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Muneeza Sheikh, Naseem Mithoowani, Khurrum Awan, Daniel Simard and Ali Ahmed, the law students who claim their "human rights" have been breached by Maclean's have a letter in today's Globe & Mail:
Margaret Wente says law students like us should be concerned about free speech (So Who's Fuelling The Prejudice? - Dec. 6). She's right! Which is why when Maclean's published the Mark Steyn article The Future Belongs to Islam last year, we met its editors and asked that they publish a response to its Islamophobic content from a mutually acceptable author, from inside or outside the Muslim community. The intention was to engage Mr. Steyn about his views on Muslims.
Maclean's said it would rather go bankrupt than publish any response - hence, our human-rights complaints. The issue is whether minority communities have the right to be part of the free speech that directly relates to them and not to be excluded. Our research indicates Maclean's published 18 articles with similar Islamophobic content between January of 2005 and July of 2007. How many articles have been published in response by mainstream Muslim organizations? None.
The irony is, if we had responded to the Steyn article by throwing rocks at the offices of Maclean's, we would have heard: If only Muslims would use the avenues available in a free and democratic society to engage in civilized debate. When we do, Canada's largest newsmagazine says it would rather go bankrupt and right-wing journalists wail about law students asserting their rights as citizens of a free and democratic society.
The publisher and editor-in-chief of Maclean's is Ken Whyte. His version of events is a little different:
The student lawyers in question came to us five months after the story ran. They asked for an opportunity to respond. We said that we had already run many responses to the article in our letters section, but that we would consider a reasonable request. They wanted a five-page article, written by an author of their choice, to run without any editing by us, except for spelling and grammar. They also wanted to place their response on the cover and to art direct it themselves.We told them we didn't consider that a reasonable request for response. When they insisted, I told them I would rather go bankrupt than let somebody from outside of our operations dictate the content of the magazine. I still feel that way.
Why did the "victims" wait five months before demanding a right of reply? By that time, Maclean's had already published 27 responses to the story - more than on any other Maclean's cover story.
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