The multicultural mindset of the illiberal Left

In the multicultural mindset, all cultures are equal except Western Civilization: its colonialist legacy is uniquely bad. In the multiculturalist mindset, to actually examine what segments of the cultural mosaic living in Europe or North America actually believe and say is xenophobic. Yet the people who are lauded as spokespeople for those segments are invariably the most anti-Western and radical, the one's most in need of scrutiny.

Thus we have Barbara Hall of the Ontario Human Rights Commission declaring Maclean's Magazine xenophobic and Islamophobic for running an excerpt of Mark Steyn's America Alone, now out in paperback. Based on her decision, it would seem she would like it if the state would have the power to silence critics of anti-Western, illiberal elements in the multicultural mosaic.

As Joel Brean reported in today's National Post:

Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, however, said that for the Commission "to refer to Maclean's magazine and journalists as contributing to racism is bullshit, if you can use that word."

He said the Commission has unfairly taken sides against freedom of speech in a dispute within the Canadian Muslim community between moderates and fundamentalists.

"There are within the staff [of the Ontario Human Rights Commission], and among the commissioners, hardline Islamic supporters of Islamic extremism, and this [handling of the Maclean's case] reflects their presence over there," Mr. Fatah said, identifying two people.

"In the eyes of the Ontario human rights commission, the only good Muslim is an Islamist Muslim," he said. "As long as we hate Canada, we will be cared for. As soon as we say Canada is our home and we have to defend her traditions, freedoms and secular democracy, we will be considered as the outside."

So not only are moderate Muslims inauthentic spokespeople, according to multicults, any criticism of Islamist Muslims is, in their eyes, labeling the whole Muslim community. No criticism or examination allowed of the "authentic" ones, no matter how truthful or how fair the comment. I wonder, did Barbara Hall actually read Mark Steyn's articles or just the contorted paraphrases and wonky misuse of quotation marks in the dossier against him? Or did she just have her hurt-feelings-meter roaring like a Geiger Counter in the presence of radioactive plutonium?

The same goes for other segments. Thus we have Rev. Jeremiah Wright who the multicults deem the authentic voice of black America, the one to whom Barack Obama must go to receive the mantle of "street cred." So multicults kowtow to a man who believes the white man invented AIDs as a plot to kill black people and says God damn America, and sees the 9/11 terrorist attacks as chickens coming home to roost.

Yet someone like scholar Thomas Sowell, whose skin is far darker than the Rev. Wright's, is dismissed because he is conservative and thoughtful, as well as an original scholar unlike Wright and his Marxist variation of Black Liberation Theology. And we have Canadians, journalists even, who buy this "street cred" crap about Wright and excuse it, based on a conversation I had with one of my colleagues in the press gallery recently. And I bet if Condi Rice gets picked as John McCain's vice presidential candidate, her black skin will be dismissed as less authentic than Obama's because he has "street cred" and uses words like "brothah."

Since 9/11 it is not hate incidents against Muslims that have skyrocketed. It is hate incidences against Jews. Jews who still seem to think the human rights regimes are protecting their community because it has targeted neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers in the past, yet hate crimes against Jews continue to rise every year..

Yet now, the human rights regimes--federal and provincial--are poised to protect the most illiberal elements within Canada's diverse and mostly moderate Muslim community and silence anyone who criticizes that ideology in the name of anti-racism and anti-Islamophobia.

Thus a political ideology that inspires the Taliban and Al Qaeda and that advocates the elimination of the state of Israel --an ideology that is presently killing Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, despite the democratic will of the Afghani people, an ideology behind the anti-Israel hate fests on college campuses, will soon, if the human rights apparatus gets its way, be off limits for criticism.

At the same time, the Blogger 5, the among the most pro-Israel, pro-Jewish conservative bloggers in Canada face lawsuits that could chill the whole blogosphere.