What the incredibly foolish Canadian élites are doing is dismantling themselves as a nation, merely in order to show how unracist they are — how PC they are. It’s Mr. Auster’s and Mr. Kalb’s oft-made prediction gradually coming true right before our eyes. They are selling their inheritance — their and our inheritance, our sacred birthright, our Western legacy and identity — for a mess of PC pottage. Had they known anything about their own culture — had they known anything of the story of Esau and Jacob, they might feel shame at what they are doing. But they have neither the one nor the other — neither knowledge nor shame.

This is the logical consequence of multi-culturalism.
If the Canadian Alliance Party had any sense, they would run on opposing this.

I recall attending an event where then U.N. Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick delivered an address. She had strong words about the criticism of the “Domino Theory,” which, though referring to Communism are as applicable to this Mohammedan onslaught into the West.

A rough paraphrase from memory: “The only problem with using Dominoes was that it was not adequate to explain the threat. A better parallel would be Chess, Checkers … CANCER!”

Great applause followed that last word, at this convention of Young Republicans — when the topic was Communism. Today, if the topic were ‘Islam,’ we know what the reaction would be. Herein lies problem #1.

And to Unadorned’s poignant comment I would only add — at least Esau got his bowl of porridge. What are we getting? Or as one said in another place: At least Judas Iscariot got paid, before he sold out the Lord he had known personally and committed suicide himself. Are we even getting our 30 pieces of silver as we sell out our Christian foundations and commit civilizational suicide?

I think the parade of horribles being set forth here is a bit overblown. It sounds to me like Canadian law is simply reaching a point that U.S. law reached long ago under the Federal Arbitration Act (title 9 of the United States Code) and comparable state laws, which make arbitration agreements enforceable contracts and allow courts to enforce awards made in accordance with those agreements. In the United States, as under the Canadian statute, the judge has little or no discretion in enforcing the agreement. (Exceptions are for such things as fraud on the abritrator, and I’d be very surprised if the Canadian statute didn’t have a similar escape clause. What U.S.—and, presumably, Canadian, law does not allow is for the judge to be able to second-guess the arbitrator.)

I see nothing in the Law Times article to indicate that the arbitration statute has anything to do with criminal law. An Islamic arbitrator would only be able to “let off” a rapist, as suggested by Mr. Auster, if the victim had agreed with the accused rapist to go to arbitration rather than to sue for damages in civil court. That agreement would leave the Crown free to exercise its own discretion whether to prosecute or not for the crime of rape.

It looks to me as if what the Muslims in Canada are doing is pretty much what St. Paul told Christians in I Corinthins 6 to do, which is not to sue each other in courts run by unbelievers but to settle their disputes among themselves. Rather than condemn the Muslims, I think that Christians ought to be emulating them. Since it’s clear that the secular courts are not going to apply the law based on Christian principles, it makes sense for Christians, as much as possible, to agree to run their lives apart from the secular court system. For example, I’d be willing to tolerate enforcement of a homosexual “pre-nuptial” arbitration agreement providing for alimony and child support, if Christians could similarly enter enforceable contracts before they marry, providing that no alimony would be paid to the partner who broke up a marriage, and for arbitration by, say, Catholic diocesan tribunals of any disputes over that agreement.

Seamus’s makes some interesting points here, but the problem still has to be understood in terms of where it will lead. Arbitration as practiced in the U.S. has gone no further than what it is. But Mohammedans have no intention of stopping here. It is but a stepping stone to pressing ever more increasing demands.

In reply to Seamus, of course I did not mean that the horribles I listed are in the new law or are now happening, but that the logic of what is is now happening leads in that direction. Would anyone have predicted 25 years ago that Canadian courts would be involved in enforcing Sharia law even in private disputes? Would anyone have predicted the growing power of Moslems in Western countries, and the silencing of any opposition to them? _Their_ will and power to change our society are steadily growing, and _our_ will and power to preserve our own society are rapidly collapsing, even as we wage a “war on terror” abroad. Where does Seamus see this process turning around? If it is to stop or turn around, what is going to make it stop or turn around? Surely not Seamus’s proposal for a complete retreat from a common public order.

O Seamus! Never forget that world conquest is enjoined upon the Mahometan. We are obliged to consider their every public act within that context.

My condolences on the demise of your wonderful and historic culture! The advance of mohemmadians is assidious and done in small increments. Each time you relent and give them an inch they will by boldness take another mile.
Soon you Canadians may find yourselves being pushed into the Pacific…in the case, from sea to sea. I don’t look forward to our ‘new’ neighbours.

