Thursday, April 28, 2022

Bringing the Middle East to Canada

"I speak from personal experience, having observed the Al-Quds Day rally at Toronto's Queen's Park a few years ago. I was shocked that it was allowed to take place on government property."
"While I support freedom of expression for everyone, the Al-Quds Day rally was nothing but undiluted hate being spouted by speaker after speaker."
"Statistics tell us that antisemitic incidents are on the rise in Canada and around the world."
"Antisemitism thrives on hate, so if there is hate being spouted on our streets, shouldn't our government take notice and do something about it?"
Raheel Raza,  Pakistani-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker, media consultant, anti-racