“These students had insisted for months that they ‘just wanted to debate the issues in public.’ Yet when that opportunity presented itself, they refused to share the set with Steyn.
“So in the middle of his interview, Steyn called to the students, who were hovering off stage, challenging them to make their charges to his face. After some shouting, chairs were rearranged and the ‘debate’ finally took place.
“The foreign-born students seemed embarrassingly unfamiliar with English common law, not to mention elementary literary devices like sarcasm and hyperbole. They read aloud samples of Steyn’s Maclean’s columns with as much venom as their wavering voices could muster. As usual, accurate quotations from Muslim leaders were singled out for particular scorn:
Signora Fallaci then moves on to the livelier examples of contemporary Islam — for example, Ayatollah Khomeini’s “Blue Book” and its helpful advice on romantic matters: “If a man marries a minor who has reached the age of nine and if during the defloration he immediately breaks the hymen, he cannot enjoy her any longer.” I’ll say. I know it always ruins my evening.
“That ‘signora’ is, of course, the late Oriana Fallaci, whose animus towards Islam preoccupied the last years of her life. After reading that passage of Steyn’s, Muslim student Khurrum Awan compared Fallaci to notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, whose name remains a byword in Canada years after his conviction and deportation for ‘spreading false news.’
“Host Steve Paikin was shocked, and asked Awan if he’d really intended to make that comparison.
“He had.”