“My condolences on the demise of your wonderful and historic culture! The advance of mohemmadians is assidious and done in small increments. Each time you relent and give them an inch they will by boldness take another mile.
Soon you Canadians may find yourselves being pushed into the Pacific…in the case, from sea to sea. I don’t look forward to our ‘new’ neighbours.

…and my (belated) condolences to yours, which, after decades of serious intellectual decay, came completely off the spool on 9-11-01, as evidenced by the overwrought, hysterical fantasy depicted in your post…(if you meant it to be funny, and it can be read that way, stop reading here). You seem to think Canada popped out an egg 2 weeks ago (..we do in fact have the 3rd oldest written constitution in the world) and that average Canadians can’t recognise the difference between an inquiry into alternative dispute settlement mechanisms for different communities (..they’ve existed for aboriginals for some time now) and a nightmarish Jihad sweeping though this barren and cold wasteland which threatens to doom us all. The old “Red-scare” again, isn’t? People like you need a new script, because this one is old, old, old.

Naturally there’s a difference between an inquiry into ADR and a “nightmarish Jihad”. But try looking at it this way. Members of every immigrant community decide how much of old-country culture they’re going to keep and how much they’ll discard. Community leaders generally try to discourage assimilation, and Sharia-based ADR is, for Moslems, one means of doing this—and correspondingly, of maintaining the leaders’ authority and influence over their constituents. This may not be altogether bad—especially if assimilation means becoming a typical Canadian liberal—but it’s also likely to preserve traditional Islamic attitudes and allegiances, which indeed tend to the Jihadic. And if their population increases as ours declines, this will sooner or later cause difficulty unless, against all historical precedent, the multiculturalists turn out to be right and we all end up celebrating our differences. Why is acknowledging that to be equated with a “Red scare”?
This exchange also raises the question of whether the paleoconservative/traditionalist participants at this website should spend time debating people who proceed or appear to proceed from radically different premises…liberals, advocates for gay marriage, etc. (I don’t pretend to know Bemused’s premises, but his comments happened to put me in mind of some very hostile participants who have posted recently). This is Mr. Auster’s call, obviously; but if the site exists so that those who share a traditionalist orientation can refine and deepen their understanding, it’s probably just a distraction to debate with hostiles. Anyone who points out real weaknesses in our position does us a favour; but comments about “Red scares”, for example, don’t do that; ditto for arguments that people like us need a new script because, you see, new scripts are better than old ones.
But I thank Bemused for “off the spool”—a neat expression I hadn’t heard and can’t wait to use.

The issue of setting up so-called Muslim arbitrators have been proposed by a group Canadian Muslim jusrists, and not the Canadian courts or government. I think there is a lot less to this story than people think. In any event, Canadian law would prevail in cases where the public good was at issue, such as child custody.

But again, where will it go next?

The latest WND article on this contains another item that merits concern:

“Muslim delegates at a conference in Etobicoke, Ont., in October elected a 30-member council to establish the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice…

“The institute is classified in Islamic law as a Darul-Qada, or judicial tribunal…

“One of the obstacles to establishing the system, the Law Times said, has been the Muslim communities’ lack of unity and organizational strength. Muslims in Canada come from many different countries and different schools of Islam…

“‘It seems as if the community was looking forward to something like this,’ says organizer B. Husain Bhayat, according to the Law Times. ‘If all groups are represented, with hard work and the unity we saw here, we will have no difficulty going forward.’”

“The two main streams of Islam, Sunni and Shi’ite, were represented at the conference, along with imams and leaders of organizations.”

The prospect of formerly divided Mohammedan groups now finding a unity pursuant to this already disturbing development (“going forward”) is something to view with alarm.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35850

Bemused makes another misplaced comparison as seen above his post as the “arbitration boards” in the U.S. when he notes that such mechanisms have “existed for aboriginals for some time now.”

Well, yeah — they’ve existed in fact for far longer than the white man has been in Canada. The oldest national constitution still in continuous effect happens to be the Gayanerakowa, the Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, which worked quite well for them before the Europeans arrived.

Now take a look at where the Iroquois are today. This didn’t happen overnight did it? It happened as a result of unrestricted immigration of a very different people, as is now happening to us. First we’d sign treaties with them, then violate them … you know that story.

When Iroquois Nations in Canada work out their own legal issues, they are doing so as sovereign Nations, as recognized by centuries old treaty provisions with Great Britain — because they were here before the immigrants arrived.

