Tried for Blasphemy

Ezra Levant was the only person in the Western World to be tried for the offense of publishing the Danish Muslim Cartoons.  He is the only person to be tried for Blasphemy in the Northern Hemisphere for the last 80 years.  He was brought up on charges by the Canadian Human Rights Commission several years ago and the charges have finally been dropped.  It all worked out OK, right?  He proved the press was free in Canada and he wasn't found guilty... but

Some 900 days after I became the only person in the Western world charged with the "offence" of republishing the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, the government has finally acquitted me of illegal "discrimination." Taxpayers are out more than $500,000 for an investigation that involved fifteen bureaucrats at the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The legal cost to me and the now-defunct Western Standard magazine is $100,000.

The case would have been thrown out long ago if I had been charged in a criminal court, instead of a human rights commission. That's because accused criminals have the right to a speedy trial. Accused publishers at human rights commissions do not.

And if I had been a defendant in a civil court, the judge would now order the losing parties to pay my legal bills. Instead, the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities won't have to pay me a dime. Neither will Syed Soharwardy, the Calgary imam who abandoned his identical complaint against me this spring.

Both managed to hijack a secular government agency to prosecute their radical Islamic fatwa against me — the first blasphemy case in Canada in over 80 years. Their complaints were dismissed, but it is inaccurate to say that they lost: They got the government to rough me up for nearly three years, at no cost to them. The process I was put through was a punishment in itself — and a warning to any other journalists who would defy radical Islam.

So someone charges you with hate crime and you foot the bill to prove your not guilty and they get off scott free.  (Is the term "Scott Free" at hate crime?  I thought not... it has nothing to do with the Scottish.)   Read the whole article linked above and pray that our government slides no further toward that of Canada.