Better Angels

Excerpts From 'Reading Lolita in Tehran On the iPhone Kindle App'

"Criminals should not be tried. The trial of a criminal is against human rights. Human rights demand that we should have killed them in the first place when it became known that they were criminals."

-- Ayatollah Khomeini

I don't have a Kindle but I do have an iPhone, so when Amazon released the Kindle app for the iPhone, I was interested in seeing how workable it is to read a book on the phone. Given that I often spend hours a day reading blog posts and email on the phone, doesn't seem like too much of a stretch, and so far so good.

My inaugural book is Reading Lolita in Tehran, a book simultaneously deconstructing Nabokov and discussing the life of women in Islamic Iran. I have mixed feelings about the prose, but it is growing on me. More important than any feelings about the quality of the writing, there are a few sequences that really jumped out at me so far and I thought I'd go ahead and share them.

The first just emphasizes the...well, you don't need me to put up neon signs for this, just read it yourself:

"I have to tell you that the Ayatollah himself was no novice in sexual matters," Nassrin went on. "I've been translating his magnum opus, The Political, Philosophical, Social and Religious Principles of Ayatollah Khomeini, and he has some interesting points to make."

"But it's already been translated," said Manna. "What's the point?"

"Yes," said Nassrin, "parts of it have been translated, but after it became the butt of party jokes, ever since the embassies abroad found out that people were reading the book not for their edification but for fun, the translations have been very hard to find. And anyway, my translation is thorough -- it has references and cross-references to works by other worthies. Did you know that one way to cure a man's sexual appetites is by having sex with animals? And then there's the problem of sex with chickens. You have to ask yourself if a man who has had sex with a chicken can then eat the chicken afterwards. Our leader has provided us with an answer: No, neither he nor his immediate family or next-door neighbors can eat of that chicken's meat, but it's okay for a neighbor who lives two doors away."

On the darker side...

A fortnight earlier, Sanaz and five of her girl-friends had gone for a two-day vacation by the Caspian Sea. On their first day, they had decided to visit her friend's fiance in an adjoining villa. Sanaz kept emphasizing that they were all properly dressed, with their scarves and long robes. They were all sitting outside, in the garden: six girls and one boy. There were no alcoholic beverages in the hour, no undesirable tapes or CDs. She seemed to be suggesting that if there had been, they might have deserved the treatment they received at the hands of the Revolutionary Guards.

And then "they" came with their guns, the morality squads, surprising them by jumping over the low walls. They claimed to have received a report of illegal activities, and wanted to search the premises. Unable to find fault with their appearance, one of the guards sarcastically said that looking at them, with their Western attitudes...What is a Western attitude? Nassrin interrupted. Sanaz looked at her and smiled. I'll ask him next time I run into him. The truth of the matter was that their search for alcoholic beverages, tapes and CDs had led to nothing, but they already had a search warrant and didn't want it to go to waste. The guards took all of them to a special jail for infractions in matters of morality. There, despite their protests, the girls were kept in a small, dark room, which they shared the first night with several prostitutes and a drug addict. Their jail wardens came into their room two or three times in the middle of the night to wake up those who might have dozed off, and hurled insults at them.

They were held in that room for forty-eight hours. Despite their repeated requests, they were denied the right to call their parents. Apart from brief excursions to the rest room at appointed times, they left the room twice -- the first time to be led to a hospital, where they were given virginity tests by a woman gynecologist, who had her students observe the examinations. Not satisfied with her verdict, the guards took them to a private clinic for a second check.

To summarize the rest of that story, the parents are told the girls were killed in a car accident, then finally manage to get them out but the girls are subjected to twenty-five lashes, and to top it all off Sanaz is treated as having brought this on herself by her parents and brother and is from then on subjected to more restrictions in her life.

If you ever find yourself slipping into that "all culture is relative" point of view wherein each country is basically the same, some with burqas and some without, I recommend grabbing a copy of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel, discussed in this post or Reading Lolita or heck any of the slew of "I was a woman in an Islamic state" books out there, several of which are on my audiobook list and which I'll no doubt discuss here after I listen to them.