Of course, you may not have had Gayanerakowa in mind. Perhaps you refer to some or other “board” that the immigrant-turned-colossus arranged for them as typical window-dressing.

Well, following the corresponding figure all the way, that doesn’t sound too encouraging either. The analogous term is known as “Dhimmitude.”

Kenneth wrote, “I think there is a lot less to this story than people think.”

I certainly hope there’s “a lot less” to it than Jim Kalb thinks — but I wouldn’t bet on that. By Mr. Kalb’s analysis, the kind of social set-up which this could portend for all of us “means the end of the common public life that has distinguished the West and given rise to unmatched achievements in science, philosophy, the arts and politics. It means radically irresponsible and therefore despotic government.”

( http://jkalb.freeshell.org/tab/archives/001610.php )

Whatever it means or doesn’t mean, I don’t want Canada, the U.S., or any part of the West to change into a Muslim or partly Muslim society. How come these wacked-out leftist élites never put their multi-culti plans to the whole population in the form of a binding referendum? It’s because they know the population they’re quietly targeting for ethno-cultural extinction would vote resoundingly No to their own disappearance. Thus the stealth wherewith these élites always go about the implementation of their wicked plans, rightly fearing the disinfectant properties of sunlight. Is there any way the rest of us can get them to stop? Or are they unstoppable? People who aren’t huge fans of some of these leftist pipedreams had better wake up and smell the coffee before it’s literally too late to go back.

Unadorned has remarked on how leftist/Tranzi elites are busy shoving mass immigration, auto-racism, and mutliculturalism down the throats of the general citizenry of Western countries, including our own. True enough. We see it taking place before our eyes every day. My question is this: Who is it that keeps on putting these elites into political power in the first place? Is there really a mechanism in place to peacefully remove them from power - even in places already far down the sewage pipe like Canada? How do they keep themselves in power? Where are their weak spots?

On Carl’s question of what gives the elites their malign power over the American people, I think it is lack of aliveness of the American people themselves. A living society, like a living organism, responds to a threat to its life. A consistent failure to respond to such threats over a period of time shows a lack of aliveness. Conservatives are sufficiently alive to specific issues and concerns, such as a slanderous tv movie about President Reagan, to take positive and effective action against it. But they are not sufficiently alive to threats against our very being as a nation and culture to take action against them.

There is no guaranteed solution to this mortal civilizational crisis in which we find ourselves. We can only keep working and also praying. There may be forces of life within the American people and other Western peoples, invisible to us at the moment, that are getting ready to manifest, though in ways and at times that we cannot predict. Many of us here are religious. We pray for various things. But among the things we pray for, do we pray for our people, our culture, our nation, our civilization? This is something we need to do.

Paul wrote:

” … but if the site exists so that those who share a traditionalist orientation can refine and deepen their understanding, it’s probably just a distraction to debate with hostiles.”

Well said. I agree in principle, and, as I’ve indicated recently, I’ve become quicker on the trigger to exclude hostiles than I had previously been, especially as, in 19 cases out of 20, once a person manifests himself as hostile, such behavior does not reform itself but gets worse. But the practical question remains of how quick on the trigger to be in any individual case, without my spending an inordinate amount of my time blocking IPs. A single, brief and somewhat obscure post doesn’t reach the threshold.

Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law School echoes my view that this is no big deal, and is in fact merely the extension to Canada of rights that private actors have had in the United States for a long time:
http://volokh.com/2003_11_23_volokh_archive.html#106999686027106312

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with “no big deal.”

(Apologies to T.S. Eliot.)

I read some of the posts on this issue at “Little Green Footballs,” http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9084_Canadian_Sharia_Watch#comments . Here are a couple which show why poster # 77’s choice of the paraphrase “Slouching Toward Shariah” to describe the situation was especially apt:

“#24 david 11/27/2003 09:34AM PST

“# 7 Tom

“Sounds true, however the Canadian gov’t should be extra careful about it.. I think they started to do the same in the UK. By now, in some English cities, several quarters with a large Muslim majority are more or less under Shariah rules (even though not legally speaking). In addition, there is also a ‘private’ Muslim Police in Brussels and Antwerp which try to enforce (illegally of course) Shariah by intimidating the Muslim community.

