Being Politically Correct or
Political Correctness Gone Mad?
4 Cases of Politically Correct People:
In Canada, No Justice, Just Hierarchy of Victimization.

comments on Political Correctness, Guilt, Shame and Fear

posted by A Weiss, October 12, 2009:

Do Canadian Human Rights Commissions Promote Justice?
or is it Political Correctness Gone Mad?

In the October 5 '09 issue of Maclean’s, Mark Steyn discusses three cases that were brought before the Ontario Human Rights Commissions. All three relate to political correctness and being politically correct.

In the first case Douglas McCue, a homosexual allergic to dogs and owner of a Bed and Breakfast in Perth, Ontario that catered especially to homosexuals, was found guilty of discrimination and had to pay a fine because he refused to rent a room to a blind-person with a Seeing Eye dog.

In the second case John Fulton, the owner of a fitness club in Sainte Catherine, Ontario was found guilty of not allowing a transsexual whose penis and testes had not yet been removed from showering in the women’s showers because although he still had his penis and testes, he claimed he already felt like a woman.

In the third case Gator Ted, owner of a bar in Burlington, Ontario was found guilty of not allowing a person who had the medical right to smoke marijuana to smoke it on his property.

In all three cases the Ontario Human Rights Commission was not motivated by the merits of the case or the presumption that one is innocent until proven guilty. Rather the owners were placed in impossible moral dilemmas.

If Douglas McCue accepted the OHRC ruling and allowed blind-people with Seeing Eye dogs in his Bed and Breakfast, not only would his own personal health be compromised, but he would lose his homosexual clientele. (Apparently homosexuals are particularly allergic to dogs and the mattresses were especially protected against this allergy.) The consequences of all this is that Douglas McCue was forced to sell his Bed and Breakfast. Is this being politically correct? Political correctness gone mad, some would say.

If John Fulton allowed transvestites with penises and testes to shower at his fitness center, he could face libel cases from outraged female clients.

If Gator Ted allowed medical marijuana users to smoke marijuana in his bar, if a trucker were to get high from the marijuana, have an accident because of it, and be tested, Ted could face criminal charges.

As Steyn points out, the various Human Rights Commissions in Canada are not motivated by justice but by an artificial and quirky but dangerous notion of “political correctness”, being politically correct, and a hierarchy of victimization.

****

Absolutely at the top of the hierarchy of victimization are Muslims. According to Canadian Human Rights Commissions, Muslims are the most discriminated groups of all discriminated groups in Canada and therefore deserve the greatest levels of tolerance. As Steyn puts it in his whimsical and sardonic style:

“In Britain, an educational establishment gung-ho about forcing the kindergartners of evangelical Christians to be taught the joys of same-sex marriage crumbled in nothing flat when Muslim parents in Bristol objected. If it’s a choice between Heather Has Two Mommies or Heather Has Four Mommies And A Big Bearded Daddy Who Wants To Marry Her Off To A Cousin Back In Pakistan, bet on the latter. Any gay couple or blind man with a Seeing Eye Dog who takes on a Muslim bed-and-breakfast proprietor will get short shrift from the “human rights” commission. The OHRC is currently championing at the bit to force gay altar servers on Ontario Catholics. At the local mosque, no imam need worry about such state encroachments on religion.” That's being politically correct.

Marc Lebuis of Montreal tried to test this thesis that human rights commissions don’t litigate against Muslims for human rights violations by trying to bring a case to the Canadian Human Rights Commission against radical Montreal Salafist Imam Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Dameus Al-Hayiti and his book , L’Islam ou l’Intégrisme?, which was widely disseminated on the internet.

Before I give a review of Al-Hayiti’s hateful claims, I want to make myself perfectly clear. I don’t believe that all Muslims share Al-Hayiti’s views. There are heroic progressive Canadian Muslims like Tarek Fatah who in his book Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State and his DVDs Islam vs. Islamism and Muslims Against Jihad fights against the views of people like Al-Hayiti. There are those Muslims who are afraid of intimidation if they say anything critical of Islam. Then there are Muslims who are fearful that any critique of Islam can lead to Islamophobia and the discrediting of Islam as a whole. Finally, there are Muslims who do what people do in all religions: they cherry pick their way through the religion to find comfort and meaning in their lives and forget the unpleasant parts or the components that are not relevant to themselves.

