The Muslim law students who co-opted the Canadian Human Rights Commission in their effort to intimidate Maclean’s magazine do not like to be criticised.  The Ottawa Citizen today printed their letter in response to a recent column in which David Warren pointed out that freedom to express opinions is a hard-won right essential to preserving Canada as a free nation.  They accuse Mr Warren of trying to shut them up and claim that Maclean’s is biased against Islam.

I shudder to think that these men will ever practice law in Canada.  They seem determined to misunderstand the character and import of Canada’s constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and the press.

I [sic] think the vast majority of Canadians would be shocked to know that Canada's national magazine is being used to promote these arguments. Mr. Warren is attempting to shut down a national dialogue on media fairness and human rights by claiming our approach is an attack on free speech. We hope that the irony of this argument is not lost on your readers.

Of course, your approach is an attack on free speech.  That's undeniable.  The only "irony" here is that the litigious Muslim law students fail to apprehend the difference between disagreement and censorship.

Note also the deceptive ambiguity in the phrase "Canada’s national magazine".  Maclean’s may be the most popular news magazine published in Canada, but it does not belong to the nation.  It is a privately owned profit-oriented enterprise; as such, decisions about its content rest with its proprietors and their designated agents.

Freedom of speech is a two-way street.

No one is preventing your exercise of free speech, but freedom of speech does not entail forcing others to use their property and money to air your views.  Hello!

Our decision to seek a remedy from Maclean's through human rights commissions was only in response to the Maclean's editor-in-chief's refusal to grant appropriate space for a response to Mr. Steyn from a mutually acceptable author; Mr. Steyn himself is not a party to our complaints as Mr. Warren asserts.

These guys do not get to decide unilaterally what constitutes "appropriate space" in a privately owned publication.  As editor-in-chief Kenneth Whyte reported three weeks ago, Maclean’s and the whingers complainants had a slight difference of opinion about what would be appropriate.

We continue to hold out hope that Maclean's will return to the table and negotiate a fair opportunity to respond to what we feel is a demonstrated bias against Canadian Muslims.

We feel that our approach is a balanced and responsible use of the various legitimate mechanisms to stand up for our rights to be a part of the national dialogue on issues that are of interest to both Muslims and non-Muslims in Canada.

So, your feelings justify compelling a privately owned publication to print stuff it doesn’t want to?  Why are these men’s feelings so sacred that they "feel" justified using public funds in an attempt to squelch freedom of the press?

If Canadians are given the chance to hear more about this issue, we are confident that they'll agree.

If all you have to offer is using taxpayers’ money to coerce Canadian media to publicise opinion against their will, I can promise you that I, for one, will never agree.

Freedom of the press is a rare and valuable thing—far too valuable to be tossed aside because a few law students don’t like what they read.

h/t: Dr Mabuse at The Kraalspace

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