Whatever you believe about how the US should interact with Islamic countries at a political level, it's important to remember the point of view of some of those, especially women, who have to actually live under the conditions imposed on them by Sharia law. In addition to Sharia law, there is this "manifest destiny"-style Islamic revolution concept that many of the leaders follow, and when you see Canada or Britain or France dealing with these issues it's particularly striking to recall those countries that, just a few years ago, were more or less Western-style democracies and are no longer.

As one of the sayings of Islamic revolutionaries goes:

One man, one vote, one time.

Mark Steyn is my second favorite committer of hate crimes against humanity

"Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value."
-- Dean Steachy, principal investigator for the Canadian Human Rights Commission

"Under the ludicrous British Columbia "Human Rights" Code, we are guilty."
-- Mark Steyn, committer of hate crimes against humanity

I've discussed Ezra Levant a couple of times, but inexcusably have yet to cover Mark Steyn, a newly-favorite writer of mine who has gone through a similar case of being brought before the Canadian Human Rights Commission for the crime of possibly having offended (or offending in the future) Muslims with an excerpt of his book, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, in which he criticizes various aspects of Islamic culture.

In my last post on Ezra Levant, I included an interview on the Michael Coren show in which Coren replayed a statement from Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, the guy who made the accusation against Steyn. Keep in mind this is the guy accusing Steyn of spreading hatred...a man who, to my knowledge, has never been brought before the Human Rights Commission (nor has any Muslim, I believe):

ELMASRY: ... and totally innocent people, obviously, is the children. But they are not innocent if they are part of a population which is total population of Israel is part of the army... From 18 on, they are part of the soldiers, even if they have civilian clothes.

COREN: So if Israeli children are killed, that is a valid use of military force by Palestinians?

ELMASRY: No, they are not valid...

COREN: So what are you saying?

ELMASRY: I'm saying that it has to be totally innocent, OK? Totally innocent are the children, obviously, OK? But they are not innocent if the army [inaudible] in civilian clothes, OK?

COREN: What about women?

ELMASRY: The same, if they are women in the army...

COREN: Anyone over the age of 18 in Israel is a valid target.

ELMASRY: Anybody above 18 is a part of the Israeli army...

COREN: So everyone in Israel and anyone and everyone in Israel, irrespective of gender, over the age of 18 is a valid target?

ELMASRY: Yes, I would say.

So we see what sort of person and system Steyn was up against. Now to get into the details of Steyn's case...Here are excerpts from Wikipedia's summary of the trial, with emphasis added by me:

Joseph Faisal, legal counsel for the Canadian Islamic Congress opened his arguments by stating that the article Maclean's published presented Muslims as "a violent people" who hold traditional Canadian values "in contempt," and depicted Islam as "inhuman" and "violent." He also argued that the cover image that Maclean's chose to run, the image of two Muslim women, along with the magazine's cover line, "could have been the picture of a horror cult movie." Faisal criticized "20 other articles" that ran in Maclean's, beginning in January 2005 that he claimed were offensive to Muslims and criticized Maclean's for publishing letters from readers praising the magazine and Steyn. Faisal added that "We're prepared to deal with those articles piece by piece, paragraph by paragraph, and those things that we find objectionable."

Faisal and Habib's complaint claims that Maclean's and Steyn, who wrote the article, violated Section 7-1 of British Columbia's Human Rights Code, which stipulates that a person must not publish or cause to be published anything that discriminates against a person or group, or exposes them to hatred or contempt. Under the BC Human Rights code, the complainants are not required to prove harm, or malicious intent; all that is required is a reasonable determination that the excerpt did express hatred and contempt toward Muslims, and likely caused it to spread.

Faisal implored the BC Human Rights Tribunal to take action, arguing that it is "the court of last resort. You are the only opportunity to right a terrible wrong to a clearly identifiable group numbering hundreds of thousands in this great country, and tens of thousands in the beautiful province of British Columbia. You are the only thing between racist, hateful, contemptuous Islamaphobic and irresponsible journalism, and law-abiding Canadian citizens."

...In his closing arguments, Faisal stated that "There has never been a case in this country that has had such clear, concise evidence, ever. There will never be any more demonstrable evidence of hatred that has been perpetrated by this article."