“Whatever comes out, it will be interpreted as a sign of weakness, not tolerance. That s the main problem”
________________________________________

“#75 pat 11/27/2003 10:42AM PST

“I suggest commentators read the source article prior to commenting. First a Canadian lawyer does indeed address the issue. In fact the symosium in question was co-hosted by a Canadian lawyer, who, incidently, swore his oath to the Koran as being the ultimate legal authority. Secondly, it is clear that these individuals fully intend resolve what we would call crimminal behavior. It should be understood that almost all Islamic law is expressed in a manner that one would desribe as crimminal-like code. Of couse the Canadian Arbitration act would not uphold such a determination, whether concensual or not. The crux of the effort is to get Islamic law recognized. Then intimidation of the populace begins. The sream of racism at every juncture. The forced adherence by minors and females to Islamic law. The intimidation of new immigrants. The wall of silence surrounding crimminal behavior, If you have any doubts go to Antwerp or Marseilles.”

I’m much closer to Unadored and Lawrence Auster’s view on this than to Seamus’s or Volokh’s. But, just to be clear, when Syed swore on the Koran, it was his oath of allegiance to uphold the laws of Canada. He wasn’t swearing on the Koran as the “ultimate legal authority”—even if, as is likely, he believes it is; he was simply indicating that the oath was binding on him. A Christian who is called to the bar swears on a Bible, a Jew on an Old Testament; again, simply to indicate that the oath is binding. (Those who for doctrinal or other reasons won’t swear oaths are allowed to “affirm”). I’m not making out a case for egalitarianism as between faiths, just clarifying what I understood took place.

As a Christian, what recourse does the gov’t give me? If I went to Saudi Arabia I would have to follow their laws, not worship my faith or be killed. The Muslims who live here wish to eradicate our Christian foundations and freedoms and implement their sharia, a barbaric form of ‘justice’, who’s to say that sharia will not just be used to Muslim communities but also the Non-Muslims.

It’s ironic that in the same year, Canada has both legalized homosexual marriage and given a legal foothold to Sharia law. Both developments are disasters,of course: But how will they impact each other in the long run?

I don’t want to assign good intentions to the Arabs, but if Anglo Saxons refuse to maintain thier culture, or to reproduce, that’s not the arabs fault.

Most of the trouble, in my view, is coming from
a Marxist, leftist establishment that wishes to reshape all western culture. This means, in particlar, eliminating the nuclear family.

If the Arabs don’t buy into the Marxist feminist nightmare that Western world is becoming, you can hardly blame them.

Rik, if the day comes that the Muslim population reaches the level where it is either an actual majority or a large minority (30-40%), there is a very real possibility of Sharia law being imposed either locally or nationally - either legally through the legislative process or on a de facto level as in certain European cities presently. If the current white majority continues in its moral laziness and decline, they will face two options when the Muslims gain sufficient numbers to achieve political control: 1. Convert to Islam; or 2. Prepare to live in Dhimmitude - a sort of 10th-class form of citizenship, which has been covered very well by both the Jewish writer Bat Yeor and the Orthodox Christian Serge Trifkovic (two groups who’ve had some experience living under the tender mercies of the Muslims.

Ron also raises an interesting point. There’s no way the Marxists, Tranzis, feminists, homosexualists, and other assorted leftists who run things now will be left in place if the day ever comes that Muslims achieve majority (or effective majority) status. My bet is that the left would make a play to establish full-fledged totalitarianism when the Sharia writing starts to appear on the wall. The Sharia is what these leftists deserve. The problem is they’ll take the rest of us down with them.

“I don’t want to assign good intentions to the Arabs, but if Anglo Saxons refuse to maintain thier culture, or to reproduce, that’s not the arabs fault.” — Ron

That sad reminder of Ron’s is of course all too true. If you’re a sports fan and the side you root for keeps stupidly and incompetently losing very badly, you can’t blame the winning team each time. Sooner or later you have to start blaming your own team. What’s going on today is a failure of, as Ron puts it, the (literal and figurative) Anglo-Saxons. More specifically, it’s a failure of the élites among them: for some unfathomable reason the Anglo-Saxon ethno-culture simply has not produced an élite class that is capable of preserving the A-S identity — capable of preserving the A-S existence itself — from this withering, soon-to-be deadly Leftist-Marxist-Feminist-Homosexual-Multi-Culti-non-white-third-world-and-now-Islamic assault we are helplessly watching it succumb to inch-by-inch. The phony arguments and deceitful tactics employed by the other side — the enemy — are so transparent one would think any kindergartner would see through them in a nanosecond. THAT’S the amazing thing. I mean, I majored in mathematics in college and I remember some pretty tough math courses. But grasping this ethno-cultural-tradition-normalness-versus-degenerateness-demography-immigration stuff is childsplay. This is NOT rocket science, folks. If they gave a course in this stuff you’d have aced it in your sleep at age four without cracking a book all semester. It’s NOT hard. I mean, what’s up with replacing all the U.S. white people against their wishes by imported Mexicans, Chinese, and Somalis, literally the federal government’s current plan? WHAT IS UP WITH THAT? Or, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem come along and tell all the women never to marry or have babies, and all the women in the country actually listen to them instead of laughing them off the stage of history? Or, two men getting “married” to each other? PUH-LEEZE! And now they’ve got us Slouching Toward Shari’ah — as if Slouching Toward Gomorrah wasn’t bad enough. I mean, sometimes you have to actually pinch yourself to make sure it’s not all some bad dream …

