‘Reasonable limits on the expression of hatred’: Mark Steyn and the Canadian Human Rights Commissions

On 20 October 2006, the website of the Canadian weekly current affairs magazine
Maclean’s featured an article entitled ‘The future belongs to Islam,’ excerpted from
the conservative polemicist Mark Steyn’s book America Alone: The End of the World
as We Know It. [1] This provocative opinion piece presented a vision of European
‘demographic decline; the unsustainability of the social democratic state; and
civilisational exhaustion,’ all of which paved the way for the continent’s ‘remorseless
transformation into Eurabia.’ [2] Since ‘the salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan
and Russia is that they’re running out of babies,’ Steyn contended, ‘Europe has age
and welfare,’ but ‘Islam has youth and will.’ [3] The article ended ominously, with
a quotation from the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar, who had recently told the
Oslo newspaper Dagbladet: ‘We’re the ones who will change you [Europeans]. Just
look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding
like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4
children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children…
Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours.’ [4] One question of
Steyn’s, concerning this allegedly existential demographic and geopolitical threat,
was meant to linger: ‘How does the state react?’ Ironically, it would be how the
state reacted to Steyn – rather than immigration – that would take centre stage.

View the full article here