In any case, below are the main elements of his book. (I warn you in advance. You will find his ideas deeply disturbing.)

BOOK EXCERPTS:

Homosexuals

* Homosexuality is a "perversion"
* Homosexuals "spread disorder on earth"
* Homosexuals and lesbians should be "exterminated in this life"
* "Homosexuals caught performing sodomy should be "beheaded"

Infidels

* Most Infidels “live like animals”
* "they are evil people, they love perversity", and "they are our enemies"
* "sending our sons and daughters to the schools of the Infidels has devastating effects on their beliefs, their behavior and their character. For the children of Infidels are the most pervert children. At a very early age, they adopt the behavior of their parents"
* "Moreover, attending schools with Infidels may lead to friendship in their heart for Infidel children, which contradicts the foundations of Islam. Because Islam prohibits befriending even the closest relatives if they are Infidels"
* "there is no doubt that it is not permissible for a Muslim to love or to take as friend whoever follows a religion other than Islam"
* "Infidels say they are open-minded, but in reality they have opened their mind to garbage and filth, and closed it to all that is pure and right!"

Men are superior to women

* "men are superior to women and better than them". In general, "men have a more complete intellect and memory than women"
* "Infidels acknowledge this reality, but they do not want to accept the truth because they are blinded by their passions"

Muslim women are superior to Infidel women

* "The veiled Muslim woman is a light in the darkness of the 21st century. She carries the torch of modesty, of chastity and of Islamic values"
* "She brings the liberating message of "LA ILAHA ILLALLAH" to the poor western woman who has lost her femininity, her dignity and her honor and who is now crying for her savior"
* The consequences of immodesty are "rape, venereal diseases, AIDS, herpes, single-parent families, crime, poverty, ignorance and many others"
* "Infidels will never admit that these social problems are the result of their refusal to submit to Allah, because they are consumed with pride"
* "... male Infidels wanted to liberate women only for economic reasons
(cheap labor) and to sexually exploit them"
* “male Infidels will not be happy with us until our women are in their beds, in their magazines and in their dancing clubs!”
* "If a Muslim woman marries a non-Muslim man ... their marriage is invalid, in fact it is adultery"

Christianity

* "It is because of this religion of lies, which goes against human nature, that the West is now full of perversity, corruption and adultery"

Jews

* Jews "spread corruption and chaos on earth"
* Most Jews "seek only material goods and money, apart from that, they have nothing"
* Jews "unjustly occupy" Palestine for the sole purpose of "filling this land with corruption and transgress the laws of Allah in the name of secularism"

Slavery

* "owning slaves is not prohibited"
* "Allah has allowed men to marry two, three or four women, but one who fears he will not be fair can marry only one or have slaves."

Democracy is contrary to Islam. Jihad is a duty of sedition

* "Democracy is a system in total contradiction with Islam"
* "... freedom is unknown in Islam, it contradicts Islam, therefore it is a false concept"
* "[freedom] serves to justify corruption" and "stooping to the lowest levels of bestiality"
* "Freedom of conscience is actually freedom to leave Islam!"
* “Anyone who leaves Islam, cut his neck”
* "no matter how it is understood and applied ... secularism is a pure negation of Islam"
* "If Muslims are strong and they have the ability to fight the Infidel
ruler, to overthrow him from power and replace him with a Muslim ruler,
it is mandatory for them to do so. This is part of Jihad in the path of
Allah"
* "injustice will never disappear from the face of the earth before
Islam and Sharia are properly applied throughout the world"
* "Islam commands us to destroy all idols", i.e. "democracy, human rights, secularism, freedom, equality, and modernity"
* in an Islamic state, Christians and Jews can keep their religion but they must pay a sum of money, the Jizyah. "The purpose of the Jizyah is to humiliate and punish Infidels to encourage them to accept Islam." The other Infidels (Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, etc.) have no options but to accept Islam or “be killed".

