Newspaper coverage of the lawfare campaign against me

Today's Calgary Herald has an interesting editorial about the campaign of lawfare being waged against me by radical Muslims and their collaborators at Canada's human rights commissions.

As supporters will know, Syed Soharwardy, of the Islamic Supreme Council of Calgary and Khurrum Awan of the Canadian Islamic Congress have been joined in their campaign by current and former HRC staff Giacomo Vigna and Richard Warman, and Warman's spokesman Warren Kinsella. Those five people -- Soharwardy, Awan, Vigna, Warman and Kinsella -- have, amongst them, filed 28 of the 31 nuisance suits and complaints against me.

Here's the Herald on Warman's excesses:

Using pseudonyms, he posted encouraging remarks on neo-Nazi sites such as "Keep up the good work Commander Schoep!" in order, he says, to flush out and identify neo-Nazi sympathizers.

In the U.S. this is called entrapment.

...Warman, in fact, has been the sole complainant since 2002 to the Canadian Human Rights Commission on Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which is the Internet anti-hate section that prohibits statements that are "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt."

Because of his zeal, many accuse Warman of overstepping the bounds of liberty, calling him a modern-day witch hunter whose actions merely helped to inflame and spread the very hatred he sought to stamp out. One of his critics is Ezra Levant, the Calgary lawyer and conservative blogger whose outspoken comments about Warman and other "censors and bullies" at the commission have resulted in a libel action by Warman.

...it also exposed the commission's lack of due process, where fundamental rules of evidence do not apply, and where Warman, a former commission member, was afforded access to files and staff unavailable to defendants. Complainants, it should be noted, also have expenses paid by the commission, defenders do not.

Warman's actions ultimately led to a human rights tribunal ruling that Section 13 is an unconstitutional violation of the freedom of expression provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights. That ruling is currently under appeal. Warman's vendettas also prompted a review by University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon who rightfully argued in 2008 that Section 13 should be repealed so that online hate speech is a purely criminal matter.

We are glad to see that Warman is suing Levant, not out of disagreement with the combative Calgary lawyer, but for the simple reason that Warman will finally have to spend his own money in a real court, rather than availing himself of commission time and resources at taxpayer expense.

We loath neo-Nazi sentiments, but the whole affair reminds us of Matthew Hopkins, who appointed himself England's "Witchfinder General" in the mid-1600s. He hunted down an estimated 200 witches, turning them over to authorities at the price of one pound per witch.

And here's an item from last month by the Ottawa Citizen's Robert Sibley:

Call it jihad through the courts. Once again Ezra Levant is under attack from Muslims who don’t like the fact that he doesn’t like Muslim extremists.

Two years ago, as most every sentient Canadian knows, Levant, the former publisher of one of the few non-Leftist magazines in this country, The Western Standard, and Mark Steyn, a columnist for Maclean’s magazine (and just about every other publication in the free world, it seems), were the targets of various human rights complaints.

...Awan gloated at the thought that his complaints had cost Maclean’s a great deal of money. Indeed, that seems to be the real purpose of the complaints.

Felton quoted Awan as saying: “‘We do not plan to appeal the decision because we attained out strategic objective — to increase the cost of publishing anti-Islamic material.’ Awan said Maclean’s spent $500,000 alone on the B.C. case, but that does not take into account the case in Ontario. The total legal cost to Maclean’s is somewhere around $2 million.” (No mention of all the taxpayers’ money the human rights commissions wasted in allowing the complaints in the first place.)

In other words, Awan and his Muslim friends weren’t really concerned about rights or justice or wanting to be treated the same as other Canadians. Nope, it was all about making it too expensive for anyone to dare criticize Islam. It was all about using (abusing?) the legal system to silence Canadians who question the Islamic worldview.

I’d call that jihad chill, or, perhaps, soft terrorism. Isn’t it a kind of terrorism when the law itself becomes the means for frightening people into silence, and, thereby, stripping them of rights to free speech and freedom of religion, which, of course, including the right to criticize religion. (Can you imagine the hullabaloo if the Catholic Church started indulging in lawsuits against those who blaspheme the Son of God?)

Now, two years later, Awan is trying the same tactic against Levant, suing the Calgary-based writer for defamation.

…Awan might be in for a bit of a surprise, presuming the Canada’s law courts aren’t as easily manipulated as the human rights commissions.

Question: do you think Warman, Awan and the others will sue the Calgary Herald and the Ottawa Citizen for criticizing them? I mean, in for a penny, in for a pound, right?