Barbara Kay: Crucial case challenges defamatory accusations of Islamophobia designed to intimidate and silence
Islamism — defined most benignly as 'the belief that Islam should influence political systems'— is, according to Joe Adam George, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute's National Security Analyst, the 'biggest existential threat to Canada within its borders.' Yet, in the English-language leaders' election debate, when Bloc Québécois leader François Blanchet dangled the word 'Islamism' for discussion, nobody took the bait.
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Writing on the subject in these pages last year, George observed that, unlike China and Russia, 'what makes Islamists such a formidable force to reckon with is their ability to weaponize Islam to silence, punish and deter' their critics. One Islamist group, the politically influential National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), is particularly active on this front.
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Leaning on the charge of Islamophobia, the NCCM launched a successful campaign to oust human rights lawyer Collin May from his positions as director of the Alberta Human Rights Commission and Tribunal (AHRC) shortly after his May 2022 appointment. Two weeks ago, the Lawfare Project and law firm Zacharias Vickers McCann LLP announced the filing of a defamation lawsuit against the NCCM on May's behalf.
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May brought sterling qualifications to his appointment. He had already served three years as a part-time commissioner, had written over 40 published decisions and conducted more than 40 mediation sessions. He has degrees in political philosophy and religion, including the intellectual history of rights. May is the first openly gay man to serve in the role. Nevertheless, he is also philosophically conservative, which stirred complaints amongst progressives that his was a patronage appointment by Alberta's UCP government.
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The campaign to unseat May began in earnest, like so many cancel-culture witch hunts, with a deep dive into May's publishing history. In early July 2022, a NDP-affiliated blogger, Duncan Kinney (included as a separate defendant in the defamation suit), unearthed a positive 2009 review by May of the Yale University Press published book, Islamic Imperialism: A History, by Efraim Karsh, professor and head of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London.
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In a blog post, Kinney criticized the review, citing an Edmonton Al Rashid Mosque Imam Sadique Pathan who criticized May's review of the book as 'binary thinking that is very convenient for people who engage in Islamophobia or outright racist views towards Muslims.'
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May's ' rather esoteric ' review had not raised objections at the time, but in July, 2022, Kinney erroneously attributed May's summation of Karsh's view of Islam as 'one of the most militaristic religions known to man' directly to May, sparking NCCM's call on the government to rescind the appointment. Premier Jason Kenney instructed May to meet and make peace with the NCCM. May met with them, but stopped short of apologizing. The NCCM was not amused. Kenney fired May in September, 2022.
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