I have never posted someone else’s article directly onto my blog. I am today.
This article was written in 2009 by Howard Rotberg, author and publisher. He is the publisher of Mantua Books. He is the publisher of my book; Back to the Ethic:Reclaiming Western Values and I am proud to stand with him.
The article is : How I Became a Banned Author in Canada.
Read the entire article. I hope you will be as outraged as I am.
This is about an author sharing his book, The Second Catastrophe, in one of Canada’s largest book chains: Chapters.
A young man came in and sat in the second row. He picked up a copy of my book from the table, took a perfunctory look at it, and started interrupting me.
“You think all Muslims are terrorists,” he asserted.
“I do not,” I replied, as categorically as possible.
“Well, that’s what your book says,” he retorted.
It looked to me as if he had just taken a few glances at it, so I replied: “Have you read my book?” He paused and then said, “Part.”…
“He has no right to lecture if he is going to say things in support of Israel,” shouted one of the attendees…
Rotberg was called a “f##ing Jew.”
He attempted to respond to the many shoutouts made at this lecture. It didn’t go well.
That was the end of the lecture. I said something to the effect that I would not be called a “f****** Jew” at my lecture. The store manager came over to me and told me not to swear. I told him that I was the one being sworn at; he said that it didn’t matter. He gathered up the books on the table and escorted me to his office at the back.
His experience there led him to write this-remember this is 2009.
I was in Canada, the land of cultural relativism, where the most important value is tolerance. Criticizing any other country or culture is a breach of the now distorted policy of multiculturalism. Now, I would pay the price.
Think of the attempts to shut down speakers, today. If the left can’t shout them down they will find a way to shut them down.
I, too, have been on the receiving end of nasty comments about my book. A magazine publisher refused to include my book in the issue about local authors.
“We did give due consideration to including your book. However, we found the opinions it expressed unhelpful at best and destructive at worst to a healthy social conversation. Of course, we support your right to publish them, and trust you equally support our right not to.”
What a surprise to find out that the person who was to review the book never read it. She read a few of the paragraphs in the introduction and deduced that it was an anti -Islam book: Islamophobic! It is not at all about Islam. It is about the Judeo/Christian ethic. But the reviewer read the word “Values” in the title and in 2015 that word had taken on the same bad odour as God and religion. But Islam? Well…
What if we, the collective “we” had stood up for Mr, Rotberg back in 2009? What if we had taken action then to stop this “bullying” by the left?
Mr. Rotberg has gone on to write more books as well as publish authors from the right of the political spectrum.Right-not far-right-whatever that means. His most recent book is The Ideological Path to Submission. And what we can do about it.
He traces the ideological pathway resulting from tolerance and explores certain ideologies that have emanated from tolerism and pose a danger of possible submission to the anti-liberal values of the Islamists. He looks at such ideologies as: Inclusive Diversity, Empathy, Denialism, Masochism, Islamophilia, Trumpophobia, Cultural Relativism, Postmodernism, Multiculturalism. Mr. Rotberg invites those Muslims wishing to share Western freedoms, to support reformers and participate in their essential duty to reject the Islamists who seek Sharia Law and a world-wide Caliphate in lands where they immigrate to.
SILENCE IS COLLUSION
From the Ethics of the Fathers: “Rabbi Tarfon used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it.”
