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December 3, 2010
Following controversy
Steyn speaks on the dangers of extremism.
JONATHON VAN MAREN
Mark Steyn, a political commentator, columnist and international best-selling author of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, spoke at Vancouver Hillel’s annual gala fundraiser last week. While some might disagree, he does not consider himself to be controversial.
“I don’t think of myself as especially controversial,” Steyn told the Independent in a telephone interview before speaking at the Nov. 21 gala. “In a sense, I regret becoming a controversial figure. I don’t think of myself in that way and I don’t think of the book as especially controversial. I think it describes what is happening before our very eyes.”
Steyn’s analysis of “what is happening” has proved to be controversial, however. America Alone outlines the emergence of a new continent, which he refers to as Eurabia, an Islamified Europe made inevitable by, what he considers, simple demographics: while Western societies are consistently producing fewer children, Muslim immigrants are producing an increasingly large number. Steyn’s evidence varies from anecdotes of European immigrants to quotes from the United Nations populations division, which noted, in 2007 that current demographic trends are leading to an “expected global upheaval [that] is without parallel in human history.”
After the book was published and an excerpt appeared in Maclean’s magazine, charges were filed against Steyn with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the British Columbia Human Rights Commission, accusing him of Islamaphobia and promoting discrimination against Muslims. While the charges were later dismissed, Steyn points to the process as a means of censorship and intimidation.
Referring to the commissions as “soft fascist bullies,” Steyn said, “The problem in the Western world today isn’t very difficult to figure out, which is that a lot of people are content to live in fear. Well, I’m not happy to live in fear, so I’m just going to get on with my life ... and if some bozo has a problem with that, that’s his problem and not mine.”
Steyn has continued to write and speak on what he considers censorship and what he calls Islamification, and he insists that those who find his thesis problematic are simply not facing reality.
“We can all make the exceptions that there are millions of perfectly agreeable Muslims who just want to get on with their lives,” he stated, “but institutionally, Islam poses a huge challenge to Western societies once it reaches a relatively small percentage of the populations. A New Democratic Party lady on the radio a few years back [asked] ... what would be so wrong if
Canada became Muslim. That doesn’t have to be a hypothetical question – maybe the NDP lady should think about which Muslim country she’d like to live in right now. I certainly would not want my children to live in an Islamic society.”
While Steyn’s work has been complimented by the likes of Christopher Hitchens, who has referred to Steyn’s book as “making an extremely convincing case,” addressing the issues his book presents proves to be more difficult.
“First of all,” Steyn said, “you have to be in the game. The Saudis are in the business of exporting ideology, not oil. People think it’s oil, but oil, in fact, just gives them the cash to fund the export of ideology. The Iranians export ideology with huge success all over the planet. We don’t. What [Westerners] are saying is that as long as they’re not flying planes into skyscrapers, they’re not a problem. That’s an absolutely idiotic way of looking at it. The fact is that a big chunk of Islam has figured out that the smart thing to do is not to fly planes into skyscrapers, but if the Western world is so decadent and decayed, it will give you the keys to those skyscrapers in 10, 20, 30 years’ time. So why bother flying planes into what’s going to be your own property if you play your cards right?”
After the interview with the Independent, Steyn addressed the gala crowd. The gathering of some 350 people also heard about recent events on campus, including Hillel students’ successful campaign against George Galloway, the former British MP who spoke in Vancouver on Nov. 22 as part of a national tour. By contacting endorsers of stopwar.ca, the group sponsoring Galloway’s visit, the Hillel students encouraged members – including some high-profile people such as Dr. David Suzuki – to remove their names from the list of stopwar.ca supporters.
Hillel, Steyn stated, has a very important place on campus, “where they celebrate every kind of diversity except ideological diversity.” He concluded, “I think Hillel is an important factor in keeping the Jewish presence alive in a college environment that has really quite disgracefully been surrendered to the worst kind of irrational Jew-hatred in the last few years.”
Jonathon Van Maren is a contributor to the Peak, Simon Fraser University’s student paper, and a member of Hillel.
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