...Steyn told the media that he was hoping the tribunal would rule against Maclean's. "We want to lose so we can take it to a real court and if necessary up to the Supreme Court of Canada and we can get the ancient liberties of free-born Canadian citizens that have been taken away from them by tribunals like this," he said.

...The day after the hearing ended, Khurrum Awan, one of the complainants in the BC case, spoke to a meeting of the Canadian Arab Federation and complained that since Maclean's is not a member of the Ontario Press Council or any similar body there is no authority within the profession of journalism, that can "condemn the journalist, condemn the publication, direct them to publish a letter to the editor." He added that he would "love" to see the case appealed into the regular courts. Awan also stated that:

"And we have to tell them, you know what, if you're not going to allow us to do that, there will be consequences. You will be taken to the human rights commission, you will be taken to the press council, and you know what? If you manage to get rid of the human rights code provisions [on hate speech], we will then take you to the civil courts system. And you know what? Some judge out there might just think that perhaps it's time to have a tort of group defamation, and you might be liable for a few million dollars."

...On October 10, 2008, the HRC dismissed the complaint, stating that the Maclean's article did not violate the province's hate speech law. The tribunal stated that the article contained historical, religious and factual inaccuracies, relied on common Muslim stereotypes and tried to "rally public opinion by exaggeration and causing the reader to fear Muslims." However, they also ruled that the article was not likely to expose Muslims to hatred or contempt.

The Tribunal stated that "With all its inaccuracies and hyperbole, [the article] has resulted in political debate which, in our view, [B. C.'s hate speech human rights law] was never intended to suppress. In fact, as the evidence in this case amply demonstrates, the debate has not been suppressed and the concerns about the impact of hate speech silencing a minority have not been borne out."

...Mark Steyn, who wrote the offending article, stated that that a lesser-known writer without a media conglomerate in his corner probably would have been, adding that:

"For me the problem is not the book, the problem for me is Canada, and I will never think of the deranged dominion quite the same way again. It has made me understand just how easily and incrementally free societies, often for the most fluffy reasons, slip into a kind of soft, beguiling totalitarianism. I don't understand why they lack the cojones to find us guilty" and that "The only reason to go through all this nonsense is to get to the stage where you can appeal it to a real court, and if necessary up to the Supreme Court."

Steyn further criticized the Human Rights Commissions and Canadian politicians, stating that:

"they didn't like the heat they were getting under this case. Life was chugging along just fine, chastising non-entities nobody had ever heard about, piling up a lot of cockamamie jurisprudence that inverts the principles of common law, and nobody paid any attention to it. Once they got the glare of publicity from the Maclean's case, the kangaroos decided to jump for the exit. I've grown tired of the number of Canadian members of Parliament who've said to me over the last best part of a year now, 'Oh, well of course I fully support you, I'm fully behind you, but I'd just be grateful if you didn't mention my name in public.'"

Mark Hemingway wrote a good summary of all this (and more) for National Review's blog, entitled "Idiot’s Guide to Completely Idiotic Canadian ‘Human Rights’ Tribunals", which is well-worth reading. Mark Steyn wrote a response to a later post of Hemingway's:

Mark Hemingway is right to say that free speech in Canada "does not exist in any meaningful way". As the British Columbia "Human Rights" Tribunal's rambling and incoherent decision makes plain, Maclean's and I were acquitted of "flagrant Islamophobia" for essentially political reasons - because neither the court nor its travesty of a "human rights" code could withstand the heat of a guilty verdict. Jay Currie puts it well:

The way I read this decision is that it imposes a two part test: a) are your words offensive and hurtful? b) are you a major media organization with deep pockets represented by serious lawyers. If “a” and not “b” you are a hate monger; if “a” and “b” you are engaged in political debate.

Just so. Because we spent a ton of money and had a bigshot Queen's Counsel and exposed the joke jurisprudence and (at the federal "human rights" commission) systemic corruption, the kangaroo courts decided that discretion was the better part of valor. The Ontario "Human Rights" Commission ruled they weren't able to prosecute the case because of a technicality - I offered to waive the technicality, but the wimps still bailed out. If you have the wherewithal to stand up to these totalitarian bullies, they stampede for the exits. But, if you're just an obscure Alberta pastor or a guy with a widely unread website or a fellow who writes a letter to his local newspaper, they'll destroy your life.

