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Media attacks against Human Rights Commissions in this country have continued non-stop since the Canadian Islamic Congress's case against Maclean's magazine was made public earlier this year.

But where were all those defenders of free speech in 1998, when a representative of the Canadian Jewish community filed a complaint with the BC Human Rights Commission against North Shore News columnist Doug Collins?

The Commission ordered Collins to pay $2000 in damages to the complainant for "injury to his dignity, feelings and self-respect." The Commission also ordered the North Shore News to cease publishing statements that expose Jews "to hatred and contempt."

A lawyer with the Canadian Jewish Congress was quoted by the Jewish Independent on December 21, 2001 as saying the decision reflects Canadian legal precedents which recognize that certain types of speech are not legally permissible, especially if they are seen to cause public harm.

Similarly, where were all those defenders of free speech when the Canadian magazine Catholic Insight recently faced a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission alleging it made derogatory comments about homosexuals?

Rob Wells' complaint alleged that Catholic Insight had portrayed homosexuals as being a powerful menace and innately evil, and that the magazine had used inflammatory and derogatory language to create a tone of "extreme hatred and contempt."

Since 9/11, however, Canadian Muslims have been the number-one minority group demonized in the public square, in books, in print and broadcast media, on movie screens, and increasingly on the Internet and World Wide Web with the explosive proliferation of single-focus sites and blogs where hate-speech is still vastly unregulated.

The recent smearing of a Canadian institution like our Human Rights Commissions by Islamophobes who claim to be "protecting free speech," is a classic case of chopped logic. They seem to have forgotten that reconciling two potentially conflicting legal rights that are also human rights -- the right to be free from group defamation and hate speech and the principle of freedom of expression -- is not a new challenge, nor is it an easy one.

The vast majority of Western countries - with the notable exception of the U.S. -- now have laws prohibiting group defamation and hate speech. Even in the U.S., many legal experts agree that hate speech should not be classified as constitutionally protected speech; it does not merit the respect of the First Amendment and it should not be protected in international law or under the constitutional law of any country.

Group defamation and hate speech are forms of abuse directed intentionally at specific minority communities, or at individuals belonging to those communities; it includes defamatory utterances based on race, nationality, ethnic origin, sex, and religion.

The inclusion of group defamation and hate speech as a defined illegal act in Canada dates back to 1934.

Manitoba enacted a group libel statute and a cause of action was filed against the Canadian Nationalist, which in its October 30, 1934 edition published two articles: "The Murdering Jew, Jewish Murder" and the "The Night of Murder, Secret Purim Festival." An injunction was issued against publishing further statements against Jews.

Canadian human rights and criminal codes have since gone through many changes to ensure that group defamation and hate speech cases, such as the Manitoba one of 1934 against Jews, are fully addressed by the laws of our land.

Given such precedents, four Canadian Muslim law students and the Canadian Islamic Congress launched human rights complaints last year against Maclean's magazine with respect to its October 2006 article, "The Future Belongs to Islam," written by Mark Steyn.

The basic premise of Mr. Steyn's article is that, just as the "white man settled the Indian territory," Muslims in the West are poised to take over entire societies and the "only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be." Once the ominously predicted transfer occurs, Steyn's article implies, citizens will be subjected to oppressive Islamic law.

The impending Muslim takeover is in turn attributed to immigration and multiculturalism, which have resulted in Muslims flooding into Western societies and enjoying far too much freedom of movement. The flood, the freedom of movement, and the fact that "enough" Muslims share the goals of terrorists -- the imposition of Islamic Law -- mean that the Muslim takeover is inevitable.

The law students met with senior Maclean's editors to propose that the magazine publish a balanced response to Mr. Steyn's article from a mutually acceptable source. The response was that Maclean's "would rather go bankrupt." No offer to consider a reasonable proposal was made; hence the submission of their complaints to the Human Rights Commission to address their case of group defamation.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission declined to hear the case, however, because its code does not cover publications that include printed magazines. But in a rare public statement, the Commission rightly noted that "[t]his type of media coverage has been identified as contributing to Islamophobia and promoting societal intolerance towards Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Canadians" and further noted the "serious harm that such writings cause, both to the targeted communities and society as a whole."

