JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE FROM A COLUMN BY NAZEEN SHEIKH IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

This is simply blather from Nazneen Sheikh, rather dangerous blather, demonstrating not understanding but attitude.

It is well known that neither the niqab nor the burqa are requirements for the world’s billion or so Muslims.

But they are nevertheless deeply traditional parts of some primitive cultures, and indeed primitive cultures everywhere have backward and superstitious customs. That is precisely what it means to be backward.

Societies leave their backward customs behind when they enjoy healthy economic growth. They don’t bind women’s feet anymore in China or Japan.

What still goes on in the backward corners of India, South America, Thailand, Africa, and other places is appalling. Countless savageries are committed daily against women from accepted rape and selling children into prostitution to bride-burning and “honor killing.”

Considering the vast scope of horrors against women in this world, I think it slightly ridiculous to be riveted on the situation of several hundred immigrant women in France who wear the niqab, and that is the order of magnitude we are concerned with here because the overwhelming majority of Muslim women in France have never worn the niqab.

As anyone who studies the ways of people without a political agenda knows perfectly well, you cannot change backward customs quickly.

Indeed, if you try, you do so with tyrant behavior as bad or worse than the custom itself, and often run the risk of bad reactions from those charged with special and unfair laws.

It sometimes takes a couple of generations in a new land for strongly-entrenched customs to fade, as we can easily observe in other groups who live in Canada.

Indeed, some seem never to change, and one may ask justly, why should they if that is their choice? They live quiet lives, just as the Muslims with their niqabs.

Hasidic Jewish men still wear full face beards and large dark hats.

Traditional Mennonite women wear ugly long formless dresses with ugly caps on their heads and they drive in silly box carriages pulled by horses.

Both those groups are stuck somewhere in the 19th century. They both also do not truly integrate into the greater society, keeping in their own close-knit communities.

And so long as they do no one any harm and obey our laws, who cares?

Telling people what they must or must not wear is in the same spirit of human rights as telling people what they should say.

Sarkozy is only responding to the increased popularity of the National Front, effectively setting himself a race with the society’s least decent political party.

Hardly admirable, but we should know from many of Sarkozy’s other deeds and words that he is an unpleasant man altogether, from his treatment of gypsies to his calling people scum.

Yet, the thoughtless writer of this piece sets him up as someone to be emulated.

I suspect Ms Sheikh to be one of those people who are ashamed of their more backward cousins, but that is no excuse to advocate corrupting the laws of civil society.

I suspect, too, this is one of her ways of responding to the irrational pressure created by the “war on terror” with its daily freely-communicated ignorant prejudices against Muslims in our society. It is a way of responding – jumping on the simpler and more backward members of her community – that is aimed at gaining approval from the ugly noisy mob, when it is the mob that is the problem.

How quickly our perceptions vary under such conditions. Not that long ago, the niqab was viewed as alluring and mysteriously beautiful, highlighting the eyes as it does. We saw that in countless movies and television shows and read it in many books. Suddenly, it is evil and must be expunged.

Ridiculous, unthinking, and unenlightened.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSES TO AN EDITORIAL AND A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“…the free exchange of ideas….”

What pompous nonsense!

Coulter exchanges no ideas, only attitudes, hateful attitudes.

And she was not there to speak and inform – she was there to entertain those who laugh at the jokes of nasty-mouthed twelve-year olds.

This woman is a hatemonger without redeeming values.

Had she attacked the appearance or customs of Orthodox Jewish people, as she does those of others, the Globe would be patting itself on the back while pronouncing that Canada has no room for her.

And in that case, you would be right.

As it is, you could not be more wrong.

And your pompous phrasing takes no account of the fact that the University of Ottawa did permit this seething lump of intolerance to speak.

It was a large group of people, exercising their own rights of speech, who shouted her down.

And, as someone who dearly embraces free speech and hates censorship, I applaud them.
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What Ann Coulter really represents – apart from intolerance and the retarded-development humor of a frat boy – is the triumph of info-tainment.

America is awash in info-tainment, having even at least one entire network dedicated to it, Fox.

She was here to make her offering on an organized tour with promised profits, just as Cirque du Soleil does Los Vegas.

Indeed, circus performer – of the kind from the old days of “freak show” tents – would be one accurate way to describe what she does.

Ideas and information are no more part of her act than they are for nude lap-dancer at a men’s lounge.

It is truly absurd to discuss her in any other light: to do so is to buy in to the idea that Americans are informed by Fox Television.
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Ian Hunter offers us a remarkably vacuous article.

What Mr. Hunter has done here, thinly disguised as a defense of free speech and quality education, is attack Allan Rock, obviously a politician he does not like.

The issue of free speech is truly not present in this incident.

Ms Coulter is a paid performer.

And an audience booed her off the stage.

It used to happen all the time in Vaudeville.

Remember the old jokes about the cane dragging an unpopular performer off the stage?

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

No, you have it wrong.

It is not that Britain’s reputation for free speech has been “ruthlessly exploited.”

It is now that is the genuine test of free speech.

Pieces like this one are in fact saying free speech is fine when times are fat and easy, but free speech needs control when they are not.

I could not agree less.

People are in fact never hurt by speech (genuine liable excluded), they are hurt by acts, acts which include the diminution of free speech.

And your use of the words, “enemy within,” is very revealing. That was a catch phrase during the American witch hunts of the 1950s.