I sympathize with the Canadian Islamic Congress, whose mouthpiece feels that, if the British Columbia pseudo-judges had applied the logic of previous decisions, we'd have been found guilty. He's right: Under the ludicrous British Columbia "Human Rights" Code, we are guilty. Which is why the Canadian Islamic Congress should appeal, and why I offered on the radio an hour ago to chip in a thousand bucks towards their costs.

Steyn said things that some people would consider offensive. He is guilty. There is no need for a concept of "free speech" unless it is offensive speech that is being protected. There is no need to protect non-offensive speech, and further there is no way for any debate to proceed without someone being willing to say something that someone else doesn't want to hear.

Here is a wide-ranging interview Steyn did on the Michael Coren show last June covering many of his beliefs:

Why you should buy Ezra Levant's new book and why you should actually pay attention to Canada

Last week a colleague at work explained to me that when the right-wing types needed a new enemy after the cold war was over, they settled on Islam, but this was a mistake since there's no plausible threat from Islamic countries.

I paused for a moment, not wanting to let my churning brain rush ahead of me and not wanting to do one of my typical head-exploding responses that just turn people off. Should I launch into tirades about the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, or the physical and mental mutilation endured by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and millions of women like her, or the formerly modern states brought to ruin by the imposition of Islamic law, known as Sharia law?

Finally I decided to call on events close to home, and said something like, "Ah yeah, but you know, I'm kind of concerned about the fact that Canada has been toying with Sharia law."

He hadn't heard anything about this. It's understandable -- the encroachment of Sharia law on Western countries is only one of the biggest and most relevant stories of our time, but after all we're talking about something happening in Canada, and who the hell pays attention to Canada?

Well, Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant do, since they both live (or lived) in Canada and have had the singular honor of being hauled in front of the Human Rights Commission there for daring to say things Muslims might not like to hear.

Levant dared to publish those pesky cartoons that Muslims were rioting and killing people over, as I discussed in some detail here.

He has now written a book on how the Human Rights Commission has terrorized numerous people in Canada for their disruptive and offensive points of view (though never, oddly, any Muslim for offending Jews or others), called Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights. I've pre-ordered my copy.

Below are YouTube segments for an hour interview Levant did on the Michael Coren show in 2004, when his problems with the HRC were hitting the fan. Of related interest, Michael Coren twice plays an excerpt from a Muslim on his show the week before. Pay attention to this part, as it plays a role in my next post, on Mark Steyn.

End of Civilization Watch: Ezra Levant is my first favorite committer of hate crimes against humanity

"I state to you that I published it without reservation; I published it in the most unreasonable manner...Whatever offends you, I reserve the right to publish it for whatever offensive reason I want."
-- Ezra Levant

If you are an American, then you no doubt exercise your patriotic right of paying absolutely no attention to Canada whatsoever. I've heard of Canadians asking what Americans think of Canada, and I think they truly don't believe the correct answer, which is: "We don't. No really, we never think of you at all."

However, there is some reason, aside from Stanley Park, to notice Canada, as I've mentioned before: They are playing footsie with Islam, Sharia law, and politically correct assaults on freedom of speech in ways we should find very disturbing. If it can happen to them, can it happen to us?

Over the last couple of years there have been a couple of high-profile legal actions that touch on this, both of which have now been resolved, so I'm going to give them some coverage, starting with Ezra Levant.

Remember the Muslim cartoon blowup a couple of years ago? The cartoons were condemned by many Muslims for providing representations of Muhammad, an act considered taboo by the religion. There were riots by followers of the peaceful religion, and most mainstream media was too cowardly to reprint the cartoons (viewable in part here), with much hand-wringing about how wrong it is to intentionally offend someone's religious beliefs.

A very few in the press were willing to stand up to the pressure, and one of them was Ezra Levant, who republished the cartoons. As a result Levant was pulled in front of the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission to defend himself for exercising free speech. He insisted that his inquisition interview be videotaped, and he released the videos on YouTube. Here is perhaps one of the most significant videos ever posted on that site, showing someone standing up for his core values instead of trying to weasel out of the situation:

An excerpt of the excerpt:

Shirley McGovern: In summary fashion, what was your intent and purpose of your article with the cartoon illustrations published on February 27, 2006?

