Mark Steyn explains what he understands to be the basis for the complaint:
If you examine Dr. Mohamed Elmasry's formal complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission about my article, Grievance #16 objects to the following assertion:
"The number of Muslims in Europe is expanding like 'mosquitoes.' "
That claim certainly appears in my piece. But they're the words not of a notorious right-wing Islamophobic columnist but of a bigshot Scandinavian Muslim:
" 'We're the ones who will change you,' the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. 'Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.' "
Given that the "mosquitoes" line is part of the basis on which the HRC accepted Dr. Elmasry's complaint of "Islamophobia," I'm interested to know what precisely is the offence? Are Mullah Krekar's words themselves Islamophobic? Or do they only become so when I quote them? The complainants want a world in which a Norwegian imam can make statements in a Norwegian newspaper but if a Canadian columnist reprints them in a Canadian publication it's a "hate crime."
He asks if the Canadian 'Human Rights' Commission should be able to make decisions as to what you and I are allowed to read, in a so-called 'free country':
But, given that the most fundamental "human right" in modern Canada is apparently the right not to be offended, perhaps I could be permitted to say what offends me. I'm offended by the federal and British Columbia human rights commissions' presumption that the editing decisions of Maclean's fall within their jurisdiction. Or to put it another way, I don't accept that free-born Canadian citizens require the permission of the Canadian state to read my columns.
Rex Murphy (God bless him) is also outraged:
The complainants read the article as “flagrantly islamophobic”.
Maclean’s magazine? Well, we all know what a hotbed of radical bigotry and vile prejudice Maclean’s magazine has been. Go away … for what seems like a century Maclean’s was no more "offensive" ... than a down comforter on a cold day and if Mark Steyn's article offended them: so what? Not every article in every magazine of newspaper is meant to be a valentine card addressed to every reader's self-esteem.
I read 'America Alone' and my take on it can be summed up in Steyn's quotation from the late historian Arnold Toynbee - "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder."
In other words, wake up!
This overbearing power of the CHRC has the potential to erode our democracy as Steyn puts it, "one distributor, one publisher, one novelist, one cartoonist, one TV host at a time".
And perhaps one blogger at a time as well.
* * * *
Update: Sign the petition!! A Free Dominion against the HRC's.
(Sign it while you still have the freedom to do so.)
More here from Steyn. This was the end of the trail from a huge rat's nest of links at BCL.
And hey, we did finally track down Gayle (9:28 pm)
Related - Toronto Catholic Magazine faced with Human Rights complaint by Homosexual.
(Sign it while you still have the freedom to do so.)
More here from Steyn. This was the end of the trail from a huge rat's nest of links at BCL.
And hey, we did finally track down Gayle (9:28 pm)
Related - Toronto Catholic Magazine faced with Human Rights complaint by Homosexual.
* * * *
Michael Coren - Consider the Source.Saturday Update: MUST-READ in the National Post - It's a human right to be an idiot, by George Jonas. (H/T Jack's Newswatch)
Also worth checking out - Just Right: Islam's prison bitch.
Also worth checking out - Just Right: Islam's prison bitch.
14 comments:
Are we talking Canada or Cuba?? Hard to figure out sometimes. How'd we get this way?
How'd we get this way?
Complacency.
Remember that old song, Don't it always seem to go; you don't know what you had til it's gone...
The Canadian Islamic Congress and their law student friends at Osgoode Hall are once again blowing hot air. I have no doubt that they know that their claims are frivolous, as it seems to be a deliberate attempt by them to silence anyone who does not agree with their perspective.
I commend Mr. Steyn for standing up to CIC and their intimidation tactics. We need more people like him in our country to stand up to those who want to impose political-correctness on every aspect of life in our society.
Never being the biggest fan of Macleans in the first place, I still signed for a subscription for it last month and made it clear on my order form that the specific reason I got the subscription was because of the HRC issue.
How incredibly appropriate that the first issue I receive, TODAY, is the one with Mark Steyn's brilliant commentary quoted above.
I see this as a pivotal battle. I look at what is going on in England and it makes my heart sick. He have to avoid going that route for the future of our society.
Steyn accurately says that even a "win" for Macleans is a loss, since it still sets the precedent that the HRC has some sort of jurisdiction here. The ideal outcome is that the HRC not only rules against the complaints, but makes it clear that it will not consider this type of case again.
Fat hairy chance of that, huh?
I trust everyone has signed the online petition?
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/a-free-dominion-against-the-hrcs/sign.html
Thanks, Anon. I'm going to add that link to the main post.
Joanne, Macleans is part of a multibillion dollar corporation, they don't need any more money from hard working Canadians. Many of their columnists are viciously hostile to the Conservative party and anything that even looks like a white anglo male. They've never given a fig about freedom of speech until their inaction bit them in the ass.
Thirty years these courts have been operating. Thirty years! And I am to step to attention and defend a LIBERAL corporation when they finally get a complaint? That's ridiculous.
If this matter gets dropped next month Maclean's will forever forget about defending free speech and go back to hating Stephen Harper and Conservatives, while the CHRC goes on persecuting everyday Canadians who AREN'T millionaires.
Yeah! We should be allowed to hate who we want to hate whenever we want to hate them and be allowed to say that we hate them in public!
I may not agree with what you write, but I defend to the death your right to say it. (Voltaire) sort of)
While Macleans is historically no friend of conservatives, they are a mainstream publication. They ARE giving Mark Steyn a voice, and they are at least making a stand on the freedom of speech issue.
Is anyone else? So, maybe we are better off supporting them then ignoring this particular situation.
If three law students and a defender of Islamofascism can face down Macleans, which is more or less a Canadian institution, liberal or not, then all the conservative bloggers in all the basements in Canada can rant and rave all they like - free speech will have taken the biggest hit in Canada's history. And you will be far worse off.
Whatever schauenfreude you will feel from Macleans taken a hit will be short lived. To quote Joanne above:
"How'd we get this way"
"Complacency"
Anonymous Macleans-hating poster above - this is the battle that has to be fought and won, because the one after it will be much harder.
Anonymous Macleans-hating poster above - this is the battle that has to be fought and won, because the one after it will be much harder.
You got it.
Is Macleans filing a counter suit
like Savage is in the states.
Mary, I'm not sure about that, but for some reason, your question made me think about this.
Joanne, You sure covered a lot of territory in this post. Thanks for the link.
That Free Dominion petition certainly seems to be gathering signatures at a slow pace. It's been stuck near a pathetic 1320 for a while now. Surely there must be at least a couple of orders of magnitude more people concerned enough to sign up. If not, that might help explain why we are where are wrt HRCs.
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