Mark Steyn is being harassed by student lawyers, the Canadian Islamic Congress and various “human rights” star chambers wallaby courts inquisitors. Read all of both of the following.
Wise and the ways of the world
SteynOnline
Wednesday, 02 January 2008Garry J Wise is a Toronto lawyer who’s taken an interest in the CIC’s complaints and has been quoted on the story in The Washington Times. His shtick is very consistent: eminently reasonable, Mister Moderate, nothing to see here, nothing to worry about, folks. “My impression,” he writes, “remains that the complaints against him are dubious, politically-motivated and extremely unlikely to succeed.” But that’s the point: The thing’ll work its way through the system, and at some stage toward the end of this year or maybe next year, the Canadian, British Columbia and Ontario “Human Rights” Commissions will all decide that Maclean’s and I should be “acquitted”, and that will demonstrate that the system “works”.
That may make sense from a lawyer’s viewpoint. But it’s not how the world operates. As evidence of how the process is ultimately “fair”, Mr Wise cites a 2002 case from Saskatchewan, in which the HRC ordered both The Saskatoon Star Phoenix and Hugh Owens to pay $1,500 to each of three complainants who had objected to the Star Phoenix’s publication of an advertisement by Mr Owens. The advertisement quoted some of the sterner Biblical passages on homosexuality. Actually, it didn’t “quote” them. It merely listed the relevant chapter and verse: Romans 1:26, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, and I Corinthians 6:9. Nonetheless, that was enough for the HRC, which relieved the parties of nine thousand bucks for “exposing homosexuals to hatred or ridicule”… Read the rest.
In rebuttal: Squashing debate like mosquitoes
Mark Steyn, For the Calgary Herald
Wednesday, January 02, 2008Naseem Mithoowani, Khurrum Awan, Muneeza Sheikh and Daniel Simard write that “some clarifications are in order” re: The Calgary Herald’s coverage of their complaint to at least three of Canada’s many “human rights” commissions about an excerpt from my book, America Alone, published by Maclean’s.
So, in that spirit, let me clarify one point of their column,”Debate denied over Maclean’s Muslim article,” which ran Saturday. They cite the following quote as an “extract from Steyn’s article”: “The number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes.”
That line certainly appears in my text, but they’re not my words. Rather, they were said by a prominent Scandinavian Muslim, Mullah Krekar, to a respectable Norwegian newspaper. The imam was boasting at how Islam would outbreed Europe: “We’re the ones who will change you . . . 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.”… More here.
I don’t know if the HRC is generally embarrassing to Canadians yet, but it will be. Better, perhaps, is the light about to be shone on the CIC.