It used to be illegal to mask your face in public in Vancouver

- because we had a right to live without unnecessary fear of the other. And maybe that bylaw, originally targeting the KKK, is still on the books, I'll have to check. Why is it so hard today for people obsessed with Western society's alleged victimization of various others not to understand that our others are engaging in potentially violent othering too? Anyway, this is just an introduction to George Jonas' latest in the National Post: Canada's medieval rights commissions

Canada's "human rights" commissars are ready. Having spent the last couple of years positioning themselves as our brave new multicultural world's vanguard against such reactionary traditions as free speech, they now feel it's time to extend their horizons. This year's target is the criminal justice system.

HRCs wish to be recognized as "experts." They're seeking intervener status before Justice Frank Marocco of Ontario's Superior Court, who is asked to determine whether a Muslim woman should remove her veil while testifying as a witness at a hearing in a sexual assault case.

Apparently the original presiding judge said yes, please, take it off. He didn't add, as I might have: "Remove it, dear lady, because you're now in Canada, and here it isn't our custom to try people on the evidence of masked witnesses."
[...]
Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Barbara Hall's troops are pawing the ground to be heard in the matter. Predictably, their view is that a believer's right to exercise her religious practices trumps the right of an accused to a fair trial. The way the law has evolved in Canada, they say, it's the courts' duty to accommodate outlandish customs. How could it be otherwise, when the vital right of a Muslim woman to be ritually veiled is balanced against a mere bagatelle, such as a man's rightoid to give full answer and defence to the criminal charges against him?

Ah, you're describing a Monty Python skit, someone might say. No, I'm not. I'm describing Canadian reality.

Here's an institution, ostensibly established to safeguard human rights, including, among others, a right Canada's Charter of Right and Freedoms calls fundamental, the right to a fair trial. Crossexamination-- "the engine of truth" as a legal cliche has it --is integral to a fair trial, and seeing a witness' face while testing his or her veracity is integral to cross-examination. Given this, what is there to say about "human rights" officials offering themselves as "experts" to testify that the right to a fair trial in 21st-century Canada takes second place to a medieval Muslim notion of feminine modesty?
[...]
Barbara Hall & Co. are masquerading as the defenders of human rights, the very rights and freedoms they're seeking to undermine.

Hall's commissars aren't demanding access to Judge Marocco's court as advocates for shariah. No, they're calling themselves experts on Canada's evolving law. They're not urging the courts to accommodate veiled Muslim witnesses, they're stating as their expert opinion that, as a matter of law, accommodating such witnesses is the duty of Canadian courts. In other words, they're trying to parlay their ideology of Advanced Matriarchal and Transsexual Multiculturalism into expertise on Canadian law. That's a fraudulent pitch, made under false pretenses -- at least, that's what I'd say if the judge asked me.

Battered "Human Rights" Kommissar Syndrome?

What will the "feminists" say to this admission from Barbara Hall, head of Ontario's "Human Rights" Commission (HT Catfur):

It was her response to Steyn's criticism of OHRC's silence on honour killings that shocked me.

"There are thousands of things that happen in the province of Ontario on a daily basis and we don't comment on all of them," she said.

But, I spluttered, women are being murdered.

"As I said, we are a small commission.

"There are many problematic things that happen in our community and we have to make choices because we can't respond to everything," Hall said.

So honour killings are merely "problematic"?

Here's a woman who's advocated for years on behalf of women's rights. She found time to crucify Steyn and Maclean's, but she's too busy to raise the issue of women who are being murdered over some hideous interpretation of "honour"?

Connect the dots...

Bravo! Mark Steyn

and Brava! Denise.

Jay Currie: trapped in Section 13: not kosher

Jay Currie decides to fire off a human rights claim against a Judeophobic cartoon that appeared in Le Devoir, the Quebecois establishment newspaper, last summer. Jay thinks we can bring the Canadian Human Rights Act into disrepute by showing how this legislation (specificially Section 13) is a very broadly worded attack on free expression that can only be effectively applied arbitrarily, from within a set of politicized assumptions about who are deserving victims (and cannot be treated with contempt in the media) and who are fair game. In this case, it is more a question of whether the offended can have a go at claiming some "human rights" money for the kind of thinly-veiled antisemitism that is now mainstream among the Canadian left-liberal opinion, and even coming to the surface in major political parties.

Then, a commenter points out to Jay that in re-publishing the offending cartoon, Jay is himself contravening the Canadian Human Rights Act. Be aware: nothing is kosher in Canada, unless the very religious law givers at 344 Slater St., Ottawa, say so.

UPDATE and related: a story on the antisemitic Quebec cartoons from the Brussels Journal.

