CALGARY -- As 40,000 copies of the Western Standard containing the controversial Prophet Mohammed cartoons rolled off the presses yesterday, the Calgary-based magazine's phones rang off the hook, excessive traffic crashed its website and its publisher entered the main ring of a media circus.
Ezra Levant, publisher of the news and political magazine, spent the day defending his publication's position on the talk-radio circuit, speaking with television news anchors and being interviewed by reporters -- most from media outlets that have decided not to show the images, which have sparked riots around the world.
"Website overloaded by traffic -- too much for server," Mr. Levant wrote via BlackBerry while he was a guest on Dave Rutherford's radio call-in show on CHQR in Calgary.
Mr. Levant said publishing the images deep inside the magazine, along with commentary and eight cartoons under the headline Drawing The Line, was necessary to properly report the story that is dominating world news.
He also accused mainstream media, including The Globe and Mail, of being cowed by radical Islam, yet not being afraid to offend religious sensibilities of other groups, including Jews and Christians.
"We'll probably wind up losing a few subscribers and an advertiser or two," Mr. Levant would later tell Charles Adler, the CJOB radio host in Winnipeg.
At least one bookseller, independent McNally Robinson, which has stores in Calgary, Winnipeg and Saskatoon, will not put the magazine on its shelves.
Mr. Levant, who was among the original Reform and Canadian Alliance Party supporters, also penned a defence of publishing the cartoons, which ran yesterday in the Calgary Sun under the headline Media Runs Scared. His magazine -- which is not yet on newsstands or in mailboxes -- is being accused of disturbing the peace, racism and committing a hate crime.
"We will use every means within the Canadian legal system to stop this intellectual terrorism," Syed Soharwardy, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, said yesterday.
"This is yellow journalism. It is not civilized. The people will have to pay the price for what they have done. They have disturbed the peace in our society," he said.
His group has asked its legal team to consider civil action against publications that show the cartoons and will ask police to intervene.
Last week, Calgary police investigated whether replications of the cartoons that were posted in one neighbourhood and published in the Jewish Free Press, which is circulated among 2,000 homes, could be deemed a hate crime. But the Crown prosecutor's office said Criminal Code requirements were not met, and the city's diversity resources officer was assigned to work with Muslim and Jewish groups.
"We're working to keep things peaceful," said Constable Kelly Mergen, adding that there have been no reports of vandalism or violence in connection with publication of the cartoons.
The cartoons, which first appeared last year in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, have angered Muslims worldwide.
Some callers to Canadian radio shows yesterday termed the Western Standard's decision to publish the cartoons "courageous," while others described it as "ignorant."
The images have already appeared in Quebec media outlets, in the University of Prince Edward Island's student paper, and on a professor's door at St. Mary's University in Halifax.
