Jew-hater Mohamed Elmasry is the poster boy for denormalizing the HRCs

Mohamed Elmasry, an immigrant to Canada from Egypt, is a Jew-hating bigot. In keeping with his Egyptian style, he’s the president-for-life of the grandiosely-named Canadian Islamic Congress. Simply put, he wants to import Egyptian values of censorship, anti-Semitism and authoritarian government to Canada. And he knows the best way to do that: through Canada's illiberal human rights commissions.

If the HRCs actually applied their laws neutrally, Elmasry himself would have been charged with “hate speech” when he declared on Michael Coren's television show that terrorist attacks against Jews were legitimate. Instead, he’s used Canada’s HRCs as a weapon against those who would criticize radical Islam -- Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine in particular.

Joseph Brean has an interview with Elmasry in today’s National Post. It’s an interesting read, with all sorts of Egyptian ideas about strangling political dissent. But I’ll just point out one minor detail.

Elmasry admits what useful idiots like John Miller have denied, but what the rest of us have known all along: Khurrum Awan and the other Muslim law students who have been pushing the HRC complaints against Maclean's in the media were nothing but the PR front-men for Elmasry himself. They were his pawns. Elmasry is so toxic politically, he had to find little bigots-in-training who were not quite as discredited as him.

Fools like Miller bought the charade. Today Elmasry revealed he was the puppet master all along. Says Elmasry:

Prof. Elmasry said both those men [Awan and Faisal Joseph], in their numerous public and media appearances, were always acting "upon my instruction."

Like all petty tyrants, Elmasry has an enormous ego (I was on a panel with him in 2006 where he actually took credit for inventing the BlackBerry. Seriously.) Flattered with Brean’s interview, he just couldn’t help himself – he had to “take credit” for the foolish antics of Awan and Joseph, although by doing so he undid the purpose of having surrogates.

There’s not much more to say about Elmasry. I agree with Brean that Elmasry has been a key figure in the battle against censorship laws such as the Canadian Human Rights Act, because it would be impossible to create a proponent (and user) of those laws more odious, more offensive, less sympathetic, and less in line with what Canadians think real human rights are. As Brean put it:

In the evolving history of human rights law in Canada, the Internet has made this review of online hate speech laws necessary. But among those who can take credit for making it possible, Prof. Elmasry has few competitors, save perhaps the blogger and free speech advocate Ezra Levant.

I appreciate the compliment, but as I’ve said before, the illiberal conduct of the Elmasrys and Jennifer Lynchs of this country are what has made denormalizing the HRCs so easy. Any severely normal Canadian who read Brean’s interview with Elmasry would correctly come to the conclusion that Elmasry wants to destroy Canada’s freedoms, and make us more like his putrid Egypt. No, thanks, you foul bigot – but thanks for illustrating what’s wrong with the system.