B.C. hearing told story promotes hatred of Islam. Others see this as an issue of free speech
Western Canada Bureau Chief
VANCOUVER–A high-profile B.C. Human Rights Tribunal heard yesterday that an article published in Maclean’s magazine drew responses from readers that called for the mass killing, deportation and forced conversion of Muslims.
Faisal Joseph, the lawyer representing the Canadian Islamic Congress, said there is a conspicuous link between the 2006 article published in Maclean’s and real evidence of hate.
“There has never been a case in this country where there has been such clear, concise evidence of hatred,” said Joseph in his closing summation yesterday to the three-member tribunal hearing the case.
The tribunal looking into the article, “The Future of Islam,” published by Maclean’s in 2006, yesterday concluded a week of testimony that drew larger than normal crowds for a human rights hearing. The article is an excerpt of a book, America Alone, by Mark Steyn.
The hearing has become polarized between those who see a freedom of speech issue and those who see hatred against a religious community.The tribunal was called after two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress – president Mohamed Elmasry and Dr. Naiyer Habib – complained, saying the article promotes hatred against Islam and incites fears Muslims are taking over the world by criminalizing the religion and its followers.
Dr. Habib, a B.C. cardiologist, testified that a handful of Muslims hold extremist views. He said he was ashamed to see Islam demonized in that way.
But Steyn has countered there is no hate in his article, just the use of incontrovertible statistics about the growing number of Muslims, compared to declining births among women in the European Union, Canada, Japan and Russia.
At the start of the week, Steyn supporters waved blank signs to signal their belief the hearing would lead to a loss of free speech.
“This trial shames this province,” Steyn said outside the hearing yesterday. “No genuinely free society should be this comfortable with state regulation of opinion.”
Steyn and Maclean’s have dared the tribunal to rule against them.
Steyn said yesterday that if his side loses, “we can take it to a real court and if necessary up to the Supreme Court of Canada” to win the “liberties of free-born Canadian citizens that have been taken away from them by tribunals like this.”
During the week, while Steyn supporters continued appearing in the public gallery, a growing number of Muslim Canadians also began attending to show their concerns about what they consider is a growing hatred for their religion.
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