Ezra Levant: Why is that a relevant question? ...Is it you'd like to get some background or does this determine anything? We published what we published. The words and the pictures speak for themselves. Are you saying that one answer is wrong and one answer is right? Is a certain answer contrary to law?

McGovern: No.

Levant: So if I were to say, hypothetically, that the purpose was to instill hatred and incite hatred and cause offense, are you saying that's an acceptable answer?

McGovern: I'd have to look at it in the context of all the information and determine if it was indeed.

Levant: I think you're playing silly [?] here -- I think you know that the answer here, that that answer would be illegal...My answer to your question is as follows: We published those cartoons for the intention and purpose of exercising our inalienable rights as free-born Albertans to publish whatever the hell we want no matter what the hell you think. I've probably given 200 interviews with people other than the state where I give a very thoughtful and nuanced expression of my intent. But the only thing I have to say to the government about why I published it is because it's my bloody right to do so; and it's my right to do so for reasonable intentions and it's my right to do so for extremely unreasonable purposes. I refuse to concede to you that what my political thoughts in my mind are or in my heart are will determine whether or not an artifact is legal or illegal. We published that magazine, it speaks for itself. The fact that you dare to ask a publisher in Canada in the name of the government, to ask a publisher in Canada what his political thoughts are, it's obvious you are hunting for a thought crime, and I am not going to answer you in a minimal way. I'm not going to say, "Please Master, I was most reasonable, let me off the hook," I published those cartoons to use the maximum freedom allowed. I state to you that I published it without reservation; I published it in the most unreasonable manner...Whatever offends you, I reserve the right to publish it for whatever offensive reason I want.

You can find the complete set of videos of that session here. I think every school child should be required to memorize the exchange.

Levant's charges were dismissed on August 5th of this year...you'd think that would be a victory, but not really so much. As he said in his blog response (emphasis mine):

Is this a victory? I suppose, in a narrow technical sense, it is. I’m off the hook now for both of the HRC complaints. That’s two legal battles done – though I’m still up to my eyeballs fighting defamation suits and other legal actions that the human rights industry piled on top of these complaints.

But I’ve read the dismissal letter three times now, and each time it makes me more angry. Because I haven’t been given my freedom of the press. I’ve simply had the government censor approve what I said. That’s a completely different thing.

End of Civilization watch: Tricking women into blowing themselves up

It's getting tougher to have people blow themselves up in Iraq. Hope tends to do that to people.

But never to be defeated, Islamic terrorists in Iraq have come up with a two-for-one solution:

1. Use women as the suicide bombers, since they don't tend to be searched.

2. To get past that whole hope thing, don't tell the women you are about to blow them up.

2a. Extra bonus if they are retarded, so they won't understand what's going on anyway.

From the Right Truth blog, here is a picture of one 15 year old (or 13 year old according to some reports) girl having the suicide vest cut off of her after she asked police for help:

See that blog for more pictures related to this. And here is video of this situation unfolding:

The Times Online (which has another interesting, non-embeddable, video of this), emphasis mine:

The teenage girl, handcuffed to an iron railing, hangs her head as an Iraqi explosives expert cuts the trigger cords on a suicide vest strapped to her body. Gunshots echo in the distance as the white vest, carrying about 30lb (15kg) of explosives, is peeled off the 15-year-old, leaving her standing in the street in a sleeveless, orange frock...

When The Times met her in a police interrogation cell this week with her mother and grandmother, she claimed that she had been drugged and had no intention of killing herself or of becoming the 16th teenage girl bomber said to have struck in the past year.

That one had a happy ending, but then there is there is this case, in which two women with Down's syndrome were used as suicide bombers:

HT Dr. Sanity, who also gets into the psychology of using children for political purposes...

End of Civilization watch: Sharia comes to UK

I am shocked. Truly.

Sharia law has been introduced in Britain, an allegedly civilized Western country. I was originally freaked out when Canada played with the idea, but I must admit I figured it wouldn't happen for real so soon.

What to say?

I'm a truly optimistic person on the world in general, but I must admit this has thrown me for a pessimistic loop.