I completely sympathize with your frustration, Unadorned! They’ve got us sluching towards Gomorrah and Sharia at the same time! How can we topple the Tranzi/Marxist/Leftist ruling eilte? How did this crowd get control to the point that they are now determining the policies of Wal-Mart? (Who is now going to implement the “diversity” doctrine in hiring - especially in management positions.) Why is it that there are no businesses that stand up to the extortion of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? What is it that keeps the white majority in the country mollified and docile? We need to answer these questions - to make a diagnosis. If this is done, and agreed upon, a course of action can be attempted to bring about a cure. Like those who founded this nation, we should be on our knees asking for God’s guidance in this.

The ruling elite of the great Russian empire was toppled by a small, dedicated group a little less than a century ago. That was a great disaster, of course, but the principle holds true. It doesn’t always take a majority to bring about change. The thing I keep on noticing about our worldly enemies is their unflinching dedication. They are unrelenting. They never stop. They never give up - even when they are defeated in the Supreme Court. (Note the continuing attacks upon the Boy Scouts.) This is something the mainstream conservatives and, amazingly, most Christian conservatives fail to grasp. If even one third of the true believers in Christendom had the the fervent dedication of the left, there would be real changes - or a tremendous civil war. The recent uprising over the Reagan hit-piece planned by CBS tells us that the majority can make things happen if they awaken from the stupor they are in. How can we help to awaken them?

I had earlier posted a comment here replying to blogger Eugene Volokh on the Sharia question, but I’ve now turned the comment into a new blog article:

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001963.html

Carl, I agree with you 100%. A conservative think tank group must be organized to fight for conservative values, and people riled up about the current state of affairs.

A resistance must be mounted to the oncoming psychotic liberal onslaught brought about by the ultra pc crowd. The conservative majority has got to organize, or our views, and our way of life, will be completely destroyed.

Mr. Wall writes:

“It’s ironic that in the same year, Canada has both legalized homosexual marriage and given a legal foothold to Sharia law. Both developments are disasters,of course: But how will they impact each other in the long run?”

This reminds me of an anecdote which I think I think I may have told here before, about the last time I was in the World Trade Center, about a month before 9/11. I passed a store with one of those contemporary style mannequins that have the shape of the mannequin’s nipples showing through the clothing—something that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago, and now, so like so much else around us, it’s “normal.” I pointed it out to a friend I was with, making some comment about the decadence of our culture, when at that moment a Muslim woman covered from head to foot in one of those horrific outfits passed us, and I said, “We’re getting it from both directions.” Our radical freedom has opened us simultaneously to radical decadence _and_ to a radically restrictive, anti-Western religion. (After 9/11, I remembered this incident and it symbolized for me the forces that had made 9/11 possible.)

I don’t know how both tendencies will interact. What I do know is that both tendencies, together and separately, spell the destruction of our culture if we don’t stop them.

I dont see the problem, to be Muslim you must accept the authority of Allah,and the courts of Shariah will do just that for us. Secular courts ?Sorry, but we dont need secular courts since they are athiest and do not recognize the authority of Allah and HIS rules.
Thats all this is about, no takeover.

If Ahmed would read the news article linked in the original article in this thread and my discussion of it, he will see that Moslems in Canada will be required by Islamic law to resort to arbitration because the arbitration will now be enforced by a Canadian court. That Canadian court will not be imposing its own (secular) rules on the (Moslem) parties to the dispute; rather, it will be imposing the Sharia rules that the parties in their private arbitration have agreed to be bound to.

what a foolish canadian elites are doing is dismantling themselves as a nation merely in other to show how unracist they are…how