"They Sure Didn't Strike Me As a Bunch of Wild-Eyed Radicals Looking to Shake Down a Magazine"

That's Christie Blatchford on the two then-law students who had a problems with the content and tone of a slew of Maclean's Magazine articles back in '06 (especially this one) and who, under the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress, took a meeting with the magazine's then-editor to complain. They were hoping to commandeer the magazine so that it would present an opposing viewpoint--i.e. theirs. When the editor balked, they did the Canadian thing and took their grievances to a few of Canada's "human rights" bodies. Sadly for them, that didn't pan out either and one of the then-students, now a fully-fledged attorney practicing in Regina, took to a real court of law to complain that Ezra Levant, who didn't write for Maclean's, had libeled him in a variety of ways.

Ms. Blatchford is accurate when she says that neither Khurrum Awan, the guy who's suing Levant, nor Naseem Mithoowani, one of the other then-law students involved in that long-ago "human rights" ruckus and now a witness for the Awan prosecution, look like a wild-eyed radical. But then, a bunch of wild-eyed radicals wouldn't bother trying to shake down a magazine. They would burn down the premises and/or shoot the editor. 

That's a reality that some Muslims who are neither wild-eyed nor violent--who, indeed, are educated and articulate and well-groomed--would prefer not to publicize. But since Canada still has free speech, they don't get to control the free flow of information.

Not yet, anyway.

 

Update: What's going on with the Canadian Islamic Congress? It has been oddly silent of late, and a quick perusal of its website reveals that nothing new has been posted in quite some time. (The most recent item I could find dates from January '13.)

 

Is the thing still up and running, or has it gone the CASMO route, and quietly faded away?

 

Update: Maclean's may have refused to print a rebuttal by the aggrieved law students in the body of its magazine, but there was plenty of other support for the Sock triad in the mainstream media (including repeated high-fives by the Toronto Star's Harpoon Siddiqui) and from "human rights" professionals. Awan well knows that, since he took the trouble to post much of it here.

 

Update: Avowed non-anti-Semite is shocked--shocked!--to hear he was the young face of an anti-Semitic organization.

 

Update: Khurrum Awan and Michael Mann sing Dan Hill's biggest (only?) hit:

 

Sometimes when we sue

We know just what to do

And we have to SLAPP our foes

Without delay.

 

We have to litigate today

Because of what they say.

We have to sue 'em

So a judge'll make 'em pay.