A seriously dangerous belief system

Human rights and anti-racism cops alert! Don't you want to bring charges under s. 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act against Madam Justice Lynn Ratushny of the Ontario Superior Court? She's calling Islam -- or at least the Muslim attitude towards women -- a "seriously dangerous belief system".

This according to a column by Margaret Wente in today's Globe and Mail. Ms Wente reports on the sentencing in Ottawa on Tuesday of Yusuf Al Mezel, a devout Muslim. Mr Al Mezel will now be Her Britannic Majesty's guest for a year. The charge? Threatening his daughter with violence.

The daughter's crime? Eman Al Mezel decided, at the age of 23, that she'd had enough of living under her father's thumb. She had lived at home, where her father wanted to keep her. So they fought bitterly when Eman started doing volunteer work at a local community centre.

Her father pushed her into a flight of stairs. He threatened to break her legs and kill her, and then smashed her computer. When she learned he had arranged for her to marry a Syrian man, she moved out. To the horror of her family, she abandoned the hijab and her Muslim beliefs, and moved in with a male friend and his family.

You can imagine the father's reaction. If you can't read the full account in Ms Wente's column. Suffice it to say the judge felt the father's harrassment and repeated threats were sufficiently threatening to warrant a conviction. Judge Ratushny called Al Mezel's behaviour "a crime of honour, committed in the name of a seriously dangerous belief system."

So you see, life in Muslim families is not always as portrayed in Little Mosque on the Prairie. Nor are crimes of honour confined to Pakistan and Afghanistan...or Toronto. The Muslims bring their "seriously dangerous belief system" with them when they immigrate.

In the name of multiculturalism and diversity, successive misguided Canadian governments have encouraged Muslims, Hindus and other aliens to hang onto their "cultural values", rather than adopt the values of the Canadian majority.

What is wrong with us?! Is it shameful, as the CBC liberal intelligentsia would have us think, to at least suggest that new Canadians adopt at least some of our values? Like allowing children to dress as they please and marry whom they choose, just to mention one.

In Walt's humble opinion "When in Rome, do as the Romans do; when in Canada, do as the Canadians do" should be stamped in 24-point type on every immigrant visa!