Also: Tahir Aslam Gora, The Hamilton Spectator (Apr 17, 2008):

The Ontario Human Rights Commission has accused Canadian media in general of contributing to racism and Islamophobia, in the context of complaints filed to the commission about The Future Belongs To Islam, a controversial book excerpt published by Maclean's magazine in 2006.

The commission ruled it didn't have jurisdiction to proceed with the complaints, but lectured the media.

"The commission has serious concerns about the content of a number of articles concerning Muslims that have been published by Maclean's magazine and other media outlets.

"This type of media coverage has been identified as contributing to Islamophobia. The commission recognizes and understands the serious harm that such writings cause."

It's interesting that the commission views such writings as doing serious harm. The question arises why the commission considers opinion pieces such as The Future Belongs To Islam so offensive but is not familiar with the violent terrorism-inciting messages by some of the radical Islamic groups in Ontario.

For instance, a well-known Toronto-area Islamic fundamentalist wrote on Facebook last week: "Jews who support Zionism and Israel ... since they are killing Palestinians ... killing them is not bad ... they all are mass murderers ... and they deserve to die."

The commission appears to be trying to be "fair" in its recent statement slandering the media for contributing to Islamophobia.

But to be fair, does the commission know about the many ethnic media outlets that spread direct hatred and arrogant stereotypes against fellow Canadians -- Christians, Jews, whites?

If not, the commission would be better off expanding its studies to all the actually influential media outlets in Canada. That might make its statements more fair and balanced rather that portraying a one-sided story.

Unfortunately, this fine point about "human rights" commission hypocrisy ends by propagating the widely-believed myth in the possibility of "fair and balanced" media. This is an inherently liberal elitist idea, for there can be no determination of "fair and balanced" without such an elite determining who is too "extreme", and who not. The Canadian "human rights" commissions are the institutionalization of this inherently political or ideological denial of politics and ideology.

Weeowll Said

Blazing Cat Fur:

With its bizarre "Guilty cause I said so" pronouncement on the Steyn ruling, the Ontario Human Rights Commission publicly proved this week that it is not an agency concerned with human rights but rather that it is a radically politicized, ideologically driven cess-pool concerned only with power.

Important Message from the Muslim Canadian Congress

Wednesday, we wondered at the Ontario Human Rights Council decision to declare 1) that they did not have jurisdiction to try Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine for hate speech; but 2) that they know Steyn and Maclean's are guilty, racist Islamophobic bastards anyway.

I suggested that this bizarre approach to the law exemplified "left dhimmi fascism", Dag's favorite term.

Now comes news that it may not have been dhimmi fascists but real-to-goodness Sharia loving ones behind the OHRC decision.

In the words of the Muslim Canadian Congress:

OTTAWA—The Muslim Canadian Congress has welcomed the decision by the Ontario Human Rights Commission not to proceed with complaints filed against Maclean’s magazine related to an article where the Canadian Islamic Congress had alleged that the magazine had violated their human rights.

However, the MCC is disappointed that the OHRC become the virtual organ of Canada’s Islamist organizations and that it has taken sides in the bitter struggle within Canada’s Muslim community where sharia-supporting Islamists are pitted against liberal and secular Muslims.

In a statement, the Vice President of the MCC, Salma Siddiqui said, the OHRC decision had the finger prints of its pro-Islamist commissioners who have close association with the Canadian Islamic Congress. It is not just the commissioners, but we have reason to believe that there are staff on the OHRC that support sharia law and endorse the CIC’s positions.

Had the OHRC restricted itself to the legality of the issue, the MCC would have no prob-lem with its decision. But in editorializing and coming out to bat for Canada’s Islamists, the OHRC is sending a very dangerous message to moderate Muslims who reject Sharia and do not take inspiration from overseas Islamic countries or groups.

On the one hand the OHRC criticizes Macleans for “portraying Muslims as all sharing the same negative characteristics,” but then does the same thing by perpetuating the Islamist myth that Muslims in Canada are a persecuted group. Those of us Muslims who do not share this addiction of victimhood, seem to have no resonance with the OHRC.

The MCC finds it shameful that the OHRC would use Islamist supplied information in a blog discussion that called for “the mass killing, deportation or conversion of Muslim Canadians” and position it as reflective of the view of media and ordinary Canadians.

The OHRC decision must be cause for celebration in Osama Bin Laden's cave and among the soldiers of the world Jihadi movement that love to spread the falsehood that Canada is at war with Islam and that Muslims in Canada live under a cloud of racism and persecution. Nothing can be further from the truth.

(HT Catfur)

So don't be dismissive next time someone tells you that Canada and Western countries have already institutionalized aspects of the oppressive Sharia law. It's what happens when we fall for the "human rights" world view, and forget about real human rights.