So – a sad day yesterday, the 29th of January, 2017.
Somebody walked into a mosque in Quebec City and opened fire, killing at least 6 people and injuring many more.
That is NOT OK!
It does not matter how much you are frightened by militant Islamic supremacists, taking the law into your own hands is never OK.
No end justifies the means. To the contrary, the means always define the end. People who want to commit violence (or any form of extralegal action) in the name of their ideology should always keep this in mind!
So, whether the shooter was a nationalist supremacist, or a Muslim convert who thought the mosque was not devout enough – murdering people is never justified. That way, blood baths and all kinds of very, very bad results lie.
We live in a land where we have the rule of law.
OK – ours is a highly imperfect system, with many double standards, but that is because it is a human system and humans are imperfect beings. Still, it is our duty as citizens to strive to make the rule of law the best it can be – to work within the framework of our laws to make imperfect human beings enforce the rule of law as best as we can.
My sincere sympathies are with all the victims of this horrible shooting and their families, friends and community.
I may disagree with the teachings of Islam, but I will never condone any form of extralegal action towards those who practice it – and no action whatsoever towards those who practice it peacefully.
And I will fight to the death for everyone to practice their belief system within the bounds of our laws, no matter what my personal opinion of the merit of that belief system may be!!!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
January 31, 2017 at 01:38
Xanthippa:
Quebec mosque shooting: Alexandre Bissonnette faces 11 charges.
I have nothing to say in M. Bissonnette’s defence. The man is a criminal.
However, Trudeau and his so-called Liberals should have known better. They should have known that violence and death are inevitable consequences of their truculently single-minded policy of forced diversity.
They saw what happened in Europe. Their obligation was, and remains, perfectly clear: namely, not to let that happen here! No matter how gratified they might feel to take in some Muslims.
They could have prevented it so easily, just by lowering immigration quotas from certain countries and declining to accept migrants.
But no. They refuse to see what is right in front of their noses. Just watch as our clueless Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland displays her mental block about Islam.
And so the pressure mounted as they screwed their blinders on tighter and doubled down on their insane agenda of cultural suicide.
Until the friction of two mutually incompatible cultures, forced too close together, became uncomfortable and then intolerable.
Someone had to be the first to snap. In the event, it was Alexandre Bissonnette.
Now, Bissonnette, I’m sure, will go to jail for his crimes. And that is just.
But the problem does not end there. The cultural tension will not be dissipated by jailing Bissonnette. This is only the first skirmish in a long and bloody conflict of cultures.
And this brings me to my point:
Limousine liberals like Trudeau and Freeland will face no consequences whatsoever for bringing this conflict of cultures to our country in the first place. In fact, they will score political points by blaming the “deplorables” of the right.
And that is grotesquely unjust.
So we must not let our condemnation of Bissonnette’s crimes distract us from the ultimate root cause of the bloodshed: the globalist multicultural agenda of forced diversity.
Forced diversity is not strength.
Forced diversity causes violence and death.
Always has, always will.
January 31, 2017 at 03:34
I agree with your perspective in the abstract. However at this point a stronger concern for me is the potential for news management that will allow narratives acceptable to the governments of Canada and Quebec to emerge, and narratives that they don’t favour disappearing into the oblivion of a lock-step managed news. We need investigative journalists in Quebec City to look into all aspects of the case and report them without running them through a political correctness filter. This would include real motivations, real context, and real state of mind of the shooter(s). Otherwise this will turn into a pretext for managing internet commentary and having a prolonged episode of virtue signalling while the sheeple graze absent-mindedly waiting for their next official instructions of How to Be Canadian and not notice what elites don’t want you to notice. I’m sure you were there a while ago.
February 1, 2017 at 19:01
Just for clarity, I posted the above before the earlier-displayed reply from Code Slinger so anything I have to say in the above is only in reference to Xanthippa’s original post and not to anything offered by Code Slinger.
February 1, 2017 at 23:41
So you think that forced diversity does not lead to violence and death?
February 2, 2017 at 23:16
Every single scientific study proves that the greater the ethnic/cultural diversity there is within a society, the lower the ‘social trust’ level there is.
I do not pretend to understand the implications of this, I am just reporting the objective, scientific findings…
February 3, 2017 at 14:55
Code Slinger, I agree with you on almost all of your points, but my earlier post was simply to inform readers that I was addressing Xanthippa’s post as that was all I had in front of me at the time I posted. There’s a delay between posting and posts being visible due to moderation. That’s all it means.
Forced diversity always has some ulterior motive, unless it comes as the result of absolute ignorance of reality. It may be seen as social justice for those allowed in (they get to live in a better place, we should pay for our past crimes against humanity, etc, being their rationales). It may be seen as necessary to keep population growth on target (probably true at the rate our homegrown population avoid fertile forms of copulation). It may be idealistic in terms of creating a better world with richer cultural experiences (something one could get from travel too). It may even be backhand racism saying these folks cannot live functionally in their countries, maybe if they come to our countries they’ll see how it’s done and tell the folks back home (and to quote Sarah Palin, how’d that work out for ya?).
