Indeed, the very willingness of many Muslims, such as the Muslim Canadian Congress, to defend Steyn’s right to write, and Maclean’s right to publish, against the CIC’s attempts to suppress both, indicates the fear of "a Muslim tide" was alarmist and without foundation.

Slowly but surely, the progressive narrative within Islam is gaining ground. An increasing number of young Muslims are turning to alternative understandings of their faith. It is therefore not a given that an increase in the Canadian Muslim population will automatically usher in an age of Islamic radicalism in Canada, or that democratic values will be supplanted by a theocracy. The European experience in fact indicates the opposite: secular centre-left and centre-right members of the community have succeeded overwhelmingly, while Islamists have failed to win even in constituencies where Muslims form large voting groups.

In Denmark, for example, four Muslims were recently elected: two women and two men, of Turkish, Kurdish, Palestinian and Pakistani extraction—all of them secularists. In contrast, all the Islamist candidates lost. In Britain, the first Muslim MP was elected in Glasgow in 1992, and several more have since been elected to the Commons; not one of them was from the Islamist camp. The same is true in France, Germany and Scandinavia. So where is the evidence that if Muslims doubled or tripled in population size, they would not embrace the values of Rousseau or Locke?

Steyn’s piece caused much grief to the tens of thousands of Canadian Muslims who could not see themselves reflected in it. We are comedians and journalists; architects and physicians; scientists and cab drivers; pizza delivery men and trial lawyers, trying hard to pay our mortgages and raise our children while forced to act as unpaid ambassadors of a community under intense scrutiny. Did we deserve a cover story in Maclean’s?

Yet if Steyn’s article was based on faulty perceptions of Muslims, that in itself should be a wake-up call to all Muslims not to let the voices of a fundamentalist minority speak on their behalf. The ambitions of the zealous will be checked only if moderate Muslims speak up. They must make their voices of reason heard above the rabid bigotry of jihadis and the din of maddened mobs, whether inflamed by cartoons of the prophet or by a Teddy Bear called Mohammed.

For moderates to speak out, however, they will need to be encouraged and empowered by the mainstream. There is a rich tradition within Islam of rationalists like Averroes and Kindi, Avicenna and Farabi, who stood up to fanatics when in all of Europe there were few willing to take on the wrath of the Catholic Church. Many of the Muslim rationalists paid a heavy price and their latter-day followers are doing the same. It does not help their cause by attacking all of Islamdom as a dark tide of ignorance looming on the horizon.

Both sides need to open their eyes. Steyn must recognize that the struggle for reform is vibrant within Islam, just as it has been within other faith communities. The pace has perhaps been slower than what we would want because of dire political conditions in many Muslim countries, where death stares reformists at every step.

Ordinary Muslims, for their part, must recognize that Muslim silence over the ills that plague Muslim societies has exacerbated Islamophobia and reinforced stereotypes. Nor is the repression of dissent in Muslim lands something to be imported. Muslims coming to Canada, the US or Europe do not want to bring with them the cultural baggage that permits the shutting down of newspapers and the bullying of journalists by Islamist goons.

Steyn may be wrong. His writings may even lead to a negative image of Muslims. But he has the right to voice his views and Muslims must defend his right. Only when we Muslims stand behind the right of authors and writers to freely express their views—even if they are offensive—will we have proven Steyn wrong. By trying to censor him, the CIC only proves him right.

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Tarek Fatah is author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, to be published by Wiley & Sons in March 2008. Farzana Hassan is author of Islam, Women, and the Challenges of Today. Both are members of the Muslim Canadian Congress.