But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Ayaan Hirsi Ali warned us and has been beating the drum of caution ever since.

First, some context from the Wikipedia page linked above:

Sharia...is the body of Islamic religious law. The term means "way" or "path to the water source"; it is the legal framework within which the public and private aspects of life are regulated for those living in a legal system based on Islamic principles of jurisprudence and for Muslims living outside the domain. Sharia deals with many aspects of day-to-day life, including politics, economics, banking, business, contracts, family, sexuality, hygiene, and social issues...

Read the full page for a historical understanding of the source of Sharia and how it has evolved over time. For our purposes, I'll focus on issues that impact us today.

Freedom of speech: ...Sharia does not allow freedom of speech on such matters as criticism of Muhammad and that such criticism is considered blasphemy against Muhammad...

In Egypt, public authorities annulled, without his consent, the marriage of Prof. Nasr Abu Zayd when he got in conflict with an orthodox Islamic cleric from the Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The cleric had condemned Abu Zayd's reading of the Qur'an as being against the orthodox interpretation and labeled him an apostate (seen as a non-believer and consequently not permitted to marry or stay married to a Muslim woman).

Homosexuality: Homosexual activity is illicit under the sharia, however the prescribed penalties differ from one school of jurisprudence to another. For example these countries may allow the death penalty for sodomy though not for other homosexual activities: Iran, UAE, Sudan, Nigeria, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia. Sharia does not recognize a human right of sexual self-determination.

Women: ...Islam unequivocally allows both single and married women to own property in their own right. Islam grants to women the right to inherit property, in contrast with some cultures where women themselves are considered chattels that can be inherited...However, a woman's inheritance is different from a man's, both in quantity and attached obligations. For instance, a daughter's inheritance is half that of her brothers, Sharia law requires family members females or males to support each others as needed.

In practice Sharia law has often resulted in women living in fear or disadvantage. In instances of rape some interpretations of Sharia law require for an allegation to be validated, victims must have four witnesses to the crime or else the victims risk being charged with fornication or adultery making a rejected allegation a potential death sentence for the victim. In Yemen Sharia law required compensation to be paid to the husband in the case of a 10 year old child bride who requested a divorce after rape and abuse (the age of sexual consent under Sharia law is 9).

Islamic jurists have traditionally held that Muslim women may only enter into marriage with Muslim men, although some contemporary jurists question the basis of this restriction. On the other hand, the Qur'an explicitly allows Muslim men to marry any woman of the People of the Book, a term which includes Jews, Sabians, and Christians. However, fiqh law has held that it is mukrah (reprehensible) for a Muslim man to marry a non-Muslim woman in a non-Muslim country.

Sunni Islamic law allows husbands to divorce their wives by just saying talaq ("I divorce you") three times. In 2003 a Malaysian court ruled that, under Sharia law, a man may divorce his wife via text messaging as long as the message was clear and unequivocal. The divorced wife always keeps her dowry from when she was married, and is given child support until the age of weaning. The mother is usually granted custody of the child. The divorced wife also receives spousal support for three months after the divorce until it can be determined whether she is pregnant.

That's actually a rather whitewashed coverage of the status of women in Islam. The women have few rights, cannot choose their husbands, and beaten and raped without recourse (it is their fault if they are raped), and effectively live a life of slavery. See my review of Infidel for the full story.

It is absolutely unacceptable for any democracy -- particularly any Western democracy -- to accept the tenets of Sharia in any form. I don't know the full extent of what Britain is allowing, but here are excerpts from the article linked above:

ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh...Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case...

The disclosure that Muslim courts have legal powers in Britain comes seven months after Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was pilloried for suggesting that the establishment of sharia in the future “seems unavoidable” in Britain...

Politicians and church leaders expressed concerns that this could mark the beginnings of a “parallel legal system” based on sharia for some British Muslims.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “If it is true that these tribunals are passing binding decisions in the areas of family and criminal law, I would like to know which courts are enforcing them because I would consider such action unlawful. British law is absolute and must remain so.”

Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: “I think it’s appalling. I don’t think arbitration that is done by sharia should ever be endorsed or enforced by the British state.”

There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men.

Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons.

The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.

In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.

In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations...