I’m not that much of an “Islamophobe” because I realize that most Islamic violence is more political than theological. The reason I know this is because our Christian Bible is almost as bloodthirsty as the Koran yet in cultural terms we have outgrown the literalism and fixated more on the spiritual nature of Jesus who was anything but a Crusader (turn the other cheek is not exactly what the crusaders had in mind). So I tend to see the various strains of Islamic terrorism as extensions of Islamic political dynamics that have no other place for their expression except in random acts of violence.
Smart political responses would be those which either blunted the rationale for Islamic violence, or turned them entirely inward (may the worst man win as in our own history). Nor am I that bent out of shape about seeing the Islamic presence in Canada. We don’t seem to have attracted the trouble-makers that France and Belgium and Sweden have in such numbers, and perhaps there is a net gain. I do imagine that if Bissonette really was a lone wolf and not with a handler, his motivations were more complex than so far presented. They were probably more personal and not as generic as in let’s just go out and find some Muslims, there was probably a history between him and this group or individuals in the group and it may have been more complicated than just anti-Muslim sentiments, maybe it was a case of a seeker after truth being disappointed or rebuffed. We shall see. Perhaps. I mean, this is Canada, a lot of things happen in plain sight here that almost nobody but the three of us here and about two hundred other people have seen. Apparently. Maybe there should be a lot more blind guide dogs available.
February 3, 2017 at 19:29
Just a quick little note: the differences between Islam and Christianity are many, but here, I would like to point to just one.
Christianity recognizes and honours the separation of the Church and State: ‘give onto Caesar’ and all that.
Islam actively forbids any separation between Mosque and State – man-made laws are seen as transgressions against Allah and must be destroyed at all costs. The very word ‘freedom’ is defined in Islam as ‘freedom from the laws of man’…and ‘justice’ means only ‘justice according to Sharia’.
That one difference is, well, existential!
May 25, 2017 at 22:21
Western countries still operate based on Christian values, but are only less blatant about it. No less than the Asian communist countries operated on the collectivist individual-suppressing culture of the Eastern religions. Religion is still cancer.
Christians effortlessly and unknowingly enjoy the theocratic luxuries of Iran.
February 5, 2017 at 00:53
peterodonnell:
You seem rather astute, yet I fear that you are too willing to give the opposition the benefit of the doubt. For example, by taking it for granted that they are sincere, acting in good faith, willing to compromise for the greater good, and so on.
Firstly, how likely is it that someone shrewd enough to become Prime Minister or Foreign Minister of this country could be absolutely – or even slightly – ignorant of reality?
The average Canadian may deserve the benefit of your doubt, but the people running this country? Not a chance. Such people do not make mistakes of this magnitude by mistake.
Secondly, is it really necessary to keep population growth on target? Who sets this target, and what are they trying to accomplish?
We are about to see artificial intelligence and robotics obliterate 3 out of every 5 jobs in this country, while creating only 1 new job for every 4 jobs eliminated.
How many technicians does it take to service the machine that replaces the entire kitchen staff at the burger joint? How likely is it that any of the kitchen staff can be retrained to service that machine?
We don’t need population growth, we need to find a way for the people we already have to keep eating once the majority of them are rendered unemployable!
Thirdly, how is old-testament blood lust relevant to anything contemporary?
Christians have spent the last 2000 years moving away from literalism and towards an allegorical interpretation of the Bible. But Muslims are not even allowed to contemplate such a thing, because it would entail bid’ah (religious innovation), which is haram (strictly forbidden); you go to hell for it.
Fourthly, what does it mean to say that Islamic violence is more political than theological?
There is no distinction between the political and the theological in Islamic jurisprudence, because the caliphate is the earthly representative of Allah. Nor does Islamic thought recognize any such concept as the rights of the individual. In Islam you don’t even own your own body; it belongs to Allah, thus your body belongs to the caliph for all earthly intents and purposes – and that’s why he has the divine right to cut your head off.
For the same reason, nothing that blunts the rationale for Islamic violence would be recognized as legitimate under Islamic scholarship. The rationale is written in the Qur’an, and it goes as follows:
Wherever Islam does not prevail, jihad (holy war) must be waged, and this war must continue until Islam prevails. Only where Islam prevails can there be peace, and therefore Islam is the religion of peace. Any attempt to reinterpret this would entail bid’ah (religious innovation), which is haram (strictly forbidden); you go to hell for it.
You see how that works? Islam (as is often quipped about the military) is a system created by geniuses for execution by idiots. It comes straight out of the book pre-stressed and hardened against any attempt to reason with it or compromise with it. Islam recognizes only two options: victory and defeat.
