Excerpt:
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."