“I'd expect an American company to do this, not a Canadian,” Mr. MacArthur said yesterday. “Even though you have tougher libel laws than us and your own versions of political correctness, to my mind [Canada] has always been a freer place for political discourse.”

Would you? Maybe you need to adjust your perceptions to match reality, Mr. MacArthur.

Posted by: Yojimbo at May 28, 2006 6:01 AM

Here's an interesting thing. Many of the books discussed here can't be obtained in the UK, even if specially ordered. Bruce Bawer's leaps to mind. I'd expect the same applies to Robert's PIG to Islam. (OTOH, you will find books of soft, interested lies like Esposito's or Karen Armstrong's in almost every bookstore.) Yet Americans walk in off the street and buy Ibn Warraq or Robert Spencer in their bookstores. Robert's book was a bestseller in the States. Melanie Phillips, by contrast, had to go to the US to get a publisher for a book about London.

Why? This is not a market-driven phenomenon: there'd certainly be Britons who'd be interested to read what Bawer has to say (specially, I'd think, if his book were widely advertised in gay magazines, since he says he's gay and covers gay issues in relation to Islam in that book). And it is certainly not a matter of the formal content of laws. It is a matter of a cultural atmosphere and of many different decisions made by many different people - no need to assume a "conspiracy" here. It seems to me that American culture is simply "healthier" in some ways than British or Canadian culture. I wish it were not so.

Posted by: Yojimbo at May 28, 2006 6:17 AM

It really is about fear, isn't it? It's not about respect, politically correctness or anxiety over sales numbers. The image of Theo Van Gogh, lying in the street with his throat slit, burning embassies and violent mobs kept this magazine off the shelves in Canada.

Posted by: maryrose at May 28, 2006 7:14 AM

I see it the opposite way. I believe the real reason for banning the issue is not fear of protest, but of political correctness. The staff were told to say it was because of the possible violence, but that is an excuse. In Canada, being politically correct is a religion, long before the cartoon riots, conservative views regarding race or religion were banished from bookshelves. But back then, there was no convenient excuse. Now they have one.

"Oh, we would love to carry this issue, but there could be problems, you see."

Rubbish, they would never want to carry any issue that mocked the multi-cultural ideology of Canada. The riots give them the excuse not to carry it.

Posted by: somethingaboutislam at May 28, 2006 7:27 AM

Where's Don Cherry when you need him?

Posted by: somethingaboutislam at May 28, 2006 7:28 AM

Don Cherry is my hero! wish we had politicians as good as Don! Cdn politics and media are too wimpy and apolgetic. l am hoping with more Conservative government, and people from the West, such as Alberta, can finally get rid of the government media leftist controlled CBC, and the Soviet style CRTC, which controls what we see and hear on TV and Radio. l ordered my book of Robert's PIGofIslam from Chapters. l made a point of telling the manager how disappointed l was that they did not have his book on display since it was a NYT best seller..and had to order it!

Posted by: Lulu at May 28, 2006 9:27 AM

Where can we email to,so that our voice may be heard so that Indigo cannot say there were no complaints about there censorship of public information.

Posted by: mark52 at May 28, 2006 10:03 AM

"Many of the books discussed here can't be obtained in the UK, even if specially ordered. Bruce Bawer's leaps to mind. I'd expect the same applies to Robert's PIG to Islam."

No, They are readily available from Amazon UK. The Bawer could be dispatched within 24 hours.

My local family bookshop only failed to get me The Myth of Islamic Tolerance because they misunderstood me on the telelphone and spent several days chasing "The Mists of Islamic Intolerance". When they finally tracked down what I really wanted, being the ethical sellers they are, they pointed me to Amazon as they couldn't match Amazon's price at that time by a good £10.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at May 28, 2006 11:07 AM

Self-censorship is a de facto act of burning books. Let us recall the prescient wisdom of Heinrich Heine when he wrote this in 1933:

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.

Posted by: Hulegu Khan at May 28, 2006 11:31 AM

Art Spiegelmann is a "New York cartoonist" like William Shakespeare was a "London playwright". He is universally regarded as one of the greatest comic-book authors alive, and his MAUS, an account of his family's experience of the Holocaust, is one of the greatest comic strips ever drawn. He is not only a great artist, but a man with genuine moral authority.

And speaking of moral authority - as I write, I am watching direct broadcast images of the Pope praying in Auschwitz on the site of the martyrdom of Maximilian Kolbe and of hundreds of thousands of innocent men. The connection may not be clear to Canadian lefties, but it is to the rest of us.

