“Mr. Levant said he isn’t buying Mr. Soharwardy’s promise, calling it a ‘temporary, tactical truce.’
“‘I don’t believe him. He thought this would be easy to do, just sic the human rights commission on me and it would be done. But I decided to fight back,’ said Mr. Levant.
“‘He’s hurting right now. . . . What he’s now saying he is going to do is not a true reflection of his feelings.’
“Mr. Levant said he plans to launch a civil lawsuit against Mr. Soharwardy to recover the tens of thousands of dollars he said he has spent battling the complaint.
“‘I put in at least 100 hours fighting this guy. He may want to run away from this issue, but I’m not going to. His values are out of sync with Canadian society.’
At his blog, Ezra writes (read the whole thing):
So why would Soharwardy do this — and why now?
The answer lies in another Arabic word: hudna. A hudna isn’t a peace treaty. It’s a temporary truce called by a Muslim warrior who’s losing in battle.
(…)
Soharwardy wants a hudna because he’s losing badly. Not financially: he hasn’t spent a penny to further the complaint against me — that has been done courtesy of Ed Stelmach’s government and the taxpayers of Alberta, to the tune of $500,000, I’d guess. Nor has Soharwardy had to spend hundreds of hours battling against me at the commission — Alberta government employees do that for him. It’s because over the past two years — and the past month in particular — Soharwardy has become known for what he is: an Islamofascist imam, who’s trying to bring Saudi values to Canada. Though I’m being pummelled in a kangaroo court, he’s being pummelled in the court of public opinion. He didn’t expect it, and he hates it.
He hates that hundreds of bloggers ridicule him. He hates that my video clips, in which I describe his illiberal nature, have been viewed almost 500,000 times. He hates that his own enemies within his mosque have taken advantage of this media coverage to shine a light of scrutiny on the way he runs his mosque – from his financial irregularities, to his abusive treatment of women. These documents here, here, here and here, first published on my blog, have been viewed thousands of times and led to a series of newspaper items in the Calgary Herald and even the Washington Times. Soharwardy is embarrassed — as well he should be. He is no longer polite company. Now he’s known as a censor, a fascist, a sexist. He’s un-Canadian. And if the complaint against me goes to a tribunal, he’ll go through this again on a larger scale.
Jay Currie writes:
Now, no doubt the niceniks and the Kinsellians will moan about how Ezra will not give this “Imam” a break and how mean Ezra’s being. Suing the man for abuse of process? How un-Canadian. I say go for it. It is well past time that people like this learn actions have consequences. Serious ones. A million dollars in damages? Go for it. It sends exactly the right message.
And, yo, Osgoode 4, do you know how long baby lawyers have to work to make a million bucks? Even the literate ones?
