Why do certain media choose to offer platforms to those who spread malicious lies and instill fear about Muslims? Do they agree with those sentiments? Is it to influence their government’s policies on multiculturalism, immigration or laws banning Muslim institutions and practices? Is it in the name of free speech for Muslim-bashers? To fill space? To improve ratings? Or merely for the hell of it?
Take a look at the Canadian cases of Maclean's magazine and columnist Mark Steyn, and the Sun Media chain and both Geert Wilders and Ann Coulter. All three warn of the imminent Muslim threat to civilization – that’s good old us, of course – and demonize an entire religion and its adherents by effectively lumping together all the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims as one homogeneous, monolithic, looming, existential menace. Never mind that Muslims live in every country on earth and are divided by sect, nationality, class, language, religious practice, ideology and race.
For some years, Mr. Steyn had a regular column in Maclean's, where a regular theme was the way Muslims imperiled the world. Besides his column, the magazine also published a long excerpt from his book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, which a reviewer in The Globe and Mail called “quite possibly the most crass and vulgar book about the West’s relationship with the Islamic world I have ever encountered.”
When the Canadian Islamic Congress protested that the book incited anti-Muslim feelings, a Maclean's spokesperson begged to differ. “Mark Steyn is a thoughtful and experienced journalist, and the piece was a commentary on important global political issues. It was not in any sense Islamophobic.” While Mr. Steyn’s column has refreshingly disappeared from the magazine, last week it decided to give great exposure to his latest book, calling him an “acclaimed” columnist.
Just because Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, claims that Mr. Steyn was among those who influenced his thinking does not mean that Mr. Steyn influenced his thinking. But why Maclean's magazine saw fit to pay Mr. Steyn to spread his dire warning about the menace of Islam is far from clear. There must have been a reason, but what was it?
Similarly, it would be interesting to know why the Canadian Christian College and the International Free Press Society Canada (IFPSC) thought it was helpful to bring extreme right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders to Canada to spread his venom against Muslims. The CCC is headed by the radical social conservative Charles McVety, whose website associates itself with Billy Graham’s Muslim-hating son Franklin and the late Jerry Falwell, a prominent American evangelist who believed that “AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals.” The IFPSC is an offshoot of a European group by the same name which, in the name of free speech, freely spreads hatred against Muslims.
The IFPSC’s website prominently features both Geert Wilders and conservative bloviator Ezra Levant. Both the National Post and the Sun newspapers gave Mr. Wilders tons of space when he was in Canada, including the Sun’s entire front page, while Mr. Levant – a prince in the Empire of the Sun – devoted a column to him and a cringe-worthy 44-minute interview on his nightly show on Sun TV, must viewing for several Canadians.
Despite his inflammatory views, Mr. Wilders is wily and soft-spoken, and Mr. Levant could hardly have treated him with more respect and sympathy. Jose Bautista would die for lobs like those Mr. Levant threw Mr. Wilders. And while Mr. Levant scrupulously does not endorse Mr. Wilders’s Muslim-baiting in any explicit way, he notes with exquisite ambiguity that while “We [sic] might [sic] not agree with everything Geert Wilders has to say,” he raises issues that “won’t go away.” Of course extensive media coverage guarantees he won’t go away.
