CBC News
December 12, 2007
OTTAWA - A Conservative cabinet minister says the Canadian Islamic Congress is attempting to undermine basic Charter freedoms by filing complaints against a journalist who wrote a book on the Muslim world.
Jason Kenney, the secretary of state for multiculturalism, weighed in Wednesday on the controversy surrounding columnist Mark Steyn's bestseller America Alone. The Canadian Islamic Congress has filed complaints with federal and provincial human rights commissions based on an excerpt of Steyn's book that appeared in Maclean's Magazine in October.
"To be attacking opinions expressed by a columnist in a major magazine is a pretty bold attack on the basic Canadian value of freedom of the press and freedom of expression," Kenney said in an interview. "I think all Canadians would reject that kind of effort to undermine one of our basic freedoms."
The Congress has argued that the article in Maclean's "subjects Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt," and is "flagrantly Islamophobic." Maclean's has refused the Congress' request to publish an unedited, multi-paged rebuttal to Steyn's commentary.
The excerpt from Steyn's book, headlined "The Future Belongs to Islam," outlines how the Islamic world is becoming more powerful with robust population growth versus the dwindling birth rate in the Western world. He argues that western democracies have failed to reinforce their own traditional values and identity to such an extent that radical and violent Muslim groups are allowed to flourish unchecked within their borders.
Other Muslim organizations and commentators have also criticized the Canadian Islamic Congress for its complaints against Maclean's.
In a commentary posted Thursday on the magazine's website, members of the Muslim Canadian Congress said Steyn's arguments are all wrong, but taking him to tribunals in the wrong approach.
"The reaction of the CIC has only given credence to his premise - that Muslims in the West cannot accept the values of individual freedom, a free press and the right to offend," wrote Tarek Fatah and Farzana Hassan. "How ironic and how unfortunate. For Steyn's thesis could as easily have been disproved by the traditional means of rational debate."
In the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has campaigned against radio talk-show hosts who made incendiary comments about Muslims on the air. In one case, a host in Washington, D.C., was fired after calling Islam a "terrorist organization," among other comments.
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/media/071212/X121211AU.html