THE Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a Muslim group’s complaint against Maclean’s magazine.

The long-running case came before the Commission after the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) complained that the highly-regarded magazine published an article in October 2006 likely to expose Muslims to hatred and contempt.

The article, entitled “The Future Belongs to Islam,” by Canadian writer and commentator Mark Steyn claimed that Muslims were on the verge of taking over Europe and the West because of demographic shifts.

The article said that their greater numbers will eventually allow Muslims to dominate Western countries, pointing out that:

Muslims are reproducing like mosquitoes.

In January this year, Steyn, writing in the Calgary Herald, said:

That line certainly appears in my text, but they’re not my words. Rather, they were said by a prominent Scandinavian Muslim, Mullah Krekar, to a respectable Norwegian newspaper. The imam was boasting at how Islam would outbreed Europe . . .

This is the nub of the complaints against Maclean’s: They’re objecting to a Canadian magazine quoting accurately the statements of leading Muslims. And at least two of Canada’s ‘human rights’ commissions, to their shame, have accepted their absurd proposition that accurately quoting leading Muslims is somehow ‘Islamophobic’.

According to this report, The CHRC concluded last week that the views in the article:

When considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature, as defined by the Supreme Court.

But The Commission noted that Steyn’s writing is:

Polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Nothing wrong with that, in any country that values freedom of expression!

Faisal Joseph, a lawyer for the CIC, disagreed with the commission’s finding. He said there was “compelling evidence of hate and expert testimony” to support their case, had it been allowed to move forward.

The complainants have filed a similar complaint with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which finished hearing the case earlier this month, but has yet to make a ruling.

Maclean’s has released a statement noting satisfaction with the CHRC decision:

Though gratified by the decision, Maclean’s continues to assert that no human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation’s media.

And we continue to have grave concerns about a system of complaint and adjudication that allows a media outlet to be pursued in multiple jurisdictions on the same complaint, brought by the same complainants.

Steyn and others – including editors at Maclean’s – have said the issue is not the article’s merits nor its viewpoint. They are concerned that such human rights tribunals could suppress free speech.

Commenting on the decision, Matthew Sheffield, Newsbusters editor, said that the Commission’s decision went:

Against everything in their DNA … the sooner they can get the public scrutiny to go away, the sooner they can go about prosecuting their less well-heeled targets, people who can’t afford Canada’s best lawyers and command the attention and affection of the country’s literati.

That is the true danger of speech regulations. Those who can fight them often escape them. Most cannot, however.

• The photo of Mark Steyn was taken by Deborah Gyapong who was at a party with Steyn the day the decision was announced.