Suicide by tolerance

National Post
Lorne Gunter


Walt Kelly, the cartoonist and satirist once had his famous character Pogo say, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

In the clash between the West and Islam, that is increasingly true. We are our own worst enemy.
Those of us who care about the survival of Western civilization occasionally rage about the way Muslim organizations feign outrage in the media at the tiniest slight. We grind out teeth when those organizations file human rights complaints against the writings of the likes of Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. We warn against our governments permitting the implementation of shariah law and against the insidious teachings of radical imams at mosques and Islamic community centres on our own continent.

But really, could radical Islamists take over unless our elites let them?

True, the Alberta human rights complaint against Levant was brought by something called the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada (ISCC), and the one against Steyn was initiated by the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), both of which make it look as if Muslims are behind these attacks on our free speech.

Yet would either grievance have gone anywhere in the absence of government-sponsored, tax-supported agencies that encourage vocal advocacy groups to lodge formal complaints against their foes, and then pay their way?

Imagine the fleeting lives of such complaints in the absence of laws -- passed by liberal Western politicians, not professional Muslim cause-pleaders --granting them legitimacy?

The Syed Soharwardys (ISCC head) and Mohammad Elmasrys (CIC boss) of the world might rail on to a sympathetic reporter or two about the indignations the Levants and Steyns are causing their religion, but without the backing of modern Western governments and the politically correct functionaries who pull their levers, open their money spigots and crack their whips, such complainants would be trees falling in the forest with no one there to hear. For most readers, listeners and viewers the response would be turn the page, switch the station, flip the channel.

It wasn't the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIRCAN) that sent chief CIBC economist Jeff Rubin for Muslim sensitivity training three years ago after a bank financial report offended the particularly pugnacious, litigious Muslim organization. It was Rubin's fearful, PC bosses at CIBC.

Yes, CAIR-CAN, the CIC and the ISCC delight in taking full advantage of the official avenues open to them to criticize and intimidate their foes, but they didn't create those avenues and there is little they could do if our governments and politically correct corporations decided to close them tomorrow.

The best example of what I mean surfaced this week from the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency ( BECTA).

Shoo Fly publishers of Newcastle has produced a very innovative, interactive software version of the Three Little Pigs -- a 3D book designed to encourage young children to develop critical thinking abilities. It has won several awards, but was not approved by BECTA because "the use of pigs raises cultural issues." In particular, the company was told, "Judges would not recommend this product to the Muslim community," out of concern the pig images would be upsetting.

British papers were instantly filled with headlines such as "PC gone mad! Muslims devour Little Red Riding Hood."

But, of course, Muslims had done no such thing. Indeed, the Muslim Council of Britain told the Daily Telegraph, "We are not offended by that at all," and called on British schools to welcome the books.

I am not saying radical Muslims pose no threat to our way of life. Of course if fundamentalist Muslims had their way we would all become converts, or at the very least servile dhimmi living at the whim of a worldwide caliphate. Muslims who protested in the Western world two winters ago against the Danish cartoons of Muhammad were not driven by our own PC elites to take to the streets carrying signs with slogans such as "Death to those who dishonour the Prophet."

Still, their fundamentalist vision would go nowhere legally, culturally or politically without our governments, politicians, bureaucrats and experts bending over backwards to appear sensitive and reasonable.

Call it suicide by tolerance. The Western world with its institutions of democracy and the rule of law, with its advances in science and medicine, its progress in individual liberty, its historic devotion to reason and its developments in culture and the arts will disappear because its own elites could not be proud enough of its achievements to defend it from within.