London (Ontario) Murders

 

Every death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. Every murder is murder, and there is no discriminating here. Each of us is equally valuable in the eyes of God, and each of us as citizens has a right to equal protection before and from the law.

So it is disturbing that, when someone who is not a Muslim kills a Muslim, it is treated very differently than when someone who is a Muslim kills a non-Muslim.

When someone ran down a visibly Muslim family in London, killing four, it was immediately identified as a “hate crime.” When a Muslim man opened fire on Toronto’s Danforth iin 2018, police insisted and still insist no motive could be found. 

You may argue that the circumstances were different. Perhaps so. In the first case, the perpetrator had at least one close Muslim friend, who insisted he had no anti-Muslim feelings. The perpetrator apparently belonged to no anti-Muslim organizations, there is nothing troubling in his social media, and there is apparently no manifesto. In the second case, ISIS claimed responsibility.

After the Danforth shooting, the authorities and media rushed to insist that, whatever else happened, the most important thing was that Muslims as a group must not be blamed.

In the wake of the London murders, authorities rushed to declare that all the rest of us, all who are not Muslims, are to blame. “This is our Canada.”

This difference in reaction and interpretation could not be more striking, and is obviously discriminatory. Either we are all and only responsible for our individual acts, or all groups must be held equally responsible for the actions of their members.

The authorities and media have called, in the present case, for immediate action against ideologies that promote such hate. They identify some such ideology called “Islamophobia,” which needs to be banned.

“Hate speech,” in the sense of inciting violence against any identifiable group, is already criminal in Canada. Those who resist further action singling out Islam for special protection fear it might involve making mere criticism of Islam as a religion or political ideology illegal. 

And there is another problem. The Quran itself, and the hadith, by a reasonable literal reading, call for Muslim supremacy and violence against non-Muslims. Not just the “jihad” concept, but any legitimate government must be run in accord with sharia law, with different rights for Muslims and non-Muslims. One is obliged to kill “kaffirs,” non-believers, as well as anyone who apostasizes from Islam.

One may well insist that such passages do not mean what they might appear to mean by said literal reading; but ambiguity is not allowed as a defense of hate speech elsewhere. The worst interpretation is always assumed.

In other words, if we are going to fairly enforce even the existing laws on hate speech, Islam itself would have to be banned.

I think it is a given that we cannot criminalize a major world religion. Not just for practical reasons, but because after the right to life, freedom of conscience is the most fundamental of all rights.

Accordingly, beyond the argument from freedom of speech, which is honoured in the US, and is supposedly guaranteed in the Canadian constitution, we simply cannot have hate speech laws, cannot ban even eliminationist hate speech. Troubling as it might seem to most, the alternative is worse. 

Especially for Muslims.