This is what happens when government’s control free speech.
Over at Blazing Cat Fur:
“In an unprecedented move clamping down on free speech, Toronto police have threatened a rabbi that if he allows a speech to be given in his synagogue by a well-known anti-Islamist activist, he will lose his job as a chaplain with the force.
Inspector Ricky Veerappan, who is (ironically) from the police force’s “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Bureau” confirmed that he and other officers from the hate crime division met with Rabbi Mendel Kaplan of the Chabad Flamingo Synagogue in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill. Kaplan had rented out space in his synagogue as a venue for a speech to be given by Pamela Geller.”
Oh but the story gets more interesting, Salim Mansur (to his credit) gets involved. Here’s a video of Mansur’s letter to York Regional Police Chief Eric Jolliffe telling of his opposition to the pressure exerted on the Rabbi to cancel the event.
But this is the very same Muslim who was emphatically opposed to Gavin Boby being given a venue to speak in Canada, stating:
Another person in this anti-Islamist struggle is Gavin Boby, a British lawyer, and his Law and Freedom Foundation. Boby’s organization is linked to the EDL and it goes about encouraging communities stop mosque construction by using existing zoning laws in municipalities across Britain. He will be in Canada for a speaking tour in early February.
On the surface, the efforts of these anti-Islamist organizations appear courageous, even noble. But they end up ironically supporting the Islamist view there is no Islam other than what Islamists insist it is.
When anti-Islamist Muslims are denied the space and legitimacy to oppose Islamism then the inescapable paradox is that non-Muslim opponents of Islamists have conceded the Islamist propaganda that Islamists are Islam’s only legitimate representatives. It then becomes easier for mainstream politicians and their allies in the West to appease and accommodate Islamists as once their predecessors sought to placate Communists.
This misrepresentation of Gavin Boby’s views and services, as well as the true nature of the problem facing us, Islam 101 (and the real purposes behind a mosque), is all the more reason why people such as Gavin Boby and Pamela Geller be given platforms to express their views, and let the tough questions by the media and vigorous debate within the public square of society be enough to settle people’s minds on these issues, one way or the other. Sam Solomon, once a well respected authority in the Muslim world on sharia:
All mosques are modeled on the model of Mohamed’s first mosque.
Somehow, I don’t really “get the hang” of people like Salim Mansur. To think that he has actually written a book called “Delectable Lie: a liberal repudiation of multiculturalism” and then agitates against Boby seems to reek of Taqiyya, in many ways. He is the archetypal example of a Muslim still clinging on to “moderate” Islam like shit to a blanket, much in the same way as Zuhdi Jasser. Which really makes me wonder to what degree these people can actually be trusted. Quite honestly, I think we should have more faith in people like Ibn Warraq, a typical example of the opposite: he knows Islam inside out like the two aforementioned and has logically rejected it as a whole !