Paving the way for 'soft jihad' (National Post July 23, 2008)

When Ibn Warraq’s secularist manifesto Why I Am Not a Muslim was released in 1995, a fellow dissident was disappointed to learn the ayatollahs hadn’t called for the author’s head: “It’s such a damn good book, I don’t understand why you haven’t had a fatwa.”

Ayatollah-prescribed fatwas are so pre-9/11. Nowadays, as liberal elites rush prophylactically to ward off charges of tolerating “Islamophobia,” the fatwas (in all but name) against damn good books like Mark Steyn’s America Alone aren’t bruited in mosques; they issue forth from human rights commissioners.

An unintended but all-too-predictable danger inherent in the prosecution of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn (the latter via Maclean’s magazine) was the encouraging message it would send to more fevered imaginations. As reported on his blog on Monday morning, Ezra Levant has received an anonymous e-mail death threat: “Ezra, you will be killed by my hands.”

Although this is doubtless a hollow menace (real killers rarely serve notice), the sender’s wish to sow fear in Levant, and by extension all journalists, is merely a cruder version of the impulse behind the human rights complaints.

Many Canadians believe the nation’s human rights commissions (HRCs) are motivated by high ideals and good intentions. But in conspiring to silence what a handful of Muslims deem “hate speech,” these good intentions are paving the way for the hell of global “soft jihad.”

The soft jihad is gradualistic and law-abiding, but no less desirous of Islamic domination of the West than its violent counterpart. Soft jihad strategy exploits liberal discourse and weaknesses in our legal system to induce guilt about a largely mythical “Islamophobia.”

The list of complaint-triggering speech offences is long in all Western countries, and ranges from the trivial to the politically existential: A decoration on a lid of ice cream distributed by Burger King offends because it resembles Allah in Arabic script; Fox Entertainment’s drama 24 portrays South Americans, Bosnians, Germans and Muslims as terrorists, but only Muslims complain; a Turkish lawyer sues an Italian soccer team because the red cross on their jerseys reminds him of the Crusades.

More alarmingly, this spring a report from the 57-nation strong Organization of the Islamic Conference announced that leaders of Muslim nations “are considering legal action against those that slight our religion or its sacred symbols.” This offensive has the potential to rival the frighteningly successful phenomenon of “libel tourism,” in which Muslim litigants seek out friendly jurisdictions for launching HRC-type fatwas against writers critical of Islamic practices like shariah, or even certifiably Islam-related terrorism.

The most recent case involves the book Funding Evil by Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy and a pioneer investigator of the financial networks that fund terrorism. She has irrefutably proven many networks are Saudi-based.

A billionaire Saudi sheik threatened a libel suit in Britain, where truth is no defence and libel laws are plaintiff-friendly. Ehrenfeld hadn’t the funds to contest, and lost the suit. The decision has hurt her career. Since the British market is now closed to them and they fear future liability, publishers shun her work.

Exactly the same thing could happen to Levant and Steyn if a negative HRC decision chills Canadian publishers and distributors. Steyn is presently poised to defend America Alone in its French translation if an HRC-type fatwa emerges in France — “And I’ll do that in every Western jurisdiction where bullies who can’t withstand free, open debate decide instead to use the legal system to shut the debate down.”

One way or another we must stop the fatwa industry in its tracks. Begin with removal of speech-regulation from the HRCs’ legal mandate. Build on that with legislation that imposes costs and damages on litigious third parties who seek to chill journalists.

Canada should also pass legislation imitative of the U.S. Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) law, presently active in 24 U.S. states, which disallows harassment of those writing on matters of “public concern,” as well as the Libel Terrorism Protection Act, a New York state initiative that will combat libel tourism.

The HRC crisis is not a tempest in a teapot. Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, says: “I don’t think it’s too strong to say that the [HRC] complaint against Mark Steyn is a totalitarian document.”

It is therefore no exaggeration to say that Levant and Steyn are fighting for the defining ideal of Western civilization which, once lost, would spell the beginning of the end of all our other freedoms.

Source: National Post