Posted by
L Gravel on Monday, June 09, 2008 6:00:00 PM
...and I didn't speak up because I wasn't Mark Steyn.
The Editors of the
National Review Online give us an update on Mark Steyn's hearing before a "Human Rights" Tribunal:
That’s right: This was only a provincial trial. The Canadian Islamic Congress — the radical Muslim complainants — went jurisdiction shopping, so once the trial in British Columbia concludes, Steyn and Maclean’s will find themselves the targets of another witch hunt at the national Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC). Both “courts” can impose penalties separate from each other, and the legal costs are likely to be astronomical. (The complainant’s legal representation is conveniently provided by the state at no charge.) Incredibly enough, in 31 years, the CHRC has not once dismissed a charge that has been brought before it. Could the courts in Soviet Russia have boasted of such a success rate?
Steyn's offense? He wrote a
book.
Meanwhile, the
Examiner reports:
A new report issued by the American Textbook Council says books approved for use in local school districts for teaching middle and high school students about Islam caved in to political correctness and dumbed down the topic at a critical moment in its history.
"Textbook editors try to avoid any subject that could turn into a political grenade," wrote Gilbert Sewall, director of the council, who railed against five popular history texts for "adjust[ing] the definition of jihad or sharia or remov[ing] these words from lessons to avoid inconvenient truths."
Sewall complains the word jihad has gone through an "amazing cultural reorchestration" in textbooks, losing any connotation of violence. He cites Houghton Mifflin's popular middle school text, "Across the Centuries," which has been approved for use in Montgomery County Schools. It defines "jihad" as a struggle "to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil."
Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."