mosques were encouraging and demanding that law professors, wherever they be found, need to be murdered? Huh? Let me amend that–law professors, their parents, wives, husbands, children and grandchildren, wherever they be found, need to be murdered. Now, does that affect your staunch and old-fashioned support of free speech just a tad? Would you and your esteemed colleagues have an issue with a call to take out your own kind? If you believe that supporting a call to murder innocents, in an age where we are witnessing terrorist attacks on a daily basis around the world, is worthy of protection, you have just demonstrated a perfect example as to how a supposedly intelligent and educated individual can, simultaneously, be incredibly stupid and foolish.
So the solution is what, censorship? I bet that’s something the cleric would agree with.
You’re in good company.
It is actually a problem of definition, or mis-definition, which leads to false conclusions. Islam is not a “religion”; it’s a political ideology with a religious veneer.
The political ideology Moslems absorb from the womb assures them that the entire world is destined to submit to Allah, and it is incumbent on all Moslems to hasten that day, by lies and violence. It is a system that cannot be “reformed” any more than Nazism or communism could be. The Hadith in question assures Moslems that at the point in the future that all the world is in submission to Allah, the natural world will miraculously become sentient–to ensure that every single Jew will be murdered.
ThaI is, Islam is murderously anti-Semitic at its foundation. Incitement to murder is not protected speech. A ban on it is not “censorship.”
We have been at war with Islam for 1,400 years because Islam was invented to swarm over the entire Earth, and eradicate all competing thought-systems. Until it is defeated, and eliminated, it should be outlawed. Certainly, it should not be encouraged, and made welcome in the West.
Islam is not a “religion”; it’s a political ideology with a religious veneer.
I’m sure you fancy you’ve said something sophisticated. You’ve actually said something stupid.
No, I don’t think that. I know what i’m talking about, and it’s transparently true.
Most of what we today think of as the Middle East, and all of North Africa, were Christian lands at the time Rome fell. The Arab invaders who stole those lands were not religious evangelists. They did not teach their victims a religion, but a political ideology that they would henceforth be required to accept.
Charles Martel and Vlad the Impaler did not drive back those savage hoards because the invaders of their countries were gentle preachers of a religion they wished to spread by persuasion. Islam’s soldiers were akin to the Red Army, rolling across the landscape to communize another country, or Hitler’s men taking over France, determined to transform it utterly.
It’s not about religion. Sharia is not about law. It’s all about the deadliest, most toxic political ideology ever devised. And telling the truth about it is anything but a blithe attempt to “sound sophisticated.” We in the West are committing cultural and civilizational suicide, and vapid people like you mock those of us Cassandras who point it out–which is a strong indication the suicide will be successful.
Adding verbiage doesn’t make the statement any smarter.
Beautifully said. Ignore the troll. She’s simply a rude idiot.
Thanks.
Bam Bam, if the professor objected so strongly to threats against lawyers he would have long ago called for the prosecution of anyone quoting Shakespeare’s Henry VI. “First thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers.”
Please read civility rule on the top of this page.
Your suggestion is that his view should be contingent on whether or not his own emotional equilibrium would be injured? Pretty silly principle of action.
I’m not suggesting that it SHOULD–I’m suggesting that it WOULD. His viewpoint would, most definitely change, without a doubt, if he, himself, felt that his own, personal life, and the lives of his loved ones, were in danger. Grave danger. Where there was a call, around the world, to slaughter and murder him, his colleagues and their respective families. Since JT, however, is not Jewish, he feels no compulsion to object. No need to apply free speech, which he very well knows is not absolute, in the proper manner, acknowledging its well-known limitations. Yes, I am suggesting that if JT had any skin in the game, which he doesn’t, his perspective would drastically change. He would personally feel the threat and act accordingly.
Montreal’s Jewish population is not in ‘grave danger’ and if they were, statutory law making it a crime to say rude things about them would be of scant consequence.
Calling for murder is way beyond your bizarre notion of rudeness.
We’ve invented thousands of gods over many millennia, which surprise! includes today’s cult monotheisms. It’s long overdue to drop all this dangerous nonsense.
But all speech should, must, be protected, including that of costumed charlatans who pretend to know the will of an imaginary entity.
I like the words: costumed charlatans. Give a man a head piece and he speaks for God.
Is that why judges wear robes?
The only question is an evaluation of Canada itself. Their reaction under their laws to this episode will show if they are serious or just dilletante ‘cultural’ warriors or if it’s just a sad joke with them left to suffer the springtime fate of all snowflakes.
So far their new anti this and that system lacks seriousness by any objective definition. But I buy my medicines from Mexico now so what need of Canada?
“springtime fate of all snowflakes”
excellent
The Canadian law applies to Christians only. In how it’s applied, that is.
That’s one problem with these laws and ‘anti-discrimination’ law generally. The culture of the legal profession is such that they will not be enforced in a non-sectarian fashion. Appellate judges, law professors, BigLaw lawyers, federal prosecutors are mostly high-class shysters. ‘Public interest lawyers’ are lower-class shysters, but just as pretentious.