“It is understandable that Maclean's reserve the right to decide its editorial content ... but what is inexcusable is that it chooses to allow, even invites, regular doses of unjustified attacks and stereotyping of Muslims to be propagated on its pages in the name of "free speech" while censoring and stifling the innocent victims, who have hurt no one, from responding and dispelling the accusations appropriately. Which "free speech" is more worthy of protection?”

When it hurts and is to the point, they use their privilege to silence freedom of speech. Like someone said, there are no freedom of speech champions, every side supports the kind of free speech that will suit it and opposes the kind that will not . The haters in the media just don’t bother to oppose anything, they simply directly practice their censorship. Why bother explaining why when you can simply do it with impunity and with impudence. That’s the example of some of the western media. They are well known and sadly, in Canada, predominate and certainly surpass any other western nation. Some blame this or that media baron or family that owns media, but we believe certain media personalities are the ones who are hateful and racist.

Free speech is unquestionably a pillar of a healthy democracy, making sure that wrongs are exposed and criticized. However, even the harshest criticism can be successfully expressed without including the element of hate.

So what exactly are the misguided champions of free speech inadvertently supporting then . . . "hate" per se? Muslims take criticism -- both justifiable and unjustifiable -- every single day, but "hate"is uncivilized and unacceptable.

People generally follow the unwritten laws of common decency that allow societies to function in a civilized, peaceful and harmonious manner. But because of the potential harm of hate and discrimination by those indifferent to the peace and harmony of the societies they live in, there arose a need for hate laws and specialized bodies such as the human rights commissions. Decent people don't deny the Holocaust, but there are laws against hate propaganda because some care more about their agendas than the well-being of society or groups within it.

The Holocaust didn't develop overnight. Six million Jews perished because Jews were relentlessly demonized over many years. The hate eventually dehumanized them and paved the path to the day it became acceptable to massacre them. The Nuremberg trials acknowledged the destructive power of hate by sentencing to death a magazine publisher who routinely promoted hate against Jews.

Likewise, the Rwandan genocide tribunals sent various media executives to jail for inciting ethnic hatred. European Union investigations found that television was regularly used to promote hate against Bosnian and Kosovan Muslims, leading to the atrocities there. So anxieties about hate are far from frivolous or contrived.

Today, we're flooded with news and films addressing the consequences of hatred: Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia, the Holocaust, the recent Kenyan and South African massacres. Yet some people turn around, as if it all meant nothing, and call for unfettered free speech!

If a publication in Iran was promoting hate against Jews (as is the case), would those Canadians opposing human rights commissions in Canada condemn Jews in Iran who complained to Iran's human rights commissions, if any existed? Would they say it's an issue of "free speech" and condemn those commissions?

Have they contemplated what might have been the outcome for millions of Jews had there been -- long before the Nazis -- German commissions with the full authority to confront hate speech, and shut down irresponsible media?

In fact, German hate laws of the time proved abysmally inadequate. That is no longer so. Now they jail anti-Semites, such as Holocaust deniers.

In the years between the two world wars there wasn't any notion of exterminating Jews. But while life seemed "normal," Jews were in fact living the time in which people were gradually being desensitized to hate against Jews. It was the stage when human rights commissions -- had they existed -- could have been most consequential.

No one could have imagined any connection between hate and what came many years later in that civilized nation, a nation no less civilized than Canada is today. But through a gradual, barely noticeable process fuelled by hate, some of those civilized people were unwittingly drawn into the atrocities committed later. Recent reports from Germany confirm how very ordinary people participated in the crimes.

What have 750,000 Muslim Canadians done other than work hard in their corner stores, cabs, or jobs to make a living, care for their families, raise their kids, and do what every other family in Canada does? So why the hate? Simply because there are criminals among them, as is the case with any other group?

Terrorists can never destroy a nation if it remains united against them.

But since hate corrodes the very fabric that holds a nation together, mainstream haters who exploit terrorism to polarize society do more harm than any terrorists will ever achieve.

The 9/11 tragedy and similar events resulted from hate by fringe groups. Yet, instead of being role models for something better, those in the mainstream have become supporters of hate speech, reinforcing that hate is the way to go. Canada didn't fight a horrific war against the Nazis' hatred only to nurture that same hatred here.

Today Canada is able to call itself "civilized" because enlightened Canadians repeatedly challenged wrongs that the rest of the population took for granted. Canada has moved forward and left hate against Chinese behind, left hate against blacks behind, against Jews, Ukrainians, Sikhs, Japanese, and others.

It's unimaginable to ever return to writing or speaking of them in the hateful manner of the past. But Muslims have been left behind. It's time that gratuitous hate against Muslims was replaced with objective debate, free of hate.

There is no place for 'hate speech' in Canada

The following letters were published in the papers (The Record). They are reprinted here with permission from their writers.

The Record's editorial tries to skirt the issue of "hate" by attempting to frame the debate in terms of "freedom of speech."

There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the article in question, written by Mark Steyn and published in Maclean's magazine, is filled with venomous amounts of hate. The article, The Future Belongs To Islam, reads like a dinner table conversation one might have overheard in 1930s Germany, where Nazi party officials discussed the breeding habits and demography of Europe's Jewish population. Disgustingly, this isn't even the worst Steyn has written publicly.