The BC Human Rights Commission finished hearing the case earlier this month and the decision on whether the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission will hear the case is still pending.

After the BC hearings, Brian Strader in the Vancouver Province wrote of Mark Steyn's article that "It's the closest thing to Nazi and anti-Jewish posters I have seen. Nazi propaganda was meant to show that Jews were a threat. The current analogy with an ‘Islamic threat' is truly chilling ... I think Muslims have a right to be nervous. Freedom of speech is not an absolute. It never was. The lessons of history are too conveniently forgotten for the sake of profit."

Islamophobes are perhaps hoping that the HRCs will declare to the effect that "Muslims need not apply." Or, if this is too embarrassing, they may campaign to have hate speech articles in the human rights code abolished. The so-called free speech lobby is already trying.

(Dr. Mohamed Elmasry is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. He can be reached at np@canadianislamiccongress.com)

Re: Edward Greenspan's editorial ("Administrative fatwa issued," June 16, 2008)

My clients are the three law students who launched the human rights complaint against Maclean's magazine in regard to its publication of "The Future Belongs to Islam," by Mark Steyn. The article speaks about the increasing Muslim demographic in the West and what Steyn states will be inevitable: a civil war in which entire societies will be subjected to an oppressive and violent form of Islam.

Muslims are described as "hot for jihad" and supportive of the goals of terrorism, and the relationship between the West's Muslims and non-Muslims is compared to the "white man's" violent settling of "Injun" territory.

When told Maclean's would rather "go bankrupt" than negotiate a counter view- article, my clients did what countless other groups before them have done; they took their complaint to the human rights tribunal.

The matter was heard in B.C. last week. The complaint has not been adjudicated, yet individuals like Greenspan have personally attacked and vilified my clients for simply raising the issue.

Greenspan states that he is "embarrassed" by these law students who attended the same law school as he. I and others am embarrassed when a prominent member of the bar confesses that he has fallen asleep during high-profile criminal trials. I am also embarrassed by the number of factual inaccuracies in Greenspan's editorial.

This is not merely offensive speech. At the very least, it is harmful, racist speech. The Ontario Human Rights Commission has condemned Steyn's article as "Islamophobic," "xenophobic" and "destructive."

Doubts about the subtext of the article are put to rest when we consider the book from which it comes, where Steyn writes: "In a democratic age, you can't buck demography -- except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out -- as other continentals will in the years ahead: if you can't outnumber the enemy, cull 'em."

Greenspan believes there is no need to suppress hateful speech, but our Supreme Court strongly disagrees when it indicated that hate speech is anti-democratic; by labelling a targeted group as inferior, we hinder their meaningful participation in society.

My clients do not want censorship. They agree the remedy for discriminatory and hateful speech is more and better speech. But this proposed remedy works only if media are prepared to include the views of identifiable communities when those communities are the subject of discussion. By excluding these views, while at the same time providing extensive coverage of inflammatory and racist views towards them, the results are widespread stereotyping, prejudice and hatred.

My clients' aim is not to "punish" anyone. Rather, they have pursued their complaint through the legitimate mechanism of a human rights tribunal, which the Supreme Court recognizes as an effective way of dealing with hateful speech based on its focus on repairing the harm, rather than on punishment.

My clients are not upset that more individuals have sought out and are discussing the article. My clients have achieved through their complaint what they always set out to create: a debate about the merits of such material. Hopefully, with the assistance of the B.C. tribunal, the public will finally have both sides of the issue.

As one lawyer to another, I have difficulty seeing what is so "embarrassing" to Greenspan. I have never seen him embarrassed when members of his own faith group complain to the same human rights tribunals. Is it the double standard that is embarrassing to him? (Faisal Joseph of London, Ont., is counsel for the complainants against Maclean's magazine. This article was edited and slightly abridged for the Canadian Islamic Congress Friday Magazine.)