Posted by: Paolo at May 28, 2006 11:37 AM

From a bookshop, Granny, and on the shelves.

If you don't find this, you must be going into different bookshops to me. One of the few exceptions is Oriana Fallaci's latest, which Waterstone's is carrying (under "politics"). The only recourse in many cases is to order from Amazon, because in some cases some of these books are not even available on order. (I know, because I've tried to get them.) The situation in the US seems to be quite different: people speak of going into bookshops and picking these off the shelves.

Look at this image:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/pictures/122714561_ac74949017.jpg

See the copy of Leaving Islam? I've yet to see a copy of one of Ibn Warraq's books on the shelves in a British branch of Borders.

Posted by: Yojimbo at May 28, 2006 1:26 PM

Yojimbo-

Ordering online is the work-around for all of these pernicious attempts at p.c. self-gelding.

Alibris, abebooks, half.com, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookfinder, ebay, etc., etc., etc.

The only thing you can't get on ebay are Nazi-era copies of books, in German, that espouse Hitlerian doctrines -as I found when I tried selling a late uncle's "trophy" copy "liberated" in Germany in 1945, of a 1942 Mein Kampf in Deutsche. The auction was closed down by ebay, over my scholarly protests ("Why shouldn't someone be able to read the racist and repulsive text in its original tongue? Are you also intending to ban Korans in Arabic for their anti-Semitic hatespeech, especially after a 1300 year record of similar genocidal treatment, as the Nazis tried to do on a smaller scale, of people from Arabia to India, Spain to Bulgaria?"... ebay, of course, never replied with more than a form-letter stating their eunuch-level p.c.-ness... and Korans are as available there as Beany Babies... or, more aptly, "Chucky" dolls).

Posted by: profitsbeard at May 28, 2006 2:18 PM

Hi Yojimbo
I see the slightly difference emphasis to your point. Being lucky enough to have a small family bookshop I tend to only use them, they only carry a small stock but will order me anything else I want within days. And I prefer to give an old family concern my trade.

There is a Books Etc near where I work but they only ever seem to have diet stuff and chick lit in the window so I am rarely tempted inside. Obviously I am not missing much.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at May 28, 2006 2:23 PM

Here's some background to Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo.
Gerry Schwartz is her husband. He is CEO of ONEX Corp. with offices in New York and Toronto.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1145961368348&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Posted by: DhimmiNot at May 28, 2006 2:37 PM

OH! Canada!

Posted by: jsla at May 28, 2006 3:37 PM

Indigo is a very difficult company to get hold of but here is the email address of its Vice-President for Public Relations (Sorya Ingrid Gaulin):

sgaulin@indigo.ca

Let's tell them what we think of them, eh.

Dominic.

Posted by: necessitasnonhabetlegem at May 28, 2006 3:45 PM

I just sent the following:

Dear Sorya Ingrid Gaulin,

I understand that you are the VP for Public Relations for Indigo Books & Music and it is in that capacity that I wish to protest to you about your company's policy of removing the current issue of Harpers from your shelves. Self-censorship, and in this case cowardice, in my opinion, also, certainly does nothing for your company's public image. In my opinion kowtowing to the violent tendencies of jihadist moslems is scarcely protecting your country's commitment to freedom of speech and is a grave and serious insult to all intelligent and free Canadians who are perfectly capable of making up their own minds about the contents of any particular magazine and certainly do not need your company to run scared of the 'poor little offended moslem' bogey-man.

I think the management of Indigo Books & Music should be ashamed of itself and I hope that it will consider reversing this outrageous and undemocratic policy.

Yours sincerely,

Dominic.

Posted by: necessitasnonhabetlegem at May 28, 2006 4:01 PM

canada stinks

Posted by: massachusettsrepublican at May 28, 2006 5:43 PM

This explains a great deal.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at May 28, 2006 6:22 PM

“I'd expect an American company to do this, not a Canadian,” Mr. MacArthur said yesterday. “Even though you have tougher libel laws than us and your own versions of political correctness, to my mind [Canada] has always been a freer place for political discourse.”

The U.S. news media have become “terribly prone to self-censorship,” especially after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, he said. “There's a more wide open debate [in Canada] than in America.”

-quotes from the Globe and Mail article.

