Paul E. Marek is a Canadian blogger and op-ed

Op-ed

An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...

 commentator best known for his widely reproduced essay, Why the Peaceful Majority is Irrelevant. He is a second generation Canadian, his grandparents having emigrated from Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

 prior to the Nazi invasion of 1938.

The essay

Marek published Why the Peaceful Majority is Irrelevant on his blog in February 2006. In it, he argues that although the assertions that "Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace", may well be accurate, they are 'entirely irrelevant" since small numbers of "fanatics" have taken over governments and committed mass murder in many places. The essay concludes that "Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence...[L]ike my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun."

The essay was published in the book, How to Achieve a Heaven on Earth.

Incorrect attribution to different authors

The essay was subsequently reproduced on many web sites and also appeared as a viral email

Viral email

A viral email is a certain kind of email which rapidly propagates from person to person, generally in a word-of-mouth manner...

. With slight changes to the title and content, it has been regularly attributed incorrectly as the work of a number of different authors, such as William J. Haynes, II

William J. Haynes, II

William James "Jim" Haynes II is an American lawyer and former General Counsel of the Department of Defense during President George W. Bush's administration. Haynes resigned as General Counsel effective March 2008...

 and Emanuel Tanay

Emanuel Tanay

Emanuel Tanay is an American physician, a forensic psychiatrist, and a Jewish Holocaust survivor.-Early life:Tanay was born in Vilna but the family soon moved to Miechow, a small community just south of Kraków...

.