In stating that Islamists who have a problem with free speech should leave, Tarek Fatah enlightened National Post readers with the kind of name-calling he directs at anyone with whom he disagrees. That represents a large number of people and Muslims across Canada have grown accustomed to his diatribes. This time around, the target was Khurrum Awan, our colleague and fellow "sock-puppet" (as we have come to be known!) in our human rights complainants against Maclean's magazine.

According to Fatah, by filing a human rights complaint and calling upon Muslims to demand a representative voice in Canadian media, this law student qualifies as an "Islamist" allied with the likes of Osama bin Laden.

Fatah's muddled rant reminds us of a December 3 press release about our complaints that was issued by Fatah's Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) - a marginal organization consisting of five individuals and a coffee table. The release stated: "Mark Steyn's piece was definitely alarmist, but the answer to his challenge is to write a counter-piece and demand that Maclean's publish it." Of course, we had already asked Maclean's for a counter-piece -- nine months earlier, in fact -- and had been refused. But verifying facts is not a quality Fatah's crew is known for.

But Fatah wasn't done yet. Following the Ontario Human Rights Commission statement condemning Maclean's for its Islamophobic content, Fatah told the Post that the statement was the work of "hardline Islamic supporters of Islamic extremism" employed by the Commission. That same day, Fatah's MCC issued yet another press release informing Canadians that the Commission's statement was "cause for celebration in Osama bin Laden's cave and among the soldiers of the world Jihadi movement."

Apart from the evident ridiculousness of these assertions, it is interesting that Fatah has such insight into the activities underway in "Osama's cave." How very interesting... Perhaps a lengthy interview with CSIS is in order.

On a more serious note, Fatah's name-calling detracts from the real issue, which is the exclusion of Muslim voices from our national media in a context where Islam and Muslims have become a regular subject of discussion. One would think that if Muslims were a topic of interest, our national media would want to provide some coverage of their perspectives.

In fact, the only Muslim columnists providing some informed perspective on Muslim-related issues are Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star and Sheema Khan of the Globe and Mail. Ms. Khan's column is published only monthly, and both columnists are frequently subjected to abuse from the likes of Fatah. On the other side of the equation, newspapers across Canada employ multiple commentators providing regular, right-wing analysis of Muslims and Islam.

And that is our point: anti-Muslim prejudice is growing in Canada because of pieces like the one that Maclean's published, which led to our human rights complaints in a context where there is an absence of Muslim (or other) voices to challenge the material in question. The limitless free speech model - that the solution to harmful and hateful speech is more and better speech - does not work for minority communities, and our complaints illustrate exactly that. Maclean's still refuses to publish a response to just one of more than twenty articles that even the Ontario Human Rights Commission condemned as Islamophobic.

And that is why free speech should not be limitless in our democracy. Section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that all rights in our democracy are subject to reasonable limits. The Supreme Court of Canada (not a "bunch of Islamists" by any stretch of imagination!) properly recognized that free speech is not limitless when it comes to upholding our criminal and human rights laws regulating hate speech. In imposing these limits, the Supreme Court noted that hate speech undermines the equality rights and multicultural heritage guaranteed in our Charter.

If, however, our media would like speech to be limitless, it has an obligation to cover the views of the community it is talking about.

(This article was slightly edited for the Canadian Islamic Congress Friday Magazine.)

According to some journalists, freedom of speech is in peril in Canada. And human rights commissions are "kangaroo courts."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Only genuine misunderstanding or deliberate distortion can explain the media's mostly one-sided discourse on the case of Maclean's before the federal, as well as the Ontario and British Columbia, human rights commissions. The group that filed the complaint against the magazine argued that a series of articles, especially a 4,800-word piece portraying Muslims as a menace to the West, may have constituted hate speech.

Canada has followed a different path on free speech than the United States, where there are no anti-hate laws because the U.S. Bill of Rights says "Congress shall make no laws ... abridging freedom of speech or of the press."

The Canadian Charter of Rights, too, guarantees "freedom of the press," but it places "reasonable limits" on it. That's why the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the anti-hate provisions of both the Criminal Code and human rights statutes.