Steyn is against environmentalism, against multiculturalism, wholeheartedly supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and is clearly Islamophobic. His writing and his ideas don't even belong on a hastily-scribbled dinner napkin, much less in a national magazine.

Make no mistake, the issue is not about freedom of speech as The Record would have you believe -- it's about hate, something which is, thankfully, not protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Both the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Canadian Human Rights Commission have already released statements claiming as much. The national body ruled, "Mr. Steyn would have us believe that words, however hateful, should be given free reign. History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred."

Canada has a somewhat unique history of welcoming people of various ethnic origins into the country. There are predominant newcomers represented over different periods of time — right now there are many people coming from Islamic countries. We Canadians like to think of Canada as being multicultural.

However, the article in question, The Future Belongs To Islam, written by Mark Steyn and published in Maclean’s, is pure speculation of the worst kind, that is fear mongering. I’ve heard this fearful outrage expressed many times before while living in Toronto, as the “established’’ ethnic groups often wail at change via immigration.

Steyn’s article reflects the ugly truth that many Canadians are really ethnocentric at best, and thoroughly bigoted at worse.

Through personally knowing several people who are Muslim, including a converted family member, I’ve come to appreciate our many similarities over the differences. I wish more Canadians would embrace the notion that social change is inevitable and that we overcome our fears and prejudices through understanding, not going into siege mode.

The World

Rushdie is no believer in free speech

SIR Salman Rushdie is back in the news. His book Midnight's Children, set during the 1947 partition of India, has received a Booker award for being the best book to have been booked for a Booker award. Or something like that.

Rushdie has also threatened a former British Special Branch officer with libel proceedings. The officer was one of many funded by British taxpayers to protect Rushdie after he received death threats in the late 1980s arising from his novel The Satanic Verses. That novel offended many for its lewd references to religious Biblical and Koranic figures, including Abraham and the wives of the prophet Muhammad.

Jews and Christians were quite restrained in their condemnation of the book. Sadly, a minority of loudmouth Muslims found in the book an excellent excuse to whip up enough hysteria to make their co-religionists into an international laughing stock. The late Ayatollah Khomeini was keen to gain political mileage for his allegedly Islamic revolution by calling for Rushdie to be given a rushed death.

This violently imbecilic response from even some Western Muslims was an affront to free speech, including freedom to offend and collectively lampoon religious sentiment. Overnight, Rushdie became a pin-up boy for a loose coalition of free-speech campaigners and sectarian bigots.

Rushdie lapped up the hysteria, projecting himself as a living martyr to free speech. He happily accepted lavish security arrangements offered by his adopted country to save him from violent religious fundamentalists, at a cost to British taxpayers of millions of pounds.

Now, some two decades on, Rushdie has made his own self an exception to his free-speech fundamentalism. And his target? Ironically, one of his very own taxpayer-funded Special Branch bodyguards.

One of the officers is about to publish a memoir of his working career On Her Majesty's Service. Part of Roy Evans' memoir deals with the period during which he was assigned to protect Rushdie. The Guardian reports that Rushdie is most unhappy with Evans' portrayal of him as "mean, nasty, tight-fisted, arrogant and extremely unpleasant". Evans also claims police nicknamed Rushdie "Scruffy" due to his unkempt appearance, and that Rushdie even charged London police rent for when overnight security was required.

Rushdie's behaviour has left a sour taste for that section of his former backers who were inspired by free speech, and not just sectarian bigotry.

Back in 2005, Rushdie was among prominent English writers and artists opposing proposed laws seeking to outlaw "incitement to hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds". Writing on the Open Democracy website on February 7, 2005, under the headline "Defend the right to be offended," Rushdie wrote: "The idea that any kind of free society can be constructed in which people will never be offended or insulted is absurd. So too is the notion that people should have the right to call on the law to defend them against being offended or insulted … The defence of free speech begins at the point when people say something you can't stand. If you can't defend their right to say it, then you don't believe in free speech."

The free-speech fundamentalist of yesteryear has now taken it upon himself to delay the publication of a book because he feels offended and slighted by its description of him. The implication of his position is simple — the law should leave him free to offend the sensitivities of millions, but should protect him from offence.

Freedom of speech is a fundamental value to emerge from the violent and bloody historical European struggles that produced the "Enlightenment". Another is the rule of law. The law provides remedies to private litigants that impinge on free speech. Rushdie is entitled to take action to protect his own reputation, even if it potentially makes him one of this century's great free speech hypocrites.

At the conclusion of his address to a recent Big Ideas Forum hosted by the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, British sociology professor Frank Ferudi declared that there are no free speech heroes in Europe. He said both the left and the right were selective in their support of free speech, especially when it came to discussing anything relating to religion.

I'm not sure which side of the political divide Rushdie falls into, but his threats against Roy Evans certainly prove that Salman Rushdie is certainly no free-speech hero.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and was awarded the 2007 Allen & Unwin Iremonger Award for public affairs writing.