James Chanain

2017-02-18 12:01:52 -0500

“…taking a charge of ‘Islamophobia’ to the Supreme Court.”



Mr. Annesley, to be clear, M-103 is neither a “law” nor a “policy”, vague or otherwise.



‘Laws’ are a particular type of thing. They start with a “bill”, they go through a Parliamentary process, and once they’re passed by both Houses and receive Royal Assent, they become enforceable laws. Furthermore, where it creates offences for which a person may be prosecuted (not all laws do), it will define sets of offences (i.e. it actually SAYS that anybody who does “x” is “guilty of an offence”).



Government ‘Policies’ are a different, and lesser, type of thing. (Never in the history of the country has there ever been a ‘policy’ of prosecuting an act that does not violate any ‘law’.)



Parliamentary Motions are a different sort of creature entirely, neither creating a law nor a policy. Most of them (and there are lots of them) are either fluffy statements of principle, or are procedural in nature – such as, for instance, giving instructions to a Parliamentary Committee.



The important takeaway here is this: No Canadian will have to defend a charge of “Islamophobia” based on this Motion, because it does not create a chargeable offence.



Incidentally, I don’t know where you get your information, but the OIC’s Cairo Declaration says absolutely nothing about “Islamophobia”. Nor does it mention “blasphemy”. (Feel free to actually read the document you’re citing. You can find it using Google. There’s an official English version.) While the OIC has offered a definition of Islamophobia in other publications, it is not in the simplistic terms that you have described.



In other words, if that’s the best you can do to find an overinclusive interpretation of the word “Islamophobia”, I think that says a great deal about the legitimacy of your point. Ultimately, Islamophobia is widely understood as being, essentially, bigotry against Muslims. No different than anti-Semitism (a term which has also been used in Parliamentary motions before), homophobia/transphobia (which are frequently discussed and condemned in Parliament, and in fact informed the context of Bill C-16), etc. These aren’t complicated concepts.

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