****

This is not the first time that I came across the idea that groups of people should be exterminated. Ibrahim Mudayris, a Palestinian imam in the pay of Fatah, announced in one of his Friday night sermons on Palestinian State Television that not only should Israel be eradicated from the face of the earth, but that at the end of history every single Jew, (I assume this includes Jews who were critics of Israel) should be exterminated. (Even Hitler himself never made the public claim that his goal was to exterminate the entire European Jewish population.)

This was backed up by Ayaan Hirsi Ali who in her courageous book, The Caged Virgin, said that when she was a teenager in Kenya and Somalia, she had never met a Jew. Nevertheless, she was forced to pray five times a day that all the Jews would be exterminated.

The second time I came across this idea was when I read a book about Muslim Shias and Muslim Sunnis in Iraq. In that book there was a statement by Al Qaeda which claimed that all you have to do is kill a few American and British “Crusaders” and they will run home like dogs with their tails between their legs, but that Muslim Shias were much more dangerous.

I was absolutely shocked that they said that Muslim Shias should be “exterminated like vermin.” I naively thought that considering that both groups consider themselves Muslim, there had to be solidarity between them.

The question about “extermination” was made very poignant to me by two lectures I attended. The first was by the Israeli, David Horowitz, who wrote the book Still Life with Bombers, and who discussed the period of the Second Intafada in the early 2000s when there was no security border between Israel and the West Bank and suicide bombing inside Israel was practically an every day occurrence. Each morning when he woke up, he hugged his wife thinking that this may be his last day of life on earth.

The second was by an Iraqi teacher at the International Teacher’s Conference in Berlin in 2007. He described the period in Iraq of ethnic cleansing between Muslim Shias and Muslim Sunnis. As a teacher, he was under particular threat of assassination. He also hugged his wife not knowing whether he would come home the same day, but also his students and he had to view dead human carcasses on their way to school.

Hence, reading Al-Hayit’s assertion that homosexuals, Buddhists, Hindus and atheists should be exterminated regrettably doesn't come as any great shock to me anymore. This verbiage has become unfortunately too common.

****

What shocks me more is the response of Jennifer Lynch, Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission:

“ ...the majority of the references in “Islam or Fundamentalism” are to “infidels”, “miscreants” or “western women”. These are general, broad and diversified categories that do not constitute an “identifiable group” under Section 13 of the Act. As we have also mentioned, the extracts that identify groups on the basis of prohibited grounds of discrimination (homosexuals, lesbians, Christians, Jews) do not seem to promote “hatred” or “contempt” according to the criteria set forth in the Taylor case. Therefore, the document on which the complaint is based does not seem to meet the requirements of Section 13 of the Act for a complaint.”

Is this what is means, being politically correct? Is this what politically correct people need to be like? Or is it political correctness gone mad?

Perhaps Jennifer Lynch is, in her mind, being politically correct.

But she is doing real live Muslims, and especially Muslim women, no great favors. Historically the Dutch political elites were just like the elites in the various Human Rights Commissions. No cultural practices were better or worse than other cultural practices. Consequently, the Dutch government only spoke to the Muslim male hierarchy. Out of this commitment to a perverse interpretation of multiculturalism, Somali teenage girls were being allowed by the Dutch government to be shipped off to Somalia to have their clitorises removed. It was the brave intervention of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, herself a victim of clitoridectomy and a tireless fighter for women’s rights and the rights of Muslim women to be treated with respect and dignity, that this horrific practice was put to an end. Today Somalian teenage girls are stopped at the airport in Amsterdam if it is suspected that they are being sent to Somalia to be subjected to this ghastly treatment.

****

When my wife and I traveled to China, we were the only white Caucasians on the trip. The others came from Kampuchea (Kompot was a witness and personal victim of the Pol Pot killing fields), the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and North and South India. They were Buddhist, Hindu, and Catholic. We are still friends today. When I used the word “multiculturalism” during the trip, they cringed. They considered multiculturalism really a kind of multinationalism. The word they preferred was diversity. They told us they felt it was wrong for Canadian schools, colleges, and universities to encourage “multiculturalism,” which they felt was a ruse for segregation.

They wanted their children and grandchildren to have equal opportunities with all other Canadians to become whatever they wanted to become in life and to be free of all forms of racial, ethnic, religious, gender, or class discrimination.

