London Free Press

Maclean's piece needs response

Faisal Joseph

December 17, 2007

On Dec. 4, I announced at a news conference that human rights complaints, including those of four law students, had been launched against Maclean's magazine with respect to the article The Future Belongs to Islam, written by Mark Steyn and published in October 2006.

In light of the widespread attention this issue is receiving, most recently in an article by Rory Leishman in The London Free Press, corrections for the record are in order.

To put the debate in context, we must look at the actual content of Steyn's article. His views on rising Muslim populations are captured best by this extract: "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 . . ."

Steyn's comments - pages' worth - raise a dilemma. What should one do when a leading news magazine publishes an article replete with misleading and false information?

The Muslim Canadian Congress, an organization founded by a Maclean's columnist and to which Maclean's has consistently turned for support, offered one solution: "Mark Steyn's article was definitely alarmist, but the answer to his challenge is to write a counter piece and demand that Maclean's publish it."

The MCC's proposal seemed reasonable - so reasonable, in fact, that four Osgoode law students, who are complainants in this human rights case, were able to come up with it on their own months before the complaint was filed. However, when the law students' delegation met with senior editorial staff at Maclean's to propose a countering article authored by a mutually agreed-upon source, they were informed that Maclean's "would rather go bankrupt" than allow such a response. So much for inviting the Muslim community to respond to inflammatory and factually incorrect material.

Steyn also proposed a solution, of sorts, in a defensive e-mail, stating that "If (they) don't like my argument. Fine. Argue against it, but don't try to criminalize debate."

Well, Steyn will be pleased to know that the four capable law students from one of the premier educational institutions of this country wanted to debate him on his stage. In fact, he should be quite unhappy that Maclean's editors would rather go bankrupt than permit the debate he so emphatically desires in a free and democratic society.

Tom Flanagan states on the Maclean's website: "All who write and speak in the public domain should rally to Mark Steyn's defence. If so-called human rights commissions can be used against him, they can be used against anyone who dares to express an idea worth debating."

Flanagan in turn will be pleased to know there is no need to "rally to the defence" of Steyn. My clients have never sought an apology from him; they have not named him as a respondent in their human rights complaints; neither did they file criminal hate speech complaints against him, or Maclean's. What they did seek, however, was an opportunity for the Muslim community to participate in the "free marketplace" of ideas - a marketplace that my clients have found to be thoroughly regulated and far from "free."

This issue is all about insisting on the "debate" Flanagan wishes to preserve and Steyn claims to relish. By definition, a debate is a two-sided conversation. Freedom of expression, in its truest and noblest form, thus results in a dialogue among all interested parties - not just among those who play by their own exclusionary rules.

Unfortunately, rather than enabling a level of debate that serves the interests of all Canadians, Maclean's editors suggested they prefer bankruptcy. And that is what prompted the above-mentioned law students to take their complaint to the human rights commission.

My clients believe the Canadian Muslim community has the constitutional right to respond when Steyn (or any other public author of the same ilk) claims Muslims share the same basic goals as terrorists. Apparently, Maclean's and Leishman do not share that belief. We will let the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal settle this one in June.

Faisal Joseph is a litigation lawyer in London, and is a former provincial and federal Crown attorney .