Under the “leadership” of leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada’s Parliament just passed an absurd motion that is poised to end free speech there by making “Islamophobia” illegal.
The motion, M-103, reads:
The government should: (a) recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear; (b) condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination and take note of House of Commons’ petition e-411 and the issues raised by it; and (c) request that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage undertake a study on how the government could (i) develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia, in Canada …
And free speech has just left the building — although I’m not entirely sure that it wasn’t already gone anyway …
As would be expected, the Conservatives in Canada stood in opposition to the motion while the Canadian Left — the Liberals and New Democrats — supported it.
Lifesite News pointed out that despite the motion setting out to “condemn Islamophobia” it doesn’t actually define what “Islamophobia” is.
The Daily Wire reported:
An Angus Reid poll showed 42 percent of Canadians would vote against the bill; 29 percent would vote for it.
The Conservatives had offered an alternative bill that condemned racism and discrimination against Muslims, Jews, Christians, and other religious groups, but did not include the word “Islamophobia.” That bill was defeated by the Liberals in February. They claimed the bill was an attempt to “water down” M-103.
Conservative Brad Trost explained that he opposed the motion because it “will only serve to strengthen extremist elements within the Muslim community itself that seek to preserve and promote their own form of hate and intolerance.”
He also said that any “serious plan to combat religious discrimination in Canada should include all faith groups, including Christians and Jews.”
Columnist Lorne Gunter wrote in the Edmonton Sun about the massive problems with this motion: “While purporting to oppose all forms of religious discrimination, the only form specifically mentioned is Islamophobia. And no definition of Islamophobia is given, leaving the door wide open to the broadest possible interpretations – including public statements condemning radical Islamic terrorism and even academic papers questioning whether Islam truly is a religion of peace.”
Montreal physician Sherif Emil discussed how dangerous this motion is in the Montreal Gazette:
Canadians, regardless of their political affiliation, should stand firmly against the motion. We are living in an age where depraved terrorist armies, who cite a unifying explanation for their actions in Islamic texts and doctrine, occupy large swaths of entire nations. Even if we dismiss these hundreds of thousands of extremists, and instead examine mainstream Islamic societies, what do we find? We find nation after nation where apostasy is a crime punishable by death, indigenous minorities are robbed of equal citizenship and religious dissent is considered treason. A charge of Islamophobia is used to silence, marginalize and imprison the few liberal Muslim thinkers who are attempting to reform Islam from within. Fear of these existing realities and open discussion of their roots and implications is not irrational. If Canada joins this Islamophobia witch hunt, it will be complicit in the crimes committed in the name of preventing Islamophobia.
LifeSite News reported that a petition has circulated on CitizenGo asking MPs to put a stop to the “restrictive ‘anti-blasphemy’” motion and had garnered over 79,000 signatures.
“This motion will encourage legislation that would criminalize speech deemed ‘islamophobic’ and lay the groundwork for imposing what is essentially a Sharia anti-blasphemy law on all of Canada,” the petition reads.
“If that happens, criticism of Islam would constitute a speech crime in Canada,” it continued, and went on to say that this “kind of content-based, viewpoint-discriminatory censorship is unacceptable in a Western liberal democracy.”
Ref.: http://thefederalistpapers.org/us/canada-moves-to-end-free-speech