But they certainly didn’t want their children to have unfair advantages because of their ethnic background and they surely didn’t want their children to be placed in a box or to walk around with a grudge on their shoulder and resentment towards other ethnic or religious groups if the level of their rewards was not justified by a lack of merit.

One must never forget that the ideals of Martin Luther King of integration over segregation are the highest principles North America has ever aspired to: people should not be judged on the color of their skin but on the character of their personality.

****

To end, I have a few questions:

Are the various provincial and Canadian Human Rights Commissions a total waste of Canadian taxpayer dollars and do they do nothing but support the political agenda of their own perverse idea of “political correctness” and their arbitrary and irrational hierarchy of victimization?

Aren't the cases described above a total travesty of justice? Shouldn't future human rights cases be handled by normal courts where there is real due process with the assumption that one is innocent until proven guilty and judges are not trying to promote their own special political agendas? Don’t the basic rights of women take precedence over inhumane cultural practices?

Isn't calling for the extermination of any group of people a human rights violation?

You decide.

Click here to go to:
Why Has Political Correctness Gone Mad?


Click here to go from being politically correct
to more on political correctness gone mad.


Click here to go from being politically correct
to victims of political correctness.


Click here to go to all the issues explored at
The Idea Emporium,
from political correctness good thinking.

 

For More Stimulating
GOOD THINKING,
CLICK HERE.
FREE Updates.
Plus INSTANT ACCESS to
2 ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS
for GOOD THINGING

Why register?
Click here for
3 more good reasons.

More on ... why subscribe?
inner magic released
from stuck in a bottle
to developing your potential
creative development, living fully

 

top of page

 

***SOCIALIZEIT***

more ...

 

Being Politically Correct or Political Correctness Gone Mad?
4 Cases of Politically Correct People:
In Canada, No Justice, Just Hierarchy of Victimization.

* BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT - it was supposed to promote justice *
* POLITICALLY CORRECT PEOPLE - they were supposed to care about human rights *
* BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT - how can it be correct to violate human rights? *
* POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD - is exactly what it say *
* POLITICAL CORRECTNESS CANADA - who would have thought! *
BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT - what does it really mean?

Being Politically Correct -
does it really mean sacrificing ethics, good sense,
good thinking, empathy ...?

I thought it was a great thing, being politically correct - not saying girl to women, that kind of thing. But being politically correct clearly means different things to different people. Being politically correct can mean throwing good thinking out the window, throwing justice out the window. Politically correct people - when the political correctness has gone rampant over all other values and over good thinking - can in fact create massive injustice. So I like being politically correct, as I define it - not promoting injustice, instead being sensitive to different realities. But being politically correct does not mean - to me anyway - unthinking and unjust.

Elsa
November 1, 2009

copyright © Elsa Schieder 2009, 2011 - all rights reserved

Being Politically Correct or Political Correctness Gone Mad?
4 Cases of Politically Correct People:
In Canada, No Justice, Just a Hierarchy of Victimization.

* BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT - it was supposed to mean inclusive and caring *
* POLITICALLY CORRECT PEOPLE - were supposed to care about justice and equality *
* POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD - is like a supposedly friendly plant eating your garden *
* POLITICALLY CORRECT CANADA has taken BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT
miles past just POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD *

 

Welcome to thinking
about being politically correct,
politically correct people in Canada and elsewhere,
and political correctness gone mad in the West.

 

For More Stimulating
GOOD THINKING,
CLICK HERE.
FREE Updates.
Plus INSTANT ACCESS to
2 ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS
for GOOD THINGING

Why register?
Click here for
3 more good reasons.

 

***NAVBAR***

 

top of page

 

 

Elsa's Adventures in Internet Land

______________________________________________________________

home      about      site map      privacy policy      terms of use      contact
______________________________________________________________

design, site construction - Elsa Schieder
copyright © Elsa Schieder, 2006-2015 - all rights reserved
copyright © elsas-word-story-image-idea-music-emporium.com, 2006-2015 -
all rights reserved

CLICK HERE TO CONTACT
Elsa

______________________________________________________________