Let’s look at Vancouver Island, BC, because everything starts somewhere:

Jay Phillips, 38, a landscaper in Courtenay, B.C., about 220 kilometres northwest of Victoria, held back three young men who are shown on a YouTube video throwing punches and yelling racial slurs.

As the attackers surround Phillips, who is black, he can be seen knocking at least one of the men to the ground.

There is a video of the altercation here and an A Channel report here.

Mr. Phillips, clearly outnumbered, made a valiant attempt to defend himself against these punks. It’s clear from the video they were hurling racist epithets at Phillips, but whether they are the new wave of the Ku Klux Klan Comox chapter is very debatable. There’s still no conclusion from the RCMP, who are investigating the incident and have already made one arrest, as to the true motivation behind the attack.

Whether “hate crime” legislation is constitutional or proper is beyond the point in this case–it is law and must be enforced in this case. However, Mr. Plillips does not seem to share the hate towards his perpetrators. His reasons for wanting to take on the punks seems rather noble:

“There are so many up-and-coming young kids of colour in this town, and I don’t want them to have to go through this. I don’t want them to have to go down the street looking over their shoulder,” said Phillips.

No doubt, and he decided to take his stand the way he knew how. Phillips isn’t looking for revenge, and likely isn’t going to be harbouring a new hatred of whites based on this incident.

Let’s contrast that now with an incident that happened in Germany:

Egyptians are horrified by the brutal slaying of a pregnant Muslim woman stabbed repeatedly inside a German courtroom, calling what they see as a lack of outrage in Germany evidence of racism and anti-Islamic sentiment.

On Monday, thousands of mourners marched behind the coffin of Marwa al-Sherbini, 32, in her Mediterranean hometown of Alexandria where her body was buried after being flown back from Germany.

The circumstances arise after a man identified as Alex W. was being prosecuted for religious crimes against al-Sherbini, who she claimed was being harassed by Alex W., calling her a terrorist and attempting to remove her hairscarf. While in the courtroom, Alex W. was somehow able to produce a knife and stabbed the pregnant al-Sherbini several times. Her husband attempted to intervene, getting stabbed in the process and then shot by the court guards. She is now being called the “martyr of the headscarf” by many back in her native country of Egypt. Her husband is now in critical condition in a Dresden hospital. (He was shot in the foot by the guards, which made it very unlikely that he is in critical condition due to their actions.)

To dismiss this out of hand as a simple hate crime would be a mistake. Without knowing all of the circumstances leading to the stabbing, we can’t get a serious grip on the state of mind of the murderer. We do know that he was facing fines of nearly eight hundred euros for his harassment and attempting to take off her headscarf. But think about the initial target–the scarf. Could that be entered into evidence behind his motivations? Perhaps Alex W. wasn’t being what people understand as “Islamophobic” (hating Muslims) but he was looking at the headscarf, or hijab, as a political symbol. Alex W. was originally from Russia, and there is a powerful guerilla movement going on for many Islamic separatists within that nation. The hijab can be interpreted not just as a means of humility or for fashion, but also as a movement that Muslims are exporting all over the world. It could also be that Alex W. saw himself being hamstrung by a government that is acquiescing to a movement looking to undermine that very government.

Contrast that to the solemn funeral held for Ms. al-Sherbini, a woman who probably did not have the intent of becoming anyone’s “martyr.” The tone of the funeral was less than stellar:

“There is no god but God and the Germans are the enemies of God,” chanted the mourners, while others carried banners condemning racism.

Thus, the entire German nation is condemned based on the actions of one Russian immigrant. The Egyptian public has been making a mockery of the event, comparing it to the supposed uproar over the murder of Theo van Gogh. Was there an uproar in the West over that? Even the bloggers got in on it, getting a free plug for a throwaway line:

An Egyptian blogger Hicham Maged, wrote “let us play the ‘What If’ game.”

“Just imagine if the situation was reversed and the victim was a Westerner who was stabbed anywhere in the world or - God forbid - in any Middle Eastern country by Muslim extremists,” he said.

Good news, Hicham! You can track all of those at The Religion of Peace, a website dedicated to exposing the inordinate number of killings in the name of Islam. Here’s just one story about Egyptian suppression of Chritians’ rights under Sharia law. It’s happening right in your own backyard, but you’re playing victim on behalf of that poor dead woman. Here’s another “what-if” scenario–what if that same Sharia law makes the hijab mandatory in Egypt and bloggers are being rounded up when they speak out against it? Luckily for you, those oppressed Christians will still fight for you.

The large part tying these two stories together is the reflection of the society’s response to two different motives. The irrational race hatred of the young men in Courtenay is met by an outpouring of support for the victim, hoping to give him support and assurance. The likely rational hatred, although enormously evil, had the victim of that crime instead swept up in a political movement used to denounce another nation and use her victimization for their own political and religious gain. She was not a martyr for your cause, and she should never be asked to.

Both incidents were isolated, and did not reflect the general sensibilities of either Germany or Canada. As Jay Phillips said:

“‘Cause you know what? Not everybody is like this! Everybody has problems with every race for whatever reason, but this? Come on, we’re not cavemen.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 11:54 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.