What constitutes hate is up to the commissions and, ultimately, the courts to decide. But this being Canada, different jurisdictions tackle the issue differently.

The federal commission and the one in Ontario do not hear complaints against the media. But others, as in Alberta and British Columbia, do.

That's not the only anomaly.

Ontario deals with hateful signs and pamphlets. You may be dragged before the commission for holding up a sign that says, "Kill all Muslims," but you won't be if you were to write that in a newspaper or a magazine (even though you would have reached a wider audience).

Another anomaly is that the federal commission was mandated to deal with hate transmitted by phone. In 2001, it added the Internet. It did not foresee media websites.

Thus a conundrum arises for the commission: it cannot sit in judgment on what the media say in print, but it can when they put the same material on their websites.

This being Canada, the commission has appointed a commission. Professor Richard Moon of the University of Windsor was asked earlier this month to come up with a solution.

Yet, despite the jurisdictional inconsistencies, grey legal zones and the difficulty of balancing free speech and hate, the system has worked reasonably well.

Complaints are weighed and either rejected or referred to a tribunal, which holds hearings, and whose findings can be appealed to the courts.

The federal commission gets up to 15,000 inquiries a year, says Jennifer Lynch, chair. "We take up only about 700 and refer only about 70 or 80 to the tribunal.

"Hate cases are only 2 per cent of that stream. The tribunal has dealt with only about 15 hate cases, so far. And not a single one of them has been overturned by the courts." So, why the hue and cry?

Karim Karim, chair of Carleton University's School of Journalism, says journalists are "fixated on their own rights and privileges ... What about the rights of people to be free of discriminatory and hateful speech? Journalists talk about one principle, and not the other."

Barbara Hall, chair of the Ontario commission, makes the same point: "Freedom of expression is not the only right in the Charter. There is a full set of rights accorded to all members of our society, including freedom from discrimination ... If you want to stand up and defend the right to freedom of expression, then you must be willing to do the same for the right to freedom from discrimination."

Anti-hate laws could be made consistent across Canada by exempting the media, as in Ontario, or axing the anti-hate provisions altogether. We may even adopt the American system and remove the anti-hate section from the Criminal Code as well.

Many disagree, including the Canadian Jewish Congress. Its head, Bernie Farber, says the anti-hate laws have helped make Canada "the warm, tolerant and accepting nation that it has become."

Beyond the law, there's self-restraint. Most media exercise it, every day. We do not publish racist cartoons and anti-Semitic rants. That Maclean's chose to publish a series of virulent articles about Muslims, however, speaks volumes.

(This article was slightly edited for the Canadian Islamic Congress Friday Magazine.)

Introduction to Ethics and Ethical Assertions:

Ethics is the reason why God Almighty sent Muhammad, the Uswatun Hasanah - or "best example" -- (Qur'an 33:21) with the special mission of perfecting the ethics of humanity. Muhammad (pbuh) said: "It is but for the perfection of ethics (Akhlaq) that I was sent." (Imam Malik)

Ethics is the science or discipline that guides the conduct of human beings, both personally and in society. Ethics allows us to discern, within a faith context, whether our conduct is good or bad, right or wrong. Some have defined ethics as "obedience to the unenforceable," but I define it from the perspective of Islamic formative principles as one's highest level of human expression through faith, the expression on which our very survival depends.

"Ethics is not a luxury or an option," the Dalai Lama has wisely affirmed. "It is essential for the survival of humanity."

Some Assertions about Contemporary Ethics: I believe I can claim some authority to comment on contemporary ethics, for as one born into the so-called postwar "baby boomer" generation, I have seen the results of ethical crises in our world first-hand. And what I have observed tells me that we are unlikely to survive the 21st century on the basis of our 20th-century ethics (or lack of thereof!).

Certainly, we all remember the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in the former Soviet Union and the widespread human and environmental catastrophe it created. That night in 1986, two electrical -- not nuclear -- engineers were in charge of the control room. They knew about the dangers of playing with nuclear power, yet they chose to perform a dangerous unauthorized experiment and even continued doing so after several warnings from the plant's computerized alarm system.