Also in the article is the justification that special Jewish courts have been allowed, so Islamic courts are acceptable. I fear this will eventually be the wedge that brings Sharia to Canada as well -- it's not acceptable that any religion get special courts. The law is the law, and applies to all equally.

With this development, I truly fear that Mark Steyn is right, and soon it will be America Alone...

Hamlet dressers and other infidels

I know I'm just an unsentimental bastard, but if there's one thing I hate in the typical biography or auto-biography, it's the standard requirement to spend quality time telling us the in-depth history of the grandparents immigrating to a new country and their trials and tribulations, then the many events that befell their children before one of them got married, had some rough times, became an encyclopedia salesman, then produced the author, who was born in a small hospital before being potty trained...enough already!

After a couple of hundred pages, finally the author starts talking about the special skill or act that is the reason I actually bought the tome in the first place. It's not that back story can't be interesting, but I want some traction with the real person to make me care enough to slog through all the back story.

So I was delighted to discover the first author I've found who really understands this principle, as demonstrated by his memoir, Hamlet's Dresser:

I actually listened to the audiobook, read by the author, which is the ideal way to experience most auto-biographies, and this is no exception.

The author, Bob Smith, does something almost unheard of for a memoir: He starts at the most interesting part, telling a little story from late in his life. Then he jumps elsewhere in time and tells another story. Not unlike Billy Pilgrim of Vonnegut's Slaughter-house Five, Bob Smith seems unstuck in time. He keeps jumping and telling stories, and the reader gets to stitch them together, make connections, and uncover the threads of his life.

It brings to mind staying up all night with a good friend, drinking and listening to him tell random stories, and at the end of the long night you realize you know something deep about this person. That's what this book is. I won't bother summarizing what happened in his life, as that's why you should read or listen to the book; really, nothing particularly big did happen to Bob Smith. He likes Shakespeare a lot, and he got to work as a dresser on productions for John Houseman, and, well, if either of those things means anything to you, read the damn book already.

The next auto-biography in my list was not a person unstuck in time. It followed, in fact, an absolutely standard approach of tracking the author's life from the beginning and moving methodically through every event in her life, in order. And that was the perfectly correct thing to do. The book is Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Again I actually listened to the audiobook, also read by the author. Some may find her accent difficult to parse at times, but it's worth it to get the authentic voice.

I had some vague impressions of Ayaan Hirsi Ali going into this...I knew she'd been in Dutch politics and had authored the short film "Submission, Part 1", which got the director, Theo van Gogh, killed in a grisly manner. Here is the film:

I knew that she had had to live in fear, and had eventually moved to the US. But I didn't know the half of it. Listening to the audiobook I got to immerse myself in Ayaan's entire life, from beginning to her "circumcision" to time of writing, and this is a case where knowing her life in this manner is crucial to understanding her journey through a primitive religious tyranny that should belong only to the dust heap of history, to her escape into the modern world and her flowering into an adult to become one of the most influential people of our times.

Through her sheer will and courage, she made the journey that her religion has not. Reading this book gives ample evidence of what it means for a religion to be taken literally, and any modern Western person can only be shocked to realize how much of the world is mired in ancient thinking. Ayaan makes a powerful case for the idea that fundamentalist Islam is not compatible with the modern world and cannot be tolerated in undiluted form. She puts it in our face that when we tolerant folk of the West talk about Islam as a "peaceful" religion perverted by a few bad apples, we know not of what we speak. Religions typically become peaceful through the process of reformation, and Islam has not had its reformation. And the followers of the unreformed strain of this religion are not few in number, and not interested in our Western ways even as they join our countries.

There is great danger as countries like Canada play with the concept of introducing Sharia law in an ill-fated attempt at tolerance; a danger that these ancient unreformed concepts could spread and touch us all. This may seem a stretch, but read this book and you will see how modern societies have succumbed in our lifetime, and you will get a sense of the vast number of women oppressed and subjected to the veil, and perhaps most importantly, you will see this what this meant to one very real individual, someone who could have easily been lost to us.

There are many more potential Ayaan Hirsi Ali's out there. Women who could be helping shape the world through their wisdom and intelligence. But they have not escaped, and live out their lives in a slavery from another time.