Canadian Islamic Congress Sues to Silence Mark Steyn

Sat, Dec 1, 2007 at 9:04:32 am PST

The Canadian Islamic Congress has filed “human rights” complaints against Maclean’s magazine for publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book “America Alone,” which the CIC labels not just “Islamophobic,” but flagrantly Islamophobic: Canadian Islamic Congress launches human rights complaints against Maclean’s.

Complaints were submitted to Human Rights Commissions in B.C. and Ontario on the grounds that “the article subjects Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt,” according to a CIC press release. In the release, the CIC labels Steyn’s article as “flagrantly Islamophobic.”

Faisal Joseph is the CIC’s legal counsel on the matter. “In Canada, we have 750,000 law-abiding Muslims,” he says. “When you read that article, it sounds to some people [like] there’s an attack from the ‘Muslim’ world against the ‘non-Muslim’ world. We take real issue with that type of characterization and the implications of it.”

In response, a Maclean’s spokesperson provided the following statement: “Mark Steyn is a thoughtful and experienced journalist, and the piece was a commentary on important global political issues. It was not in any sense Islamophobic, and Maclean’s is confident that the Human Rights Commissions will find no merit in the complaints.”