I just got this in an email. It warrants the attention of all who value Freedom of Speech, Thought, and Belief.
Dear Western Standard reader,
Our magazine has been sued for publishing the Danish cartoons, and I need
your help to fight back!
As you know, the Western Standard was the only mainstream media organ in
Canada to publish the Danish cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammed.
We did so for a simple reason: the cartoons were the central fact in one of
the largest news stories of the year, and we're a news magazine. We publish the
facts and we let our readers make up their minds.
Advertisers stood with us. Readers loved the fact that we treated them like
grown-ups. And we earned the respect of many other journalists in Canada who
envied our independence. In fact, according to a COMPAS poll last month, fully
70% of Canada's working journalists supported our decision to publish the
cartoons.
But not Syed Soharwardy, a radical Calgary Muslim imam.
He asked the police to arrest me for publishing the cartoons. They calmly
explained to him that's not what police in Canada do.
So then he went to a far less liberal institution than the police: the
Alberta Human Rights Commission. Unlike the Calgary Police Service, they didn't
have the common sense to show him the door.
Earlier this month, I received a copy of Soharwardy's rambling, hand-scrawled
complaint. It is truly an embarrassing document. He briefly complains that we
published the Danish cartoons. But the bulk of his complaint is that we dared to
try to justify it - that we dared to disagree with him.
Think about that: In Soharwardy's view, not only should the Canadian media be
banned from publishing the cartoons, but we should be banned from defending our
right to publish them. Perhaps the Charter of Rights that guarantees our freedom
of the press should be banned, too.
Soharwardy's complaint goes further than just the cartoons. It refers to news
articles we published about Hamas, a group labelled a terrorist organization by
the Canadian government. By including those other articles, he shows his real agenda: censoring any criticism of Muslim extremists.
Perhaps the most embarrassing thing about Soharwardy's complaint is that he
claims our cartoons caused him to receive hate mail. Indeed, his complaint
includes copies of a few e-mails from strangers to him. Some of those e-mails
even go so far as to call him "humourless" and tell him to "lighten up". Perhaps
that's hateful. But all of those e-mails were sent to him before our magazine
even published the cartoons. Soharwardy isn't even pretending that this is a
legitimate complaint. He's not even trying to hide that this is a nuisance suit.
Soharwardy's complaint should have been thrown out immediately by the Alberta
Human Rights Commission, just like the police did. But it wasn't. Which is why
I'm writing to you today.
According to our lawyers, we will win this case. It's an infantile complaint,
without basis in facts or law. Frankly, it's an embarrassment to the government
of Alberta that their tribunal is open to abuse like this.
Our lawyers tell us we're going to win. But not before we have to spend hundreds
of hours and up to $75,000 fighting this thing, at our own expense. Soharwardy
doesn't have to spend a dime - now that his complaint has been filed, Alberta
tax dollars will pay for the prosecution of his complaint. We have to pay for
this on our own.
Look, $75,000 isn't going to bankrupt us. But it will sting. We're a small,
independent magazine, not a huge company with deep pockets. All of our money is
needed to produce the best possible editorial product, not to fight legal
battles. This is clearly an abuse of process designed to punish us and deter
other media from daring to cross that angry imam in the future.
One of the leaders in Canadian human rights law, Alan Borovoy, was so
disturbed by Soharwardy's abuse of the human rights commission that he wrote a
public letter about it in the Calgary Herald on March 16th. "During the years
when my colleagues and I were labouring to create such commissions, we never
imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech," wrote Borovoy,
who is general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Censorship
was "hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions. There
should be no question of the right to publish the impugned cartoons," he wrote.
Borovoy went even further - he said that the human rights laws should be
changed to avoid this sort of abuse in the future. "It would be best, therefore,
to change the provisions of the Human Rights Act to remove any such ambiguities
of interpretation," he wrote. That's an amazing statement, coming from one of
the fathers of the Canadian human rights movement.
I agree with Borovoy: the law should be changed to stop future abuses. But
those changes will come too late for us - we're already under attack. The human
rights laws, designed as a shield, are being used against us as a sword.
We will file our legal response to Soharwardy's shakedown this week. And we
will fight this battle to the end - not just for our own sake, but to defend freedom of the press for
all Canadians.
Do you believe that's important? If so, I'd ask you to help us defray our
costs. We're accepting donations through our website. It's fast, easy and
secure. Just click on http://www.westernstandard.ca/freedom
You can donate any amount from $10 to $10,000. Please help the Western
Standard today - and protect freedom for all Canadians for years to come.
Yours gratefully,
Ezra Levant
Publisher
P.S. Remember, Soharwardy's complaint will be prosecuted using tax dollars and
government lawyers. We have to rely on our own funds - and the generous support
of readers like you.
P.P.S. Please help us now, at
http://www.westernstandard.ca/freedom
This is not an isolated case, consider it part of the Litigable Jihad Cox & Forkum have a lot more on this subject
I think I will chip in about what I spend on soda pop at work in one week after all as Michelle Malkin says in"Free Speech isn't free."
Posted by ky/kentuckydan
at 2:18 AM CST
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Updated: Thursday, 30 March 2006 6:04 PM CST
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Updated: Thursday, 30 March 2006 6:04 PM CST