Embrace of freedom

This is a good example of Anti-Muslim propaganda by the spinmasters at the Canadian chain of SUN newspapers.

Iraq vote reveals Muslim 'spin doctors' as fakes

By Ezra Levant -- Calgary Sun
Mon, February 7, 2005

Since 9/11, millions of Canadians and Americans have been asking: "Where are the Muslim moderates?"

Where are Muslims who will renounce terrorism without then saying the word "but" and then making excuses? Who will say terrorism is wrong, full stop?

No "official" Muslims have done so. Take Mohamed Elmasry, the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, just to pick one.

This unelected "spokesman" for Muslims said last year that all adult Israelis are legitimate targets for terrorism.

He was trying to spin-doctor terrorism.

Muslim spokesmen like Elmasry are to al-Qaida what Sinn Fein is to the Irish Republican Army: Apologists who feign opposition to the violent tactics, with a nudge and a wink.

Watching official Muslims respond to terrorism has been a depressing spectacle for those who want to believe that the spirit of freedom and democracy is universally appealing to humanity.

It lent credence to the old canard that liberal democracy just isn't suited to Arabia -- a soft prejudice that oddly goes by the name "Arabism" in diplomatic and political circles.

Well, for the first time ever, an Arab nation held free elections. Now we know where all Muslims who value freedom and democracy are: Under the jackboot of dictators throughout Arabia. Those spokesmen we've been hearing from? Merely mouthpieces for the dictators and their cruel philosophy.

Eight million Iraqis dared to vote, in the face of fatwas and terrorist threats -- a higher voter turn-out than in Canada.

Compare that bravery, that commitment to freedom, to the cowering election monitors from Canada and elsewhere, who "observed" the elections from neighbouring Jordan, afraid of terrorism.

Since the liberation of Iraq, the Iraqi people had not been heard from. They were in their homes, while coalition forces and the residue of Saddam's regime duked it out, with the world's press corps unable to contain their contempt for the coalition.

But during the past two years, Iraqis had a chance to make up their minds, in private - and on Jan.30, they resoundingly rejected Saddam's threats, and international media pessimism. They voted jubilantly. As one Iraqi said, it was like "a wedding for all Iraq."

This is not a column about the Iraqi election. That has been written.

This is a column about how that election debunked the false moral authority carried by the Elmasry's of the world. This is about asking real Arabs, real Muslims, for the first time ever, to choose between freedom and Islamofascism, and getting the answer that optimistic Westerners had all hoped for.

This is about the last drops of the UN's moral authority finally evaporating, a UN whose sole contributions to Iraq's future had been to embezzle billions from the so-called "oil for food" program, and then to stall the toppling of Saddam as long as possible, and then to natter at the liberating coalition for two years.

This is about the Canadian and American left's haughty sophistication about "nuance" and "multilateralism" being proved nothing more than a parlour fashion -- that the coalition, led by a U.S. President they regarded as a cowboy simpleton, actually understood Iraq better than they did, and, more importantly, did something about it, at lightening speed, with a better result than anyone had hoped.

This is about the delegitimization of every remaining Arab dictatorship, which is to say, every other Arab government. And it is about revealing the Elmasry's of the world as being anything but spokesmen for the true hopes of Arabs and Muslims.

That's what this is about.

Of course it's a coincidence that this editorialist is Jewish.