Canadian Journalist Resigns After Editors Spike His Anti-Jihadist Column

Belman. Cathy Shaidle is a friend of mine and a great fighter.  I have a similar story to tell.  Yesterday I was contacted by a journaluist I know who wanted me to comment on an article he wrote about Islam and moderates etc which was just published by a prominent right wing academic internet journal.  I told him I didn’t like the article because it was confusing.  On the one hand he seemed to be making the case against Islam and on the other hand he was being generous to it. I gave him all the sentances I didn’t like.  He told me that all those sentences were inserted at the request of the editor or the piece wouldn’t be published.

By Cathy Shaidle, News Real Blog

They don’t make ‘em like Rory Leishman anymore. He’s one of those old fashioned newsmen you only see in black and white movies these days.

As a rare non-lefty Canadian journalist, he’s fought all the good fights, particularly against activist judges. Leishman was also battling our censorious, PC-mad “Human Rights” Commissions long before the rest of us took up the cause.

This week, Rory resigned as a long-time columnist for the London (Ontario) Free Press.

He’d submitted a column to run on (ironically) September 11, detailing the connection between the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) and the Muslim Brotherhood. The LFP said they’d only run the column if Leishman removed references to two local imams. He refused, the paper spiked the column, and Leishman resigned on principle.

You can read the spiked column, plus Rory’s supporting material about radical Muslims operating with relative impunity throughout Canada, and the correspondence between Leishman and his editor, at Rory’s blog. The entire post is well worth your time. Here’s an excerpt:

How could tens of thousands of Muslims living in Canada sympathize with Islamist terrorists who were plotting the greatest mass slaughter of civilians in Canadian history?

Part of the answer can be found in some mainstream Muslim publications in Canada. For example, in July, Al Bilad, a monthly newspaper published in Arabic and English in London, Ontario, featured a poem that glorifies an Islamist homicide bomber who pleads to her mother:

“Yumma, tell my son that I did not abandon him, never!
“I did it for his freedom and our peoples (sic) right to be able to live free, forever!
“Yumma, tell my husband that he will always be my all,
“I know he understands and he knows why I took that call.”

Following the publication of this ode to terrorism in Al Bilad, all Canadians alert to the peril of home-grown radicalization should surely boycott the newspaper. Yet the current issue includes advertisements for Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic [socialist] Party; Irene Mathyssen, NDP MP for London–Fanshawe; Khalil Ramal, Liberal MPP for London-Fanshawe; Jim Chahbar, Conservative candidate for London–Fanshawe; and Ed Holder, Conservative MP for London-West.

Reaction to Rory’s resignation was swift. I received lots of emails and even a few phone calls from readers who’d been enjoying Leishman’s columns in the paper since literally the previous century.

Mark Steyn interrupted his hiatus to comment on his site’s front page:

Among other recent developments, Rory Leishman has quit The London Free Press over its decision to quash his column on the left’s collusion with pro-terror Islam. We have had cause to write about this torpidly conformist newspaper before. (See also here and here.)

Leishman emailed supporters to explain his decision, after his former editor, Joe Ruscitti, disclosed Rory’s resignation in his own weekly column. In that email, Rory wrote in part:

…I think readers of my column might find the comments appended to Joe’s column particularly interesting. They include several kind comments, which I much appreciate, as well as some vitriolic abuse. One critic, Leila Paul — presumably the same Leila Paul who is running for London city council and was formerly employed as a news anchor for the CBC in Vancouver — has suggested that the Free Press would have been open to a libel suit if it had printed my disclosure that two prominent local imams, Sheik Jamal Taleb and Dr. Munir El-Kassem, had taken part in a recent lecture series at the London chapter of the Muslim Association of Canada, an Islamist organization dedicated to promoting the ideas of Hassan Al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. (…)

I am not the least bothered by such vilification. It reminds me of the quip by the great Dr. Samuel Johnson: “Attack is the reaction: I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.”

I know I speak for many when I say I hope to see Rory Leishman’s byline in a more deserving outlet in the very near future.

As for his editor: I was frankly stunned when I read the post below at Joe Ruscitti’s this morning. I’m speechless, except to say that when newspaper bigwigs gather to wonder yet again why their subscribers and revenues are disappearing, they might want to take a look at this breathtaking squib penned by one of their own.