My perception as a Canadian is that while both the U.S. and Canada (specifically, our respective governments and media) are plagued by a negative form of political correctness, Canada is worse off in this this respect. The above remarks in the G and M seem wrong to me, at least in regard to openness in criticizing Islam. If we take the recent cartoon uproar as an example, there was probably a higher percentage of U.S. publications that carried the cartoons or at least gave critical comment; only a few publications in Canada did this. (One such publication, the Western Standard, is being sued, at tax-payer expense, by a Muslim group in Alberta).

Regarding the "left" in Canada, it's inaccurate to say that the left is pro-Islam, as some have suggested. Some on the left are indeed naively pro-Islam (particularly in the NDP), as are some on the right (chiefly religious conservatives). However, the defeat of the proposed sharia in family/personal law in Ontario was due in no small part to the work of mostly leftists, feminists, etc. (Of course, the general public overwhelmingly opposed the sharia initiative as well, with something like 95% against the sharia proposal). On this issue, however, religious conservatives generally were on the same side as the Islamists. (Religious conservatives are also generally in favour of Muslim schools in Ontario; it is the left that is opposing Muslim schools). The pro-Islam camp in Canada consists of chiefly (a) radical multiculturalists on the far left who are perhaps courting the Muslim vote and who (strangely enough) see the rise of Islam as helpful to their goal of overturning the status quo (this is not unlike the error that was made by Marxists in Iran), and (b) religious conservatives who (naively) believe there is common ground or at least common interests between themselves and Muslims on such issues as cultural values (!), the establishment of religiously-based law in some domains (personal and family law, some commercial law), and the maintenance and further establishment of religiously-based schools.

Posted by: Archimedes at May 28, 2006 7:10 PM

...I should add that those religious conservatives in Canada who favour Islamic schools etc., tend to be in positions of power in the religious establishment and in politics. This is a small but influential minority. The general public, including religious consevratives, generally does not favour Islamic schools.

Posted by: Archimedes at May 28, 2006 7:16 PM

Hulegu,
Heine's line about people being burned where books have been burned may have been quoted in 1933, but he himself died in 1856.

Posted by: wallyUK at May 28, 2006 8:18 PM

massachusettsrepublican
Don't make me come down there and bop you on the nose.
You are sounding like an ignoramus.
We are all in this together. Sooner or later we will need each other.

Posted by: DhimmiNot at May 28, 2006 8:55 PM

Somethingaboutislam,
the only Don Cherry I know was a blacK US jazz musician ( trumpet?) who spent his later years in Sweden.
What was his stance on Islam? many US jazz musicians at the time embraced muslim names and garb etc . cant recall Don's stance?
iS THERE A DIFFERENT dON cHERRY?

Posted by: protestcat at May 28, 2006 9:11 PM

canada stinks
Posted by: massachusettsrepublican, hey that is a rude statement and uncalled for. many Canadians are on the US side, hey your freakin Kerry is more unAmerican than most, and he is from your area! so we Cdns are on the same side, and wacko islamafacists want us all dead or slaves to allah. so you need to look in the mirror when you say stink.

Posted by: Lulu at May 28, 2006 9:23 PM

wallyUK-

Heine's quote is from 1821.

Freud, when the Nazis started throwing his works onto the bonfires of their vanity in 1933 (perhaps the source of the date mix-up?), mocked:

"What progress we have made! In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books."

The contentment was illusory.

He was driven out of Austria a few years later and into exile in England, where he died in 1939.

Human 'books' followed into the flames shortly thereafter.

Posted by: profitsbeard at May 29, 2006 1:16 AM

John MacArthur is a far-left-winger of the "blame the U.S. first" school.

http://tinyurl.com/kuwme

He published a ghastly article in which he made the ridiculous assertion that the tendency after the Cold War to dig up and denounce the horrors of the Stalinist regime was just a clever right-wing ploy to justify the Reagan administration's policies, or somesuch nonsense. This is, of course, the classic rhetorical fallacy of argument from adverse consequences: To denounce the horrors of Communism is to give right-wingers more political ammunition, so let's keep our mouths shut about it.

http://abcdunlimited.com/ideas/doublestandards.html

Yet here is MacArthur claiming that in the U.S., we have more self-censorship. Self-censorship of the horrors of Communism is exactly what he used to recommend to his fellow "progressives" where Communism was concerned. Now with Indigo pulling his magazine off the shelves due to fear of those consequences, MacArthur is getting hoisted by his own petard. Someone should remind him of the above article he wrote.

Posted by: Steven L. at May 29, 2006 11:58 AM

Paolo:

I have not read the Spiegelman article, but understand from having read a commentary on it, that you may be disappointed by the (leftish, PCish)stand he takes.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at May 29, 2006 12:22 PM