“Back in 2006, Soharwardy filed a complaint with the Alberta human rights commission because the Western Standard published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. You simply have to read his hand-scrawled complaint — my favourite part was that those cartoons violated his rights because he was a direct descendant of Mohammed. Uh, I’m not sure if that’s considered a legal cause of action back in Saudi Arabia, let alone in Canada.
“You really have to check it out (…) I was tempted to make the compelling legal argument that I am a descendant of Moses, I refrained. (I also used a spell-check.)”
(…)
“Now Soharwardy is mad again — this time because of some public comments posted to the Western Standard blog on December 2nd, ironically in response to a post by me about radical Muslims using human rights commissions as censors.
“Soharwardy says he felt scared by those public comments — but not scared enough to, say, contact the Western Standard to even ask for them to be taken down. As usual, his first stop was the police who, as usual, turned him away. So off to the human rights commission he goes. Soharwardy’s press conference today? Well, we all know that’s what genuinely scared people do.”
(…)
“I blame… the media. Seriously: I blame them for the soft bigotry of low expectations. If Soharwardy and Elmasry were WASPs, the media would ridicule them for their thin skin, and would attack their views as the reactionary fascism that it is. But because they’re foreign-born, dark-skinned Muslims who speak with an accent, the media shut off their natural skepticism and forget all of their ideals about free speech — and their judgment — because they want to be gentle.”
