scaramouche

Saturday, 04 July 2009

The curious case of the kafir in the Trudeaupia: The Mark Harding “hate speech” case just gets curiouser and curiouser (or outrageouser and outrageouser). I found this, from 2002 (my bolds):

An Ontario man convicted of promoting hatred against Muslims says his community-service sentence has included indoctrination into Islam.

After losing an appeal to Canada's Supreme Court on Oct. 17, Mark Harding must resume his sentence of two years probation and 340 hours of community service under the direction of Mohammad Ashraf, general secretary of the Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga, Ont.

Harding, 47, said he had one session under Ashraf in 1998 before an appeal process stayed the sentence.

Ashraf, according to Harding, said that instead of licking stamps and stuffing envelopes, "it would be better if you learned about Islam."

The cleric made it clear, Harding recalled in an interview with WorldNetDaily, that during the sessions nothing negative could be said about Islam or its prophet, Muhammad.

"He said he was my supervisor, and if I didn't follow what he said, he would send me back to jail," recounted Harding, who had been prevented from speaking publicly about his case under a gag order.

Harding was convicted in 1998 on federal hate-crimes charges stemming from a June 1997 incident in which he distributed pamphlets outside a public high school, Weston Collegiate Institute in Toronto. Harding – who said that until that point he spent most of his time evangelizing Muslims – was protesting the school's policy of setting aside a room for Muslim students to pray during school hours.

In one of his pamphlets, Harding listed atrocities committed by Muslims in foreign lands to back his assertion that Canadians should be wary of local Muslims.

The pamphlet said: "The Muslims who commit these crimes are no different than the Muslim believers living here in Toronto. Their beliefs are based on the Quran. They sound peaceful, but underneath their false sheep's clothing are raging wolves seeking whom they may devour. And Toronto is definitely on their hit list."

"The point I was trying to make is you shouldn't have a violent religion like Islam allowed in a school when Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism is not allowed," he told WND.

Harding, an evangelical Protestant, insists he has love rather than hatred toward Muslims and wants to see them go to heaven.

A lawyer for Harding, Jasmine Akbaralli, says she is trying to obtain permission for her client to serve out his sentence in an Islamic community closer to his current home in Chesley, Ont., north of Toronto and about a three-hour drive from the Islamic Society of North America.

The plea is based on humanitarian grounds, she said, due to her client's poor health.

Harding said he has suffered four heart attacks since 1997, and he and his wife and two children are penniless because his health has prevented him from maintaining his trade as a cabinetmaker.

Akbaralli said she would not comment on Harding's previous experience with Ashraf, noting that she was not representing him at the time. Calls to Ashraf and others at the Islamic Society of North America on Tuesday and Wednesday were not returned.

Understanding Islam

During his 1998 session with Ashraf, Harding was told to read a book called Towards Understanding Islam, by Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi.

On page 12 of the book, Harding noted, it gives a description of a "kafir," or infidel, a person who does not follow Islam.

"Such a man ... will spread confusion and disorder on the earth," the book says. "He will without the least compunction, shed blood, violate other men's rights, be cruel to them, and create disorder and destruction in the world. His perverted thoughts and ambitions, his blurred vision and disturbed scale of values, and his evil-spelling activities would make life bitter for him and for all around him."

"It was obvious that he intended to make sure I understood that I was a kafir," Harding said of Ashraf.

Harding's 1998 conviction on three counts of willfully promoting hatred was commended by Canadian Muslims.

"The verdict sends a message to Christians, Muslims and Jews that personal views of that nature can't be allowed in a public forum," said Shahina Siddiqui, coordinator of community relations and social services for the Manitoba Islamic Association, in a report by the Canadian evangelical publication Christian Week. "There's a fine line between freedom of expression and hatred. Harding crossed that line."

Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said after the verdict that "spreading hate is against Canadian values and against Canadian law, and it doesn't matter the group that is victimized."

The verdict was not a suppression of free speech, Elmasry insisted, according to Alberta Report magazine, arguing that he would not consider scholarly books in the library that criticize Islam to be hate literature. Harding "is just trying to stereotype and put out hate literature, and he was found guilty by the courts," he said.

Harding asserted at the time that he meant to criticize only Islamic terrorists, not all Muslims. But he added that faithful Muslims will always engage in jihad, or holy war, against non-Muslims because it is required by Islamic teachings…

And there you have it. State mechanisms in a non-Islamic state, a democracy no less, were used to silence a man who was not spreading hate, but who was sounding the alarm about jihad and sharia. Even more outrageous, the clueless authorities, who know nothing about Islamic doctrine but who have swallowed the stupid juice of multiculturalism and assimilated all its attendant palaver about “stereotyping” and “victims” and hair-breadth “lines” separating “free speech” from “hate speech,” hounded him, destroyed his health and livelihood, and, shades of Stalin and Mao, served him up to the Islamists for reprogramming.

What happened to Mark Harding is beyond reprehensible. It is a crime, pure and simple. It is even worse than what supposedly happened to Maher Arar, because all of it occurred entirely inside Canada. The nation owes this man (is he still alive?) an apology and mega-millions in compensation--at least as much as we shelled out to Arar for being tortured by the Syrians.

Update: What, pray tell, is ISNA, the organization charged with reprogramming this recalcitrant kafir? According to An Activist’s Guide to Muslim Groups (posted on the FrontPage Magazine site),

ISNA enforces Wahhabi theological writ in the country’s 1,200 officially recognized mosques (out of a possible total of 4,000, including unrecognized and small congregations). ISNA president Muzammil Siddiqi, described by many of his critics as a power-hungry fanatic, appeared in an official ceremony at the National Cathedral in Washington directly following September 11. On October 28, 2000, at an anti-Israel “Jerusalem Day” rally sponsored by Grover Norquist’s Islamic Institute (see below), AMC, and other groups, Siddiqi asserted, “America has to learn… if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come. Please, all Americans. Do you remember that?… If you continue doing injustice, and tolerate injustice, the wrath of God will come.” Many of the main mosques in the U.S. were recently built with Saudi money and saddled with a requirement that they follow Wahhabi imams and Wahhabi dictates…

In other words, Harding was handed over to the very people he was warning us about. It doesn't get more Kafkaesque than that!

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:10 | link | comments

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Posted by: scaramouche at 09:10 | link | comments