Levant's Felton Strategy Falls Flat. Could This--Awan's Words in a Queen's U Publication--Have Helped?

In her latest report about the Levant libel trial, Christie Blatchford mentions that Greg Felton, "a B.C. blogger and freelance journalist" who has some, ahem, interesting views re 9/11 and the Joooish lobby, appeared as a video witness--for the defense. Felton seems an odd choice to help bolster the case of the man who is perhaps the mouthiest conservative Jew in the land, but, as Blatchford notes, the B.C. writer interviewed Khurrum Awan, the dude suing Levant, nearly six years ago for Canadian Arab News. During the course of that interview, Awan patted himself on the back for, essentially, losing the "human rights" commission battles but winning the larger war. The three Muslim law students, he said, had "attained our strategic objective--to increase the cost of publishing anti-Islamic material."

Awan has since stated that he never said any such thing, but Levant and his defense thought that this assertion was crucial to their case. Unfortunately, Felton has written so many other things that are, shall we say, unreliable, some of which were read out in the courtroom, that, notes Blatchford, "it's dubious how much weight his evidence can be given" by the judge.

Instead of relying on Felton's testimony, perhaps the defense should have included this. It's from an account of a talk Awan gave at Queen's University that appeared in the Queen's Journal in January, 2009. Awan was so proud of it that he posted it on his website (my emphases):

Lawyer Khurrum Awan speaks to a crowd of about 30 in Biosciences Complex on Wednesday. (Emma Kreiner)

Khurrum Awan may not have won his human rights complaints against Maclean’s magazine, but said he’s happy people are still talking about its effects two years later.

“It was to raise awareness on the issue of media defamation, the exclusion of Muslim voices and the lack of oversight of media,” he said...

The lack of oversight, eh? Yeah, I can see how that might get your goat--or should I say sheep?

An article published in Maclean’s in October 2006 called “The Future Belongs to Islam,” by Mark Steyn, was the basis of the complaints.

Steyn wrote that the demographics in predominantly Muslim countries suggest the Muslim population will rise to overtake European populations, creating a breeding ground for more jihadist activity.

This view paints a monolithic picture of Islamic communities that doesn’t account for differences within them, Awan said, adding that the term “jihad” was also misused.

There were 21 other articles Maclean’s published between January 2005 and July 2007 that were also mentioned in the complaints, he said.

Maclean’s published another story by Steyn in April 2006 where he cited the Quran out of context and called Muslims “sheep-shaggers,” Awan said.

They filed the cases as a last resort because they weren’t given an opportunity to respond to the controversial pieces, he said...

He took the Quran out of context and "misused" jihad, did he? How dare the uppity infidel do such a thing!

As for the "sheep-shaggers" claim--I don't know if Awan's misrepresentation of Steyn's words (as has been well documented, it was the late Ayatollah Khomeini who touted the inter-species hanky-panky) rises to the level of libel. At the very least, though, it merits an Awanian apology to Levant's co-champion of free speech, that most non-Islamic of concepts, and one which the Pakistan-born Awan (with his yen for more "oversight of media") still seems to have trouble wrapping his bald noggin around.

Update: "It is emphatically not about censorship," wrote the Muslim law students in this op-ed piece for Canada's largest circulation newspaper, The Toronto Star. It's about "citizens of a free democracy [who] need to have faith in the 'free marketplace of ideas'" and who "need to trust the power of more and better speech to defeat the harm of discriminatory and hateful speech."

Oh, you mean like having the freedom to bring your ideas to market by placing your op-ed piece in the Canadian newspaper with the largest circulation?

Hey, works for me.

But since, obviously, it is about censorship--or "the lack of oversight of media," as Awan euphemized it--one can understand why they resorted to our victimhood-crazed "human rights" system to do their heavy lifting.