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Do you remember a cover story Maclean's
ran on Oct. 23, 2006?
No? Me neither, and I wrote it. Such
is life in the weekly mag biz. But it was an excerpt
on various geopolitical and demographic trends from
my then brand new tome, America Alone: The End of
the World as we Know It.
I don't know whether my bestselling
book is still available in Canadian bookstores, but
it's coming soon to a Canadian "courtroom"
near you! The Canadian Islamic Congress and a handful
of Osgoode Hall law students have complained about the
article in Maclean's to (at last count) three of Canada's
many "human rights" commissions, two of which
have agreed to hear the "case." It would be
nice to report that the third sent the plaintiffs away
with a flea in their ears saying that in a free society
it's no business of the state to regulate the content
of privately owned magazines. Alas, I gather it's only
bureaucratic torpor that has temporarily delayed the
province of Ontario's enthusiastic leap upon the bandwagon.
These students are not cited in the offending article.
Canadian Muslims are not the subject
of the piece. Indeed, Canada is not mentioned at all,
except en passant. Yet Canada's "human rights"
commissions have accepted the premise of the Canadian
Islamic Congress - that the article potentially breaches
these students' "human rights."
Since the CIC launched its complaint,
I've been asked by various correspondents what my defence
is. My defence is I shouldn't have to have a defence.
The "plaintiffs" are not complaining that
the article is false, or libellous, or seditious, for
all of which there would be appropriate legal remedy.
Their complaint is essentially emotional: it "offended"
them. And as offensiveness is in the eye of the offended,
there's not a lot I can do about that.
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.
The eminent Q.C. who heads the Canadian
Human Rights Commission may well be a shrewd and insightful
person but I don't believe her view of Maclean's cover
stories should carry any more weight than that of Mrs.
Mabel Scroggins of 47 Strathcona Gardens. And it is
slightly unnerving to me that large numbers of Canadians
apparently think there's nothing wrong in subjecting
the contents of political magazines to "judicial
review."
Let's take it as read that I am, as
claimed, "offensive." That's the point. It's
offensive speech that requires legal protection. As
a general rule, Barney the Dinosaur singing "Sharing
is Caring" can rub along just fine. Take, for example,
two prominent figures from Scandinavia. Extremely prominent,
as it happens. In his Christmas address to the Swedish
people, King Carl Gustaf hailed the dawn of "one
new Sweden. Young people with roots in other cultures
put Sweden on the map in musical styles, in the field
of sports, with business ideas that were not there when
I was younger... To welcome changes and to let the mix
of cultures and experiences enrich our lives and our
society is the only road ahead." Blah blah blah.
Usual multiculti bromides. Could have been our own Queen's
Christmas message or her vicereine on Canada Day.
Stick it in the Globe and Mail and no
one would bat an eyelid.
By contrast, here's another Scandinavian
head of state. Two years ago, Queen Margrethe II of
Denmark, musing on Islamic radicalism in her own country,
said that people need occasionally to "show their
opposition to Islam... It is a challenge we have to
take seriously. We have let this issue float about for
too long because we are tolerant and very lazy.
And when we are tolerant, we must know
whether it is because of convenience or conviction."
Can you still print the Queen of Denmark's
remarks in a Canadian publication? To be honest, I'm
not sure. 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."
It's striking to examine the Canadian Islamic Congress's
complaints and see how many of their objections are
to facts, statistics, quotations - not to their accuracy
but merely to the quoting thereof. But, of course, they've
picked the correct forum: before the human rights commissions,
truth is no defence.
Oh, dear. Is that "offensive"
to the executive committee of the OFL?
Very probably so. I may well have another "human
rights" suit on my hands. Heigh-ho. Might as well
be hung for a sheep as a lamb. Or we could all grow
up and recognize the dangers in forcing more and more
public discourse into the shadows. As David Warren put
it, the punishment is not the verdict, but the process
- the months of time-consuming distractions and legal
bills that make it easier for editors to shrug, "You
know, maybe we don't need a report on creeping sharia,
after all. How about we do The Lindsay Lohan Guide To
Celebrity Carjacking one more time?" Canada is
not unique in the urge of its bien pensants to pre-emptive
surrender: Australian publishers decline books on certain,
ah, sensitive subjects; a French novelist was dragged
into court to answer for the "Islamophobia"
of one of his fictional characters; British editors
insist books are vacuumed of anything likely to attract
the eye of wealthy Saudis adept at using the English
legal system to silence their critics.
Nonetheless, even in this craven environment,
Canada's "human rights commissions" are uniquely
inimical to the marketplace of ideas. In its 30 years
of existence, no complaint brought to the federal HRC
under Section XIII has been settled in favour of the
defendant. A court where the rulings only go one way
is the very definition of a show trial. These institutions
should be a source of shame to Canadians.
So I'm not interested in the verdict
- except insofar as an acquittal would be more likely
to legitimize the human rights commissions' attempt
to regulate political speech, and thus contribute to
the shrivelling of liberty in Canada. I'm interested
only in getting the HRCs out of this business entirely.
When it comes to free speech on one of the critical
issues of the age, to reprise Sir Edward Grey on the
eve of the Great War, the lamps are going out all over
the world - one distributor, one publisher, one novelist,
one cartoonist, one TV host at a time.
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