Clarification and question from Dr. Pipes

Submitted by Amir Sani (Canada), Mar 29, 2005 at 13:02

I believe Dr. Pipes either did not have all information about this specific incident or was just unfair in this article. The Abraar school is not a "madrassa", but a private Canadian school that teaches Ontario curriculum with some bites of Arabic and Islamic studies. The so-called anti-semitic incident was related to a student essay where he wrote a story about Palestinian militants fighting Israeli soldiers (not civilians), where he also included a drawing of an Israeli flag burning and a Palestinian flag raising on the temple mount. The school has suspended the teachers involved in the project already.

The whole thing sounds like political correctness running wild.

While I totally agree with Dr. Pipes about the necessity of fighting Islamic radicals and their teachings and agenda, I caution against the frequent use of "hate speech" labels. Would Dr. Pipes seriously think that, for instance, the "belief" in supremacy of a religion and falseness of other religions amounts to hatred itself? That is what every religion proclaims. What kind of Christian would not believe that Jesus is the only lord or that Mohammad was not a false prophet?

Also, if we are putting restrictions on war stories in which soldiers or militants get killed in the name of "preaching violence", where does it end? Would no-one be allowed to write an essay in school about WWII or a current world conflict? or perhaps we shall remove Stephen King's books from libraries?

Winning the propaganda war is extremely important, no doubt about it. But we should be careful about the tools that we are using. If required, push to make Islamic propaganda illegal for what it is, but not under the false context of "hate speech" and "violence" as the PC police in Canada seems to be doing.

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