Excerpt:
Muslims must "demand that right to participate" in national media, Khurrum Awan, the primary witness in the Maclean's magazine hate speech hearing, told a weekend conference of the Canadian Arab Federation.
"And we have to tell them, you know what, if you're not going to allow us to do that, there will be consequences. You will be taken to the human rights commission, you will be taken to the press council, and you know what? If you manage to get rid of the human rights code provisions [on hate speech], we will then take you to the civil courts system. And you know what? Some judge out there might just think that perhaps it's time to have a tort of group defamation, and you might be liable for a few million dollars," he said.
On a discussion panel with Barbara Hall, Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and Haroon Siddiqui, editor emeritus of the Toronto Star, Mr. Awan described his increasingly high-profile struggle "against particular elements in media that are misusing and abusing their responsibility" in writing about Islam.
Under the sponsorship of the Canadian Islamic Congress, and with the help of a small team of fellow recent graduates of Osgoode Hall law school, that struggle has so far involved complaints to the British Columbia, Ontario and federal human rights commissions over an excerpt of Mark Steyn's book America Alone in Maclean's magazine in 2006.
The only case to be heard so far, in B. C, concluded last week with a decision pending.