Were they not inexorably entwined in the mock trial of Maclean’s magazine and the attempt to limit legal expression of opinion in this country, the four legal amigos seated at the B. C. Human Rights Tribunal’s table of complaints would almost be pitiable. Not pitiful.
Faisal Joseph is a former Crown counsel now in private practice, and the lawyer in charge of bringing two human rights complaints against Maclean’s, “on behalf of all the Muslim residents of the province of British Columbia.”
That alone is ludicrous. Presumptuous. And false. The province’s Muslim community was not canvassed prior to the proceedings. It did not endorse Mr. Joseph’s mission. Indeed, aside from Mr. Joseph and his legal assistants, only a few Muslims have attended the hearing, taking place this week inside a B. C. provincial courtroom.
But proof has no relevance at this Tribunal; one may claim anything.
The only named complainants are two Muslim men: Canadian Islamic Congress president Mohamed Elmasry, of Waterloo, Ont., and Naiyer Habib, recently of Saskatchewan, and now of B. C.. Only Mr. Habib has bothered to show up, but he refuses to discuss with reporters the hearing and its implications. So there he sits, behind the counsel table, alone in his thoughts.
At least Mr. Joseph has some company on the front line: Three young law students, fresh from Osgoode Hall in Toronto, all of them eager to assist in the effort to prosecute Maclean’s magazine in B. C. for its publication almost two years ago of a 4,800-word book excerpt, allegedly hateful and Islamophobic, written by acerbic journalist Mark Steyn.
The law students had tried to negotiate some sort of settlement agreement with Maclean’s prior to this hearing, the Tribunal heard yesterday. That failed; now they conduct “research.” We learned they surf the Internet, cross referencing Mr. Steyn and his Maclean’s excerpt with anonymously written posts about Islam. They hand to Mr. Joseph documents that he attempts to enter as evidence -- mostly unsuccessfully. They fill his plastic water glass; he ignores it.
Yesterday, as on Monday, one of the three students served as a Tribunal witness. Khurrum Awan was called upon to interpret Mr. Steyn’s words. Counsel for Maclean’s objected to this bit of multi-role playing, asking what relevance Mr. Awan’s personal views might have to the issue at hand. But that was overruled.
Cross examination, handled by high-priced Toronto lawyer Julian Porter, was mercifully brief. Even in direct Mr. Awan hadn’t much to say. He hadn’t much chance. Most of yesterday’s proceedings moved at a snail’s pace, thanks to arguments over Mr. Joseph’s purported evidence.
He seemed intent on entering written material that had little, if anything, to do with the Steyn book excerpt published in Maclean’s. Mr. Joseph first tried to promote a “poll” about attitudes toward Muslims, and then have law student Mr. Awan interpret its meaning for the Tribunal.
Mr. Awan is not a polling expert. But the real trouble, noted Maclean’s lawyer Roger McConchie, was that the “poll” was, in fact, a news article, gleaned from the Ottawa Citizen, and written in September, 2006. Weeks before the Steyn excerpt had graced the pages of Maclean’s.
Relevance? None. The Tribunal panel refused to admit the faux-poll.
Undeterred, Mr. Joseph next sought to enter a pair of reports, to do with attitudes about Islam and Western media portrayals of Muslims in the post-9/11 world. Mr. Mc-Conchie rose again.
The reports were not written in British Columbia, or in Canada, or even in North America; rather, they were prepared in Europe, one for the United Nations, the other for something called the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. Neither report had a thing to say about the matter at hand, the Maclean’s/ Mark Steyn affair.
Relevance? None. Without explaining why, the panel allowed the UN report, and rejected the other.
Mr. Awan spoke, at last. The Steyn article of 2007 lauded a Muslim comic, which the witness felt was wrong. The problem, he said, was Mr. Steyn seemed pleased by Islam’s “lowest common denominator,” a comedian, yet he dismissed as hogwash a made-in-Canada TV sitcom, a show called Little Mosque on the Prairie.
As for Ms. Amiel’s article, the witness said it “attacked” multiculturalism while endorsing Mr. Steyn’s book, America Alone. Apparently, all of this had something to do with the promotion of hatred in Mr. Steyn’s 2006 book excerpt; only Mr. Awan could say what that was, but he didn’t. Relevance? None.
Finally, Mr. Joseph turned to the Internet, and to the self-styled pundits and anonymous posters who make up the blogosphere. Nasty things had been written about Islam, and Mr. Joseph suggested that it was Maclean’s fault. Among the examples he produced was a blog item written in December by lawyer and journalist Ezra Levant, on the conservative-minded Web site, the Western Standard. The item Mr. Levant posted was followed by incendiary comments, written by his mostly anonymous readers. (Mr. Levant is himself the target of a human rights complaint, in Alberta; he was at the tribunal hearing yesterday.)
A weary Mr. McConchie rose in protest once again. The Levant blog posting and the comments it attracted “has nothing to do with any issue that’s relevant… This may well contain the rantings and ravings and postings of blog idiots. It may contain the scholarly thoughts of distinguished international experts…The point is that what, at best, this represents is the contents of somebody else’s blog and a potpourri of postings by people whose identity is unknown, whose addresses are unknown.”
Mr. Joseph seized upon the phrase “blog idiots.” He turned in his chair and leered at Mr. Levant in the spectator’s gallery. Once, twice, thrice. He later used the phrase himself, referring to “the idiot bloggers on the Western Standard.” And turned to leer again.
Regrettable conduct, but such was Mr. Joseph’s finest moment. The Tribunal panel allowed as evidence the Levant blog posting, and others.
Relevance? None. The hearing continues today.