dialamah

I agree with you even more, that is crazy.

I believe that tolerance and acceptance are part of Canadian culture, but then there are many people such as yourself to put the lie to that, with your unrestrained complaining about immigrants in general and Muslims in particular, along with your fury at women in power and scorn for liberals. Still, I continue to believe that Canada is, overall, tolerant. Also you have again confused people with government. What laws a country enforces may or may not be what their citizens want.

I'd agree that jailing someone for holding a sign is insane, but in my view its equally insane to panic about Sharia Law in Canada because an MP suggested that a study be done regarding religious discrimination including Islamaphobia. I tried to look up the nun and sign story, but only found one where a nun broke into a nuclear plant, along with a couple others, and splashed human (?) blood around. Do you have a link?

You mean the version that most Muslims believe in peace and tolerance and that Allah disapproves of murder, conversion by the sword, pedophilia and discrimination of Jews and Christians? That won't get me thrown in jail. Its the same version of Islam that Sisi believes. I could get thrown in jail if I was gay and someone told on me. I could get thrown in jail if I insulted Allah or Mohammed, and someone reported me. I could get thrown in jail if I supported or preached the same as the Muslim Brotherhood. I could be thrown in jail for performing FGM, and I believe fined if I married my daughter off if she was under 18. I might get thrown in jail if I was a journalist and was too overtly critical of certain policies. I don't agree with a lot of the laws in Egypt and many Egyptians would agree with me. Its funny that you have no problem understanding that in Canada people don't universally agree with their government, yet can't imagine that citizens in other countries and under oppressive and corrupt regimes might also disagree with their government.

Its essentially the same version my family who live in Egypt follow. Funny, they are neither dead nor in jail.

Your claim that I embrace Muslims who want to kill gays is simply more ridiculous hyperbole in an attempt to discredit me for not falling for your xenophobic and Islamaphobic rhetoric.

You choose to only take one side to task though, the side that disagrees with your conviction of Muslims as nasty. And I'll say to you, as I said to Argus: given your experience and what you believe, your attitude comes as no surprise. And further, to give you full credit, you are very measured in your responses. Please now return to applauding the xenophobes and Islamaphobes whose words you admire so much, since they echo your own beliefs.

I said that those actions were morally wrong and in Canada, illegal. And yes, they do happen although probably not as often as in the $tates. It's usually the conservative Christian right objecting to gays, transexuals, abortion providers and sometimes violently. I'm sure you don't approve of violence, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. This is why I don't like talking to people like you, this implication that because I fail to hate and fear Muslims I must therefore "love" everything about them/their religion/their countries.

Having come late to the discussion you fail to realize that the assigning of labels did not start with me, and you have chosen to applaud those who've chosen to insult me. That is why you've lost my respect.

You sound like someone with an open mind as opposed to a closed mind, so why do you call yourself conservative? I've no doubt that there is a range among conservatives and liberals as to what they find acceptable. Still, the more conservative the person, the less likely they are to accept or tolerate someone 'different', imo. Again I don't want to whitewash liberals, and there is a valid debate as to whether liberals are any more willing to tolerate or accept certain conservative groups. Anyway, wherever you are on the liberal-conservative spectrum, I appreciate that we're able to have relatively sane conversations, even if we disagree.

And if I point out that followers of Islam also love tolerance, forgiveness and peace I'm labelled a Jew-hater, anti-Canadian, told that I support killing gays, pedophilia, honor killings and the oppression of women. Funny how you've never objected to that eh? Instead you support those people. So forgive me if I fail take your claimed objectivity and fairness seriously.

Yup, see them post here every day.

I agree that extremism is the problem, and I also agree that the vast majority of conservatives in Canada and the US are any where near as extreme as the radical and violent Muslims who populate news stories. Still, it is the conservative mindset that rejects others just for being 'other'. It isn't liberals who rally against gays or behead apostates. Not to claim that liberals are lilly-white either, but generally speaking there seems to exist a very different mindset between these groups. If I'm to be vilified by the likes of DoP or Argus for not accepting their version of Islam, a version based on intolerance and hate and rejected by the majority of practicing Muslims, then I believe I'm on the right side of the debate and ultimately history. I look for bridges; they look for walls and ultimately it's bridges that create peace and prosperity, not walls. I agree, you can hate homosexuality as much as you want. So can Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs. But what you and they can't do, by law and morally, is attack them physically or discriminate against them in the marketplace, school or work. I also believe its morally wrong to claim homosexuals are usually pedophiles or want to convert everyone else, even if saying so is not against the law. Don't care if you hate gays because God told you so or because you just do, spreading lies about them so that other people will also hate (and fear) them is wrong. And it isn't liberal-minded types who engage in this kind of character assasination against entire groups because they are 'different', it's conservative-minded types. Re: the baseball player. I agree that's an extreme over-reaction to something said in the heat of the moment. He apologized, now let's move on. I'm ok putting this kind of over-reaction at the feet of liberals; some need to learn not to sweat the small stuff I guess.

Any zealot, really.

Only if one is inclined to believe bullcrap.

Conservatives are the ones who reject people because they are gay, because they are gay and want to marry, because they are transgender, because they are pro-choice, because of their religion, because they wear a hijab, because they don't 'fit in' with the prevailing culture. The Muslims that we don't want in Canada view the world with the same narrow-minded, "my culture is superior, you must accept it" attitude that a certain small right-wing group on here also have.

This from the guy who styles himself an expert on immigration, the legal system, how "leftists" think and how Muslims think.

In Charlottesville on Saturday night, a White Supremacist group holds a rally and chants: Russia is our friend.

So then your claim that Muslim immigrants are driving some kind of crime wave is wrong. My neighbourhood is about 50% immigrant. The people who engage in petty crime and "harassing/beating" of others is pretty close to 100% white.

This makes more sense to me as well. That way, regardless of what their personal opinions may be, they clearly understand what the expectation is for their life in Canada.

Last year, the white supremacists next door regularly threatened the non-white people in our complex; if a white person stood up for the non-whites, they were also harassed and threatened. They used their vehicle to chase people and attempted on two occasions to run people off the road, including a woman walking her dog. These actions never made the news, of course, because nobody suffered any physical harm. However, eventually the police took it seriously enough to charge the guy, and the prosecutor/judge took it seriously enough to put a restraining order on him. He wasn't able to return home, and they've since sold and moved, thank goodness. Why do you think we should wait till people are actually hurt to take this stuff seriously?

Here's the argument against the bill. Here are a couple of pertinent excerpts: I haven't read the entire debate (didn't even know you could access them online! That's cool!) so I don't actually have an opinion about whether it should have passed or not, but may as well have both sides of the argument if you want to talk about it. It seems to me that a newspaper article reflecting the concerns of the widow is designed more to garner knee-jerk emotional reaction and to slag the Liberals, than to actually consider the merits of the legislation itself.

Funny, I was just wondering this morning how much longer daily press briefings would last. Wonder what Pence thinks of Trump.

I ought to have more properly said that increased punishments do not deter crime. Is someone decides to commit a crime it doesn't matter if the potential penalty is 5 years or 20 years. Only after caught does the lawbreaker care. I agree that no punishment at all would result in lots more crime. Just where the line between actual deterrence and just punishment for revenge is, I don't know.

True'ish; I recently linked a report identifying differences between immigrant crime and non-immigrant crime, sentences and outcomes. I think they should keep more detailed records though.