Ahh! the fox is amongst the chickens now! ;D
Mohamed Elmasry, leader of the Canadian Islamic Congress, told the Globe and Mail that his organization will seek to have charges laid against the magazine under Canada's laws against distributing hate literature
And well he might seek. The law is there for everybody. Whether he and his group can ever assemble a case that meets the criteria, or the case ever comes to trial, or results in a finding of gulity, or a dismissal, or whatever, we have yet to see. But, iif we have laws (and I most definitely believe we should in this case) then its by the process of trial and precedent that we find out what they actually mean.
This doesn't bother me much, because I don't think he really has a case. But I'm not a judge.
Syed Soharwardy of Calgary, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, said that making jokes about religion should be off limits and he is willing to test that theory in court.
Good for him. He had an opinion and he expressed it. Many people think many things should be against the law. That doesn't mean that they ever will be. If he chooses to launch a court case, so be it.
You find yourself arguing in ever diminishing circles about what you can and can not say.
If this was the universal reaction of all media, the effect you are describing might be a real risk. But tell me, honestly, that across the board this is what happens in Canada as result of having reasonable restrictions on expression, as opposed to being a result of PC or having a particular constituency (ie: readership) that one wants to please. You could equally argue that when media outlets self-regulate to avoid civil libel action, that the risk to free speech is so great that we shouldd not have libel laws.
But by not forcing people with beliefs like the one you make example of about the holocaust to defend their stupidity they are in fact left to believe it. They get away with being a bigot and racist because no one will debate the points they try to make. As a result they continue to believe such unadulterated crap and teach it to their children.
They may very well be left to be bigots, and to teach stupid things to their children. I don't care. A person's private beliefs, private expressions and what they privately teach their children aren't the object of my discussion. I don't think you could realistically ever effectively control this, nor would I suggest it. You cannot control what people think. But you can sure as hell regulate how they behave in public, and that is my point.
It is the ultimate ostrich response to a truly vile and disgusting practise.
If legislating against the public expression of hateful ideas is "ostrich-ism", then why legislate against any anti-social behaviour at all? Why have laws against domestic violence (for example), when we know that lots of women and children still get beaten up in the privacy of their homes, instead of on the street as was once acceptable in some places (and may still be today in other places).
I had always thought that "genocide" meant murder of a race.
The Criminal Code defines "genocide" as:
2) In this section, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part any identifiable group, namely,
(a) killing members of the group; or
(b) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.
Jesus, pardon my language... but doesn't this give some the right to spew "hate".
I don't really know, but I don't think so, any more than the right to self defence using minimum reasonable force automatically gives you a right to kill somebody who steps on your lawn. The facts of that defence would have to be established, just like any other. The question that would have to be decided in the courts would (I think) be whether something was actually the tenet of a religion, the interpretation of it, or something else altogether.
right now we have people going to jail for saying "I believe that x", and in my opinion, that is wrong. Sure, Ernst Zundel is a big fat goof, but worthy of all those court costs, etc?
Really? Who has been jailed in Canada for this? What was Ernst Zundel actually punished for? Saying "I believe (x)", or spreading ideas that violate the hate law, which the Crown would have to have proved beyond a reasonable doubt? Actually, he wasn't charged under "Hate Propaganda". He was charged under Section 181, "Spreading False News":
Every one who wilfully publishes a statement, tale or news that he knows is false and that causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
You can look over the case at:
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/z/zundel-ernst/supreme-court/. He was found guilty on appeal in Ontario court. The cae wwas appealed to the Supreme Court. Part of the appeal was based on the question of whether or not the law violated the Charter right to freedom of expression: it was decided at Supreme Court that it did, and the appeal was dismissed. So, as far as that goes, the Supreme Court actually protected the right to say things that some find offensive,
in a particular case. So, I would say, the system worked.
Who really cares if this idiot believes that Greenhouse Gases will kill us all, or that the Holocaust was a consipiracy, or that everyone on the planet except me is behind the 9/11 attacks.
Not me. I couldn't care less what he believes. What I care about is what he, or other people like him, achieve when they actively incite hatred, racism, social violence or other crap we don't need. And, like I said, it matters not to me what colour/race/creed/relligion/etc the offenders are.
at one time we thought that the sun went around the earth, right? Right?
Yes, but I could scarcely call the actions of the Roman Catholic Church in attempting to suppress opposing theories as "reasonable restrictions to maintain a civil society". It was patently unreasonable, because the theorists were not advocating harm or violence or marginalization. They were advancing a theory, and one with pretty good evidence. The Church felt its power threatened, so it tried to stop the expression of the idea. But, obviously, not every case will be so clear cut, such as the example of a person who genuinely voices an actual religious belief against an identifiable group. The only fully acceptable way we have of deciding is to run a case through the courts, maybe even appeal to the Supreme Court. To me the way to decide is not to just let people do or say whateever they want, in the hopes that somehow it will all turn out right in the end.
Cheers