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Muslims are targets of hate propaganda too
Lubomyr Prytulak to Mary M Gusella   13-Jan-2004
Mary M Gusella, Chief Commissioner
"This success clearly indicates the rise of a national Islamic lobby in Great Britain and marks the end of the Jewish lobby monopoly in the British media and political scenes." � Al-Quds Al-Arabi

  13 January 2004


Mary M Gusella, Chief Commissioner
Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC)
344 Slater Street
Ottawa, ON    K1A 1E1

Re: Muslims are targets of hate propaganda too

Dear Ms Gusella:

The day after mailing my letter to you of 09-Jan-2004, I came across the BBC article reproduced below which describes the sacking of BBC television presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk and which substantiates my argument.

That is, the BBC article demonstrates that if the objective and professional BBC has been broadcasting what is nothing better than anti-Muslim hate propaganda, then it may be inferred that anti-Muslim hate propaganda is able to circulate widely without registering on non-Muslim consciousness.  The Muslim protest, in turn, demonstrates that Muslims themselves are conscious of anti-Muslim hate propaganda, and find it odious and intolerable.  The Muslim protest, furthermore, is not based on Muslim feelings alone � it is based on Muslim feelings concerning statements that are false; in other words, an integral characteristic of the Muslim complaint is a determination of the untruth of the material complained of.  To give a single example, the Muslim response was not merely to express pain at the Kilroy-Silk allegation that the sole Arab contribution to civilization had been oil; the Muslim response went on to demonstrate that the allegation was false by listing some Arab contributions to civilization, ending with "When the West was still considering if a woman was an animal with a soul or a human being in the late 15th Century, the Messenger Muhammad had already given her the right of inheritance and divorce."  And finally, the BBC story demonstrates that the larger society is capable of agreeing that a Muslim complaint is meritorious, and of taking the decisive actions of firing a BBC television presenter and of closing down his show.

Therefore, if Muslims have not been complaining to the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) of hate messaging in Canada, or if they have been complaining only rarely, the leading explanation might be as suggested in my letter to you of 09-Jan-2004 � first, that Muslims distrust the CHRC because they perceive it to be a tool of the Canadian Jewish Congress; and second, that Muslims distrust the CHRC because of its irrational and unjust and indefensible and baffling indifference as to whether the complained-of material is true or false.

I urge you once again to begin restoring confidence in the CHRC by placing before the public the statistics on CHRC annual funding for hate-messaging investigations and prosecutions over the past decade, broken down by the ethnicity or nationality or religion of both plaintiff and defendant � which is to say, I urge you to fill in the sums within the cells of tables such as the one below, where the entries of 00.00 serve to indicate where real dollar amounts are to be written, and where the non-zero entry in the yellow cell is an imaginary figure used only to illustrate computation.


HATE-MESSAGING EXPENDITURES 2003
(Cell entries are in millions of dollars)

DEFENDANT
Arab German Jewish Ukrainian TOTAL
P
L
A
I
N
T
I
F
F		 Arab 00.00 00.00 00.00 00.00 00.00
German 00.00 00.00 00.00 01.00 00.00
Jewish 00.00 00.00 00.00 00.00 00.00
Ukrainian 00.00 00.00 00.00 00.00 00.00
TOTAL 00.00 00.00 00.00 00.00 00.00


The above table happens to particularly interest me, but a more comprehensive table of broader interest would include Aboriginal, Chinese, Italian, Sikh, and so on, groups.  In addition to a total-annual-expenditures table, the CHRC should also release a per-capita-annual-expenditures table, with per capita signifying per individual in the Canadian population falling into the plaintiff category.  For example, if the CHRC spent one million dollars in support of German prosecution of Ukrainians for hate messaging (shown in the yellow cell above), and if there were two million Germans in Canada, that would work out to fifty cents per German Canadian spent prosecuting Ukrainians for hate messaging, and so fifty cents would be entered in the corresponding yellow cell in the per-capita table.  A third table would report per capita expenditures but with per capita referring to individuals of the defendant type.

Tables such as the above might prove useful in at least two ways � they might provide some indication as to where pacific relations reigned, or in the alternative where CHRC discouragement of complaints reigned.  That is, the probable observation of a large number of entries of zero would call for a determination of whether the relevant groups typically had nothing to complain of against each other or whether the CHRC typically was inhospitable to their complaints.  Also, the existence of unequal spending might be suggestive of CHRC favoritism, with spending ratios in the order of ten or a hundred to one opening the question of CHRC bias and perhaps mandating correction of an erring CHRC, and with spending ratios in the order of a thousand or a million to one opening the question of CHRC corruption and perhaps mandating dismantling of an irredeemable CHRC.

Any imbalance in the level of support that the above-suggested analyses might discover should arouse particular scrutiny when it is in the wrong direction.  For example, with the Israel Asper media empire already broadly disseminating the Zionist world view to Canadians, it would seem unnecessary to dedicate disproportionate CHRC hate-messaging resources to defend that same Zionist position.  Rather, it would be groups whose views suffered from restricted distribution � like Arabs, Germans, and Ukrainians � who might deserve CHRC support.  The discovery that the CHRC funnels the majority of its funding to the very group that needs it least would reinforce the call for CHRC reform or dismantling.

