Syed Soharwardy Wants A "Hudna" (Part A)
February 12, 2008
Written by Ezra Levant
Today Syed Soharwardy told the Calgary Herald editorial board that he is withdrawing his human rights complaint against me that he filed two years ago when I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. (Seriously, if you haven't done so, you've really got to look at his hand-scrawled complaint here. I know dyslexic ten-year-olds with ADD who are more coherent.)
If he's really withdrawing the complaint, this is the first I've heard about it; and when I spoke with my lawyer this afternoon, the complaint was still proceeding against me.
It might be a lie — it wouldn't be Soharwardy's first, but then again, lying to an infidel newspaper isn't immoral to someone like Soharwardy. It's called taqqiyah.
But even if Soharwardy withdraws his complaint against me, an identical complaint filed by the Edmonton Muslim Council still proceeds.
So why would Soharwardy do this — and why now?
The answer lies in another Arabic word: hudna. A hudna isn't a peace treaty. It's a temporary truce called by a Muslim warrior who's losing in battle. It's pretty easy to understand how hudnas work by watching Israel fight Hamas and Hezbollah. Those two terrorist groups lob rockets and send suicide bombers into Israel for months; then, every once in a while, Israel deploys its military and flattens Hamas and Hezbollah, who then call for a hudna. The UN intervenes, saving Hamas and Hezbollah to fight another day. That's a hudna: a tactical truce for a strategic advantage.
Soharwardy wants a hudna because he's losing badly. Not financially: he hasn't spent a penny to further the complaint against me — that has been done courtesy of Ed Stelmach's government and the taxpayers of Alberta, to the tune of $500,000, I'd guess. Nor has Soharwardy had to spend hundreds of hours battling against me at the commission — Alberta government employees do that for him. It's because over the past two years — and the past month in particular — Soharwardy has become known for what he is: an Islamofascist imam, who's trying to bring Saudi values to Canada. Though I'm being pummelled in a kangaroo court, he's being pummelled in the court of public opinion. He didn't expect it, and he hates it.
He hates that hundreds of bloggers ridicule him. He hates that my video clips, in which I describe his illiberal nature, have been viewed almost 500,000 times. He hates that his own enemies within his mosque have taken advantage of this media coverage to shine a light of scrutiny on the way he runs his mosque — from his financial irregularities, to his abusive treatment of women. These documents here, here, here and here, first published on my blog, have been viewed thousands of times and led to a series of newspaper items in the Calgary Herald and even the Washington Times. Soharwardy is embarrassed — as well he should be. He is no longer polite company. Now he's known as a censor, a fascist, a sexist. He's un-Canadian. And if the complaint against me goes to a tribunal, he'll go through this again on a larger scale.
But can someone abuse a government process like he has, for two years, and then simply walk away with impunity? I've spent the better part of $100,000 defending against this thug — but because he's losing face, he thinks he can pretend he never did what he did.
Soharwardy claims that he's seen the light and realized that he was misguided — that he should never have tried to censor me. Really? Last month he was cheering on commission's interrogation of me; two weeks ago, he was sending me more legal threats. The only epiphany he's had was that in the circus he started, he's coming across as the clown — an angry, anti-Semitic clown who shouts down women at his own mosque.
I understand that Soharwardy has an Op-Ed in tomorrow's Herald in which he effectively admits his complaint was motivated by Saudi-style censorship, not any Canadian belief in human rights. In other words, he admits what I've alleged all along: he was hijacking a secular "human rights" commission for his radical Islamo-fascist agenda. But now he wants us all to pretend he didn't.
Imam Undercuts Himself By Twisting His Own Words (Part B)
Calgary Herald - February 16, 2008
Written by Licia Corbella
Earlier this week, Calgary Imam Syed Soharwardy spent nearly two hours with the Herald's editorial board before announcing he would withdraw his two-year-long Alberta human rights complaint against Ezra Levant, the publisher of the defunct Western Standard magazine.
Soharwardy lodged the complaint after Levant published Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that were central to murderous protests around the world by Muslims, including renewed violence in Denmark on Friday.