I print it below, in full, without further comment:

Chalk one up for Rory

I’d say it’s coming in about about 7:2 for Rory Leishman from the phone calls and emails I’ve been getting since my column appeared Saturday to explain why the decades-long relationship between The Free Press and the columnist is at an end.

(You can also read Leishman’s side of things on his blog.)

Even some of Muslim faith took the time to e-mail me that they were unhappy with what I wrote. Shows what I know.

Still, the answer is, ‘No, I’m not changing my mind, we’re not running it.’

And we’re not changing the newspaper’s name to The London Censored Press, as a handful of you have suggested.

September 29, 2010 | 10 Comments »

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10 Comments / 10 Comments

  1. Mer says:
    September 30, 2010 at 6:31 am
    Laura. The Canadian Govt is right wing

    The Canadian media is anti-semitic , Islamofascist enabling or just plain Islamofascist.

    The HRC witch hunters with their awesome unconstitutional powers have enabled Islamofascism and silenced most open opposition. Only a few rich guys dare to stand up against them.

    Government doesn’t weigh that much against the other factors.

  2. Mer says:

    Canada. Becoming too politically correct?

    Becoming? The CBC has most Canadians convinced that the Israelis are Nazis and have occupied some mythical Kingdom called Palestine and they have brutalized the entire Arab world.

    Canada a totally caved to Islamification a long time ago. Islamic money has taken over a large percentage of the news services.I got some source data somewhere – from memory was 33 to 66 percent of some media services. Islamic Investment money has also poured in to Canada. They opened up new Internet Islamic Investment Network to pour in the money

    Canada has had unchecked (loyalty unchecked) Islamic immigration for several decades. We are totally infiltrated with an enormous number of Hamas, Hezbollah,Palestinian and Iranian sympathizers. (Crowds chanting “We area all Hamas” might be some indication of that )There is a pipeline of money and support going both ways.
    Terrorist WMD will have no trouble getting here.

    Maybe they will just use the WMD on the US and just occupy us.
    Is that the best case scenario?

    lol not a good situation.

  3. My fellow Dudes and Dudettes,
    I disagree with this article. I mean, Abbas must somehow know that Palestinian refugees and their families will now be able to live in Israel in virtual and peaceful perpetuity. I am not sure, but I think this is good news. Right?

    Next, Abbas can and will accept a strong Israeli leader since this is our new brotherhood. Also, Abbas can once and for all tell Hamas to go and jump in the lake and die. I think he has that power, yes I do. He has big shoes to fill, that he does. Huge portions of that Arab world’s population will listen to what this man says. They value his opinion. He is very opinionated.

    I cannot and do not believe the naysayers. Now is the time to build upon that platform of trust and love that has alluded us so long. Peace out

  4. never once heard any anti-Jewish comments at all come out of my (yes, Italian Catholic) parents’ mouths, so I was pretty isolated from anti-Semitism and figured that Hitler just picked you guys at random as a convenient target.

    And today, I’m still blown away at the number of supposedly smart people who seem to think that ripping on Jews in 2010 is somehow mystically different from when everyone else has done it for the past 1200 years. *sigh* “Yes, but this time it’s different … ” always seems to be the excuse. It’s not the same now. Yes, and I’m sure back in 1935, it wasn’t the same now either. That’s the problem with history; it’s always “now,” isn’t it? I may not agree with Israel’s policies all the time — I don’t agree with myself all the time, and I’m hardly in a position to pontificate. But pete’s sake, few lessons have been taught as decisively in the past several centuries of European history than that there really, really, really needs to be an Israel.

    Seriously, what do the Jews have to apologize for anyway.

  5. Laura:

    Even greater than the islamic threat to the free world is the leftist government and media establishment. Take down the leftist power structure and we will have defeated the islamic jihadists as well. Without being aided and abetted by our own leftists, islamic supremacists cannot continue to infiltrate the west.

    No truer words were ever written. The most sinister, the most devious, the most dangerous is the animal rights element of leftists. They pose a major security threat to all freedom loving people.

    DID YOU KNOW THAT ADOLPH HITLER WAS A VEGETARIAN? Does that not tell you something of the nature of the threat?

  6. Even greater than the islamic threat to the free world is the leftist government and media establishment. Take down the leftist power structure and we will have defeated the islamic jihadists as well. Without being aided and abetted by our own leftists, islamic supremacists cannot continue to infiltrate the west.

    Thankfully we no longer need the msm to be informed. The internet has provided the ability of real journalists to publish material on their own blogs and no longer have to be controlled by big media monopolies.