The above are not abstract or academic speculations which the CHRC can feel free to attend to at its convenience, or not at all.  As a Ukrainian haled before the Canadian Human Rights Commission by Jews, I need to know promptly whether I am facing a just tribunal or a kangaroo court, and I would receive my answer most unambiguously by learning whether the CHRC distributes its resources impartially, or whether it supports Jewish causes over Ukrainian causes in a ratio of a million to one.  From your point of view, the question is urgent because the integrity of the CHRC is in question, and the current perception of lack of integrity undermines trust in government and brings the administration of justice into disrepute.  You have no more urgent task before you than filling in the cells of the above table, and if you begin that work today, you will have begun it ten years late.

Yours truly,



Lubomyr Prytulak

cc:

Irving ABELLA, National Honourary President, CJC, Department of History, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON  M3J 1P3
Bernie FARBER, Executive Director, CJC, 4600 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON  M2R 3V2
Ed MORGAN, Chair, CJC, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, 84 Queen's Park, Toronto, ON  M5S 2C5
Moshe RONEN, Chair Board of Governors, CJC, 4600 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON  M2R 3V2
Len RUDNER, Director of Community Relations, CJC, 4600 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON  M2R 3V2




Mr Kilroy-Silk has apologized for his comments
Arab media attack 'racist' Kilroy

Pan-Arab media outlets have reacted with outrage to comments about Arabs made in a newspaper article by UK TV presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk.

A representative of the Muslim Council of Britain, which has protested against the article, was damning about Mr Kilroy-Silk's comments on the Dubai-based pan-Arab TV station Al-Arabiya.

"What he said in his article is venom," Azzam al-Tamimi told the popular TV channel.

"This is not the first time he squirts venom from his pen... He is known for his hatred against Arabs and Muslim and inciting hatred against them."

Al-Arabiya, a competitor to Al-Jazeera, aired a lengthy report on the controversy.

Its London correspondent said Mr Kilroy-Silk had been "inaccurate by mixing up what is Arab, Muslim and Iranian" and "failed to distinguish between the terrorists who carried out the 11 September attacks and the 200 million ordinary Arabs".

"What is important is the reality concerning the contribution that 'Arabs' or Muslims have made to world civilisation"
Al-Muhajiroun
The London-based Arabic-language paper Al-Quds Al-Arabi made a similar point.

Mr Kilroy-Silk, it commented, "committed an offence by making a generalization and putting all Arabs in one basket."

Mr al-Tamimi saw a connection between the article and what he called a campaign against Muslims in the West.

"There are suspicions," he said, "that Kilroy's article is part of an intensive campaign that started with the statements made by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister of the Zionist entity, in which he accused Muslims in the West of being behind growing anti-Semitism."

Public debate

Al-Arabiya's correspondent said Mr Kilroy-Silk had "denied any role by the Arabs in civilisation throughout history, except oil" � a point taken up by a UK-based extremist Islamist movement Al-Muhajiroun.

"What is important," the Al-Muhajiroun web site said, "is the reality concerning the contribution that 'Arabs' or Muslims (as Mr Silk really means) have made to world civilisation."

"Whether it be the environment or global warming, economic exploitation, social decline or out-of-control crime rates...Islam has a solution that is superior to the decadence resulting from the implementation of man made law (in which Mr Silk has his vocation)," it said.

"When the West was still considering if a woman was an animal with a soul or a human being in the late 15th Century, the Messenger Muhammad had already given her the right of inheritance and divorce."

It ended with a call for a public debate on the contribution of Arabs to civilisation "with Kilroy Silk and his comical historical references on one side and some real scholars of Arab and Muslim history on the other".

'Fierce campaign'

Al-Quds Al-Arabi welcomed the BBC's decision to take Mr Kilroy-Silk's morning TV talk show off the air pending an investigation of his comments.

"The BBC decision to suspend Robert Kilroy-Silk's daily talk show deserves a warm welcome and praise," the Arab nationalist paper said.

"Kilroy-Silk not only insulted Arabs and Muslims with his racist attack, he also insulted the organization he worked for, which is renowned for its objectivity and professionality and has gained a world-wide reputation because of this."

The paper attributed the BBC's response to the strong reaction the article provoked in the Muslim community both in Britain and abroad.

"The BBC did not suspend Kilroy-Silk's show due to pressure from and protests by Arab embassies," it asserted.

"It suspended it because of the fierce campaign led by Arab and Islamic groups, including the new generation of the community."

"This success," the paper continued, "clearly indicates the rise of a national Islamic lobby in Great Britain and marks the end of the Jewish lobby monopoly in the British media and political scenes."
BBC News, UK Edition, Last Updated: Saturday, 10 January, 2004, 16:58 GMT at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3385911.stm


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