Soharwardy is trying to take back his complaint, but it's already too late. Levant's resolve is too strong and freedom of expression too fundamental a right to be so easily shrugged off after the microscope of world attention ended up being turned on Soharwardy.
The founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada (ISCC) asked for a meeting with the Herald's editorial board via an e-mail, arguing that Levant was "attempting to paint me as a hate-mongering, anti-Semitic, Wahabi radical who wants to see Canada governed under sharia law. Nothing could be further from the truth."
While preparing for the meeting, a quick search on Canwest's library system showed a Jan. 17, 2004, column written by the cleric.
In it, he wrote: "Sharia cannot be customized for specific countries. These universal, divine laws are for all people of all countries for all times."
In the same column he also boasts: "I am one of the founding members of the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice. The mandate of the institute is to resolve disputes within existing Canadian laws by using the principles of conflict resolution from Islamic Law, or sharia."
His column is clear. He wanted to bring sharia to Canada and even helped found the organization that spearheaded the drive to do so.
But in our meeting, Soharwardy denied his own column. "I never asked to bring sharia in Canada," he now insists.
As for the allegation he's anti-Semitic, in 2000 he wrote in his newsletter: "Presently, what Israeli forces are doing to Palestinians is worse than the Holocaust of World War II." Comparing Israel's attempts to defend itself to the carting of millions of Jews in cattle cars to gas chambers is obscene.
In our meeting, he said the above quote was taken out of context, that he has numerous Jewish friends and holds a Hanukkah celebration at his mosque, the Al Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre.
Some of Soharwardy's most vile words came after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that killed more than 280,000 people.
While Christians from around the world were emptying their wallets to help the victims of this natural disaster, Muslim leaders were blaming the disaster on immoral Christian tourists in their countries.
Soharwardy seemingly got swept up in the wave of anti-Christian rhetoric and sent out a news release accusing Christians of kidnapping Muslim orphans in Indonesia. Again, he denied his own written words.
"I don't believe that, I just quoted what was in the newspaper and asked where are the wealthy Muslim governments, why are they not helping."
But here's what his Jan. 23, 2005, news release actually said: "ISCC... strongly condemns the exploitation of tsunami victims by the Christian missionaries. There have been several reports that the Christian missionaries are kidnapping Muslim children in Indonesia.... It is now proven that the Christian missionaries do not help people on humanitarian grounds. They help people in order to exploit their needs and convert them to Christianity."
Even though it was mostly "Christian" countries and organizations that came to the aid of these devastated people, these kinds of news releases caused many Indonesian Christians to be attacked and killed, including three Christian school girls who were beheaded by Muslim men.
Soharwardy explained: "I wanted to use that news to send a message to Muslim governments." In other words, he knew his news release would find its way overseas. Perhaps he was hoping to join the lecture circuit there, too.
Soharwardy is a charmer. He convinced me that I must have misread his columns. But relistening to the tape of our meeting and rereading his original texts, one thing is clear: he cannot be believed.
To us, he said he lodged his complaint with the AHRC because he felt Muslim "youth were getting alienated" not because the cartoons subjected him to hatred.
This man with two master's degrees in engineering, who has lived in North America since 1980, now says he has just realized how important free speech is. For a fella who practises outrageous forms of it — you would hope so.
To the CBC's The National on Wednesday, however, Soharwardy gave a different reason for dropping his complaint against Levant, who has spent two years and $100,000 in legal fees fighting this Orwellian battle: "People were looking at Ezra Levant as a martyr of freedom of his speech... taking this into a different direction that I did not want."
Soharwardy wanted to be the hero and martyr in his campaign against Levant.
It backfired on him.
Now he's the subject of a human rights complaint by women claiming sex discrimination at his mosque, Levant is planning an abuse of process lawsuit against him and he's being scrutinized on CNN and across Canada.
Soharwardy fell into his own trap. Changing his words, as is his way, won't likely be the salve to his reputation that he's looking for this time.
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