A "Bizarre and Frightening Spectacle"

Ezara Levant has a very informative piece on who is sitting in judgment over Macleans at Mark Steyn's show trial. I didn't see Vasiliy Ulrikh listed, but it was only day one. The National Post has a pretty good summation of this "bizarre and frightening spectacle". It points out a fact that I at least was unaware of:

"None of the main players starring in this quasi-judicial drama actually live or work in B. C. Not Mr. Steyn, not the editors responsible for Maclean's, and not Mohamed Elmasry, a Muslim who launched a complaint to the B. C. Human Rights Tribunal on behalf of all Muslims in this province."

Apparently the British Columbian Human Rights Tribunal doesn't deal with petty technicalities like jurisdiction. I'm sure its only a matter of time before some imaginative muslim files a complaint in B.C. against Sir Edmund Allenby for the horrible insensitivity he showed when he proclaimed “today the wars of the Crusades are completed,” after drubbing the Turks (A minority in the Ottoman Empire) in 1917.

For now though the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal will have to make do with the crimes of Maclean's, and they are legion. Lawyer Faisal Joseph, representing the complainant, describes them in detail:

"The Steyn excerpt that Maclean's published in October, 2006, presented Muslims as 'a violent people' who hold traditional Canadian values 'in contempt,' he alleged. Their religion was portrayed as 'inhuman" and 'violent.'"

Not only that, but also:

"'20 other articles' that ran in Maclean's, beginning in January, 2005; these were also unkind to Muslims. . . Mr. Joseph even slammed Maclean's for publishing letters from readers praising the magazine and Mr. Steyn."

If these blatant examples of Freedom of the Press weren't enough to damn Maclean's, even

"the cover image that Maclean's chose to run with the Steyn excerpt was hauled before the inquiry. The image of two Muslim women, along with the magazine's cover line, 'could have been the picture of a horror cult movie,' declared Mr. Joseph."

Ignoring the hate crime Mr. Joseph committed by implying that a photo of two actual muslim women looks like a "horror cult movie", let's examine this new standard for the publication of photos. If publishing photos of minorities that resemble scenes from horror movies is prohibited, doesn't that rule out Holocaust photos? I can't think of anything more "horrific" than the piles of emaciated bodies awaiting incineration or mass burial. Will the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal actually put Canadians in the situation where both Holocaust denial and Holocaust proof are considered hate crimes?