The resulting explosion and its aftermath killed thousands of Soviets in the immediate area, while fallout from Chernobyl was detected in virtually every country on earth with technology capable of sensing atmospheric radioactivity. For more than two decades we have all been made aware of the effects of this unprecedented disaster, but my burning question is: What was going on in the minds of those two engineers? To work in that environment they must have been intelligent and competent enough to know what they were doing. Thus, if knowledge was all that mattered, they would have been capable of handling their critical responsibilities. So, what went wrong? I am not alone in believing that it wasn't stupidity or incompetence that blew up Chernobyl -- it was a lack of ethics, a lack of basic morality.

The same symptoms can be seen behind so many problems and conflicts around the globe. Why did the war in Afghanistan happen? Why Iraq? Why Palestine? And why the tearing apart of Bosnia and Kosovo, right in the heart of Europe? What caused the unthinkable disasters of September 11, 2001? Again, I believe it was not a lack of knowledge or, especially, of technology. These ongoing tragedies owe their root causes to a fundamental lack of human ethics.

Now you might be saying to yourself, "I am not like that; the people I know, love and associate with are not like that; and besides, how can we police the morality of people thousands of miles away?" Let us just stop and think for a few moments...

Think about the senseless aggression against Bosnians in Bosnia and Herzegovina; think about the devastation of Srebrenica, where more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Serbs right before the eyes of our so-called modern, democratic world. Think about thousands of gang- raped Bosnian mothers, sisters, daughters, not to mention the unfortunate children resulting from such heinous violations.

Think about the chronic injustice weighing down millions of Palestinians in the Middle East. Think about the senseless invasion of Afghanistan and the daily reports of that country's destruction and despair. Think about Iraq, gutted by unfair sanctions, decimated by American-led aggression.

Think again about the shock and terror of September 11, and about those who chose to perform deliberate acts of violence, injustice and mass-murder. And think about the administration of George Bush Jr., and his government's role in so much of this world's suffering -- including that of America itself.

Many of those behind these atrocities were/are intellectual elites of the aggressors.

It was never mere lack of knowledge that fuelled all this craziness. And, deep down in our hearts, we know it; but we turn a blind eye and hope the discomfort and fear will somehow go away. It was, and still is, a basic lack of ethics that is responsible for today's rising tide of violence, fear - and paranoia. That is why I stated earlier that it would be difficult to survive the 21st century with the ethics of the 20th century. Something must change significantly, deeply, and positively, in order to initiate and nurture a collective move to bring peace to all who inhabit our planet.

This brings me to a second major claim about contemporary ethics: that is, we are in bad shape and we know it, yet we are not ready to promote the changes that will save us. Like many of you, I often ask myself; Why? Where are our ethical barometers or indicators? Can we even find the map of our human journey anymore?

I acknowledge that there are indeed some good signs in the world, but they are not enough when the overwhelming trend seems to be in a negative direction.

* * *

-- To be continued --

(This article was edited for the Canadian Islamic Congress Friday Magazine)

When U.S. forces descended on Baghdad five years ago, they seemed unstoppable. American military arrogance had reached an all time high, and it seemed only a matter of time before the same frenzied scenario took place in Teheran, Damascus, and elsewhere.

As it turned out, festivities began dwindling almost as soon as they were announced. One could argue that the day Saddam's statue was toppled was the same day the U.S. army embarked on its real battle in Iraq -- one that continues to hinder long-term strategic planning, if not the entire U.S. Middle East project.

Five years of continuous blood-letting may have somewhat toned down George Bush's expectations. The uncompromising crusader who once vowed to fight tyranny at any cost is now trying to secure a treaty to indefinitely secure U.S. interests in Iraq. His administration may be hoping to achieve the best possible outcome from the worst possible situation.

Co-opting the UN has helped to lend temporary legitimacy to the occupation. The international body, once rendered irrelevant, became a major hub for American diplomacy in seeking to legitimize the occupation of a country that refuses to concede. But even willing Iraqi leaders, perfectly rehearsed elections, and mass suppressions, have failed to bring about the desired stability.

