Considerable evidence is mounting, particularly in Europe, that this scenario is a common sense observation.  Muslim populations are growing while other religious groups are declining, thus Muslim influence is increasing. Great Britain’s Labour government has even gone to the absurd lengths of describing any Muslim-caused domestic terror as “anti-Muslim” activity because the bombings make other Britons less likely to feel good about Muslims. There is open talk of infusing British law with Islamic Shariah law, an accommodation that the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested would be “inevitable” before an outcry forced him to recant.

But getting back to Mr. Steyn and Maclean’s, they are the poster victims of the trend in Canada to suppress the freedoms of speech and press at the whims of special interest groups.

Most Americans are not only unaware of the Steyn show trial but also the many incidents in which Canadians have been hauled before human rights tribunals and charged with hate crimes for merely expressing traditionalist morality in public.

An evangelical pastor, Stephen Boisson, was fined $5,000 by the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal on May 30, 2008 for writing a letter to the editor of a local paper in 2002 critical of homosexual activism in the schools.

A Saskatoon, Saskatchewan newspaper publisher and a private citizen were each fined $4,500 in 2001 for the crime of publishing an ad that listed five Bible verses about homosexuality and had a circle with two stick figures of men holding hands with a line across it.  Three homosexual men had complained that they did not like the ad.

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has for a decade prohibited the broadcast of any material critical of homosexuality. Stations that carry Focus on the Family and other American radio programs have been warned that they could lose their licenses unless  segments dealing with homosexuality are edited out. 

Many Americans have a warm, fuzzy view of Canada, and have no idea that a totalitarian nation is taking shape, instigated by gay activists and Muslim pressure groups in the name of “tolerance.”

They do not know because America’s mainstream media are refusing to cover it. 

Perhaps it will take someone like Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan being charged with a hate crime in Canada to get the media’s attention.  But that’s unlikely, since celebrities have long understood  that the only group that it is still okay to ridicule is Christians, especially Catholics and evangelicals. And that’s not news.

As for Canadian mullahs attempting to use the law to gag Mr. Steyn and anyone else who gets in their way, well, that’s just not news either in the United States.