I provide some excerpts from several sources. Please RTWTs at the links provided.
First, by the Editors at National Review Online, Free Steyn:
On December 4, the Canadian Islamic Congress announced that it had filed a complaint with three of Canada’s “human rights commissions” over an October 2006 article that Steyn had published in Maclean’s, Canada’s leading news weekly. “This article completely misrepresents Canadian Muslims’ values, their community, and their religion,” said Faisal Joseph, an attorney representing the complainants, in a press release. “We feel that it is imperative to challenge Maclean’s biased portrayal of Muslims in order to protect Canadian multiculturalism and tolerance.”
The article in question was adapted from Steyn’s recent book America Alone, which argues that Western society may be irrevocably altered — and not for the better — by unassimilated Muslim immigration. It’s no surprise that this thesis is controversial, probably in part because Steyn makes his points so well. But the real threat to tolerance here is the CIC, which would have the state impose penalties on those whose writings it disagrees with.
If you haven’t yet purchased your autographed copy of America Alone, you can do so here. The least you should do is read the MacLeans’ article that has the Canadian Islamic Congress’ panties in a knot. Titled The future belongs to Islam, it makes such hateful statements as this:
On the Continent and elsewhere in the West, native populations are aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic. Time for the obligatory “of courses”: of course, not all Muslims are terrorists — though enough are hot for jihad to provide an impressive support network of mosques from Vienna to Stockholm to Toronto to Seattle. Of course, not all Muslims support terrorists — though enough of them share their basic objectives (the wish to live under Islamic law in Europe and North America) to function wittingly or otherwise as the “good cop” end of an Islamic good cop/bad cop routine. But, at the very minimum, this fast-moving demographic transformation provides a huge comfort zone for the jihad to move around in. And in a more profound way it rationalizes what would otherwise be the nuttiness of the terrorists’ demands. An IRA man blows up a pub in defiance of democratic reality — because he knows that at the ballot box the Ulster Loyalists win the elections and the Irish Republicans lose. When a European jihadist blows something up, that’s not in defiance of democratic reality but merely a portent of democratic reality to come. He’s jumping the gun, but in every respect things are moving his way.You may vaguely remember seeing some flaming cars on the evening news toward the end of 2005. Something going on in France, apparently. Something to do with — what’s the word? — “youths.” When I pointed out the media’s strange reluctance to use the M-word vis-à-vis the rioting “youths,” I received a ton of emails arguing there’s no Islamist component, they’re not the madrasa crowd, they may be Muslim but they’re secular and Westernized and into drugs and rap and meaningless sex with no emotional commitment, and rioting and looting and torching and trashing, just like any normal healthy Western teenagers. These guys have economic concerns, it’s the lack of jobs, it’s conditions peculiar to France, etc. As one correspondent wrote, “You right-wing shit-for-brains think everything’s about jihad.”
Actually, I don’t think everything’s about jihad. But I do think, as I said, that a good 90 per cent of everything’s about demography. Take that media characterization of those French rioters: “youths.” What’s the salient point about youths? They’re youthful. Very few octogenarians want to go torching Renaults every night. It’s not easy lobbing a Molotov cocktail into a police station and then hobbling back with your walker across the street before the searing heat of the explosion melts your hip replacement. Civil disobedience is a young man’s game.
There’s much more in the article and you should read it. I said that already, but it definitely bears repeating. Steyn’s book, from which it is adapted, is even more worth reading.
Meanwhile, Michael Savage, for whose self-absorbed ranting I have little use, at least operates under a legal system better suited to self-defense – and to free speech. He does have a right to say what he has said. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has a perfect right to mount a boycott of his radio show. This kerfuffle is described sympathetically, amazingly, in the San Francisco Gate.
Savage vs. CAIR: The battle over free speech
Savage’s controversial commentary tends to elicit a censorious response. It wasn’t long ago that Savage’s remarks on illegal immigrants drew the ire of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, which, it seems, is always on the lookout for avenues of politically-correct behavior control. Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval introduced a resolution twice this year condemning Savage for “hate speech,” a meaningless yet ominous gesture which disregards the concept of free speech. The resolution failed the first time around thanks to the lone dissent of the now-ousted Supervisor Ed Jew, who, in contrast to Sandoval’s identity-politics-steeped perspective, stuck with upholding the First Amendment. But in October, the resolution passed, providing a menacing example of government interference, albeit symbolically, in the free speech rights of its citizenry.Economic punishment is another weapon in the hands of those opposed to Savage’s provocative methodology and the Council on American-Islamic Relations is the latest to jump on the boycott bandwagon. CAIR is a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization that touts itself as “America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group.” As such, CAIR expressed concern over a number of statements made by Savage on his Oct. 29 program that the group felt were anti-Muslim in nature. In response, CAIR, along with the newly formed Hate Hurts America Community and Interfaith Coalition, has attempted to mount a boycott aimed at advertisers on Savage’s show. According to a Dec. 3 CAIR press release, a growing list of companies, including AutoZone, Citrix, TrustedID, JC Penney, OfficeMax, Wal-Mart, and AT&T, have joined the boycott.
But rather than taking CAIR’s boycott lying down, Savage is fighting back, in court. Represented by his lawyer, Daniel A. Horowitz, Savage is suing CAIR primarily for copyright infringement. According to the text of the lawsuit, which is posted at Savage’s Web site, CAIR “misappropriated” his work by posting the four-minute segment in question at its Web site and including it in outreach and fundraising efforts. Taking it a step further, the lawsuit accuses CAIR of misrepresenting itself as a “civil rights organization” and of “advocating a specific political agenda that is directly opposed to the existence of a free society.” While the copyright infringement charges against CAIR may or may not pan out, the broader implications could end up holding the most weight.
Please note the companies who have joined the boycott against Savage. You may mount your own, if you wish. Perhaps against them.
I admit I was briefly conflicted about WalMart, because they are often the target of “hateful” propaganda from union socialists, and I’ve gone out of my way to patronize them because of it. However, as long as they’re against free speech, they might as well suffer from it.
God speed, Mark Steyn. Good luck, Michael Savage.
Update: 7:45PM. Forgot this one.
Censorship In The Name Of ‘Human Rights’
…human rights commissions are the perfect instrument for the CIC. The CIC doesn’t even have to hire a lawyer: Once the complaint has been accepted by the commissions, taxpayers’ dollars and government lawyers are used to pursue the matter. Maclean’s, on the other hand, will have to hire its own lawyers with its own money. Rules of court don’t apply. Normal rules of evidence don’t apply. The commissions are not neutral; they’re filled with activists, many of whom aren’t even lawyers and do not understand the free-speech safeguards contained in our constitution.
And the punishments that these commissions can order are bizarre. Besides fines to the government and payments to complainants, defendants can be forced to “apologize” for having unacceptable political or religious opinions.
An apology might not sound onerous, yet it is far more troubling than a fine. Ordering a person — or a magazine — to say or publish words that they don’t believe is an Orwellian act of thought control. The editor of Maclean’s, Ken Whyte, maintains his magazine is fair. But human rights commissions have the power to order him to publish a confession that he’s a bigot — or, as in one Ontario case, even order someone to study Islam. Even convicted murderers cannot be “ordered” to apologize.