The White House, State Department and military have all offered endless predictable talk about democracy, freedom, liberty and security in order to woo an increasingly agitated American public. But U.S. action on the ground speaks of another reality: an imperial quest, marked by excessive violence, blatant flouting of international law, disregard for the national sovereignty of Iraq, and similar disregard for the human rights of its citizens.

Now the Bush administration is ready to crown its Iraq travesty with a long-term strategy that would turn Iraq's occupation into a lasting one. The U.S. is "negotiating" a treaty with the Iraqi government, one that would replace the UN mandate and legalize the permanent American occupation of Iraq.

The reality is that time is running out for Bush. If no treaty is reached by the end of the year, his administration could find itself pleading with the UN Security Council for another extension of its mandate - a potentially embarrassing and dangerous scenario for U.S. diplomacy, as it would allow Russia and China to re-emerge as important players wielding fearsome veto powers. By signing a long-term treaty, however, the Bush administration would pre-empt action by any future democratic president of Iraq.

When the UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq in November 2005, America celebrated the decision as a sign of international commitment to Iraq's political transition.

John Bolton, then U.S. ambassador to the UN, repeatedly lambasted the UN and now saw "the unanimous adoption of this resolution (as) a vivid demonstration of broad international support for a federal, democratic, pluralistic and unified Iraq." After this, the Pentagon said that the US "planned to cut the numbers of troops next year." Since then, the opposite has happened. Iraqi troops botched their first serious test by proving themselves unable to crack down on the Al Mahdi army, and U.S. forces grew in numbers.

In order for the U.S. to sign a long-term strategic treaty with Iraq, it needs a level of stability. The military should be able to macro-manage Iraq as troops relocate to their permanent bases, which now number 50 according to a report by Patrick Cockburn in the UK Independent. Meanwhile, their Iraqi allies would preserve the illusion of sovereignty in dealing with day-to-day life in Iraq. America's dilemma is that this coveted stability is nowhere in sight.

Iraqis are, unsurprisingly, furious about U.S. expectations from the proposed treaty. According to Cockburn, "Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which U.S. troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilize Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country."

Iraqi cabinet spokesman Ali Al Dabbagh was quoted by Iraqi TV as saying that his government will not compromise Iraq's sovereignty and is committed to "safeguarding Iraq's full sovereignty in line with international resolutions."

Although it is difficult to believe in Prime Minister Al Maliki's commitment to "full sovereignty," one cannot underestimate the pressure he faces in parliament -- fractious alliances, nationalists from various backgrounds, an unstable Shia front, and skeptical Sunni leadership. The Al Jazeera satellite TV network reported on how two of these legislators testified to the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that "U.S. troops should leave Iraq before talks on a long term security pact could be completed."

Khalaf Al-Ulayyan, founder of the National Dialogue Council wants talks delayed "until there is a new administration in the United States," the exact scenario that the Bush administration is hoping to avoid. The U.S. in fact wants an agreement by July, one that would be hard to reverse, even by a Democratic Party president.

To avoid embarrassment, "it's entirely possible that the Bush Administration, sometime this summer, will force the hapless regime of Prime Minister Maliki to submit to a U.S. diktat on a US-Iraq accord," says Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation. And, "If Maliki signs the accord, and ignores the opposition from parliament, he would instantly lose whatever remaining credibility he has left as an Iraqi leader," which would lead to more violence in Iraq on the eve of U.S. presidential elections. "Not a pleasant scenario," Dreyfuss adds.

One can argue that no pleasant scenarios are possible in Iraq at any time under an American military presence. Iraq's past treasures were squandered immediately after its "liberation" by U.S. forces, and its present is haunted by bloodshed and uncertainty. The Bush administration now wants to ensure that the country's future is also compromised by violence, humiliation and war.

(Ramzy Baroud, www.ramzybaroud.net is an author and editor of www.PalestineChronicle.com His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle, is published by Pluto Press, London. - This article was edited for the Canadian Islamic Congress Friday Magazine.)