Fifthly, we have no problem with Islamic violence in Canada yet, because Muslims account for only about 3 percent of the Canadian population. When there were that few Muslims in Europe, countries like Germany, France, Belgium and Sweden had no problems with Islamic violence either. The real problems start somewhere around 5 to 7 percent.
Just let the concentration of Muslims exceed 5 percent in Canada, and see how that works out for ya!
Finally, Bissonette shows all signs of being a patsy. He’s an inexperienced, impressionable kid. Where did this greenhorn kid get an assault rifle – in Canada, of all places? This country is so tightly locked down that outlaw bikers have a hard time getting prohibited weapons in Canada.
So who gave the gun to this kid? Who egged him on? We will probably never know. But we can guess…
Cui bono?
February 9, 2017 at 14:04
CodeSlinger, what you call forced diversity is better known as multiculturalism. Why blame Trudeau and Freeland for something two-thirds of Canadians favour. You and I might like to see Muslim immigration restricted but it’s not in the cards.
February 11, 2017 at 01:08
Curmudgeon:
Two thirds of Canadians favour multiculturalism?
Sure they do… and the vast majority of Britons oppose Brexit… and hardly anyone likes Donald Trump.
Please… step away from the Kool Aid.
NO ONE – outside the limousine-liberal echo chamber – thinks Canada needs more Muslims!
Multiculturalism – not to mention our fraudulent Charter of Privileges and Indulgences, disarmament of the Canadian people, and the whole regressive left wing poison package – was foisted on us by Trudeau the elder, and is now being shoved the rest of the way down our throats by Trudeau the younger.
As for Freeland… did you watch the video, linked above, of her on the Bill Maher show?
Here, let me link it again: Chrystia Freeland displays her mental block about Islam.
How can you defend – or even tolerate – such pig-headedness?
Trudeau, Freeland and their ilk support globalism to Canada’s detriment.
But they are not stupid.
They are traitors.
February 8, 2017 at 19:30
As to the specifics of this case, I don’t know, and I wouldn’t want to make things up just to fill in the void. There could be any possible explanation. There is too much generalization going on in today’s political climate, the fact that (a) does something does not mean that all others who might agree with (a) on certain issues would do that too. But many spend their days trying to implicate all of us in the bad choices made by others. This is a big catch-22 for the free speech movement. You want to allow all forms of speech, then some knob comes along and says Hitler was right, etc etc, and you of course think exactly the opposite, now you’re stuck defending his right to say the dumb things he is saying, or not defending it and setting a precedent, which then makes you wonder, well if we’re going to ban that sort of speech, why do we allow praise of Lenin or Mao? They were just as bad. Or Mohammed. And so it goes.
February 8, 2017 at 21:23
Indeed.
But this is the test of a free society: letting people say hateful things so they can be debunked by more speech. Giving the haters enough rope to hang themselves by!!!
Or, as someone famous once said: I absolutely disagree with your point of view, but I will fight to the death to protect your right to say it.
Something along those lines…
And that is the chief and most defining difference between those who love freedom and those who would impose totalitarianism of one shade or another: defending the right of odious and deplorable people to say what they truly think – even if totally idiotic – is the currently unpopular position that we have been cast into. After all, it is easy to set a legal precedent to censor obviously false and whatever else speech: which precedent will then be used to censor necessary and reasonable criticism of the government/powers-that-be.
If you do not defend the right of odious people to say things ‘everyone’ disagrees with, then you will, without exception, lose any right to criticize real and true abuses of power.
And that is the message we need to get out – but which is obviously overshadowed by the fact that we have to defend the right to say ludicrous and hateful things.
February 10, 2017 at 18:05
Xanthippa:
Exactly right.
The moment as you allow the state to place “reasonable restrictions” on the rights of individuals, it begins enacting restrictions that are virtually impossible to argue against, at first. Then, by a series of incremental steps of the form “if that is reasonable then surely this is also reasonable,” it soon succeeds in rendering the rights of individuals completely vacuous.
Just look at what Canada has done to the right to bear arms.
And we are already far down the same path in regard to free speech.
Much farther than the most of the USA, where the constitutional amendments still have some teeth. The reason for this is the wording of the amendments. The First Amendment reads
“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech”
And the Second Amendment reads
“… the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”
This is how you word a bill of rights! The idea of a “reasonable restriction” is unequivocally excluded.
This is one of those seldom-appreciated details that reveal the practical genius of the men who framed the United States Constitution. They knew that mealy-mouthed enemies of freedom would try to undermine the force of the wording, so they gave it maximum strength from the outset.
Compare that to the scurrilous fraud that passes for a bill of rights in Canada. The very first clause reads
“The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
In other words, it guarantees nothing at all!
Every time we get sucked into another discussion of what restrictions “can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society,” the ratchet clicks another couple of notches.
The web of restrictions invited by this wording keeps tightening around us until we can’t even breathe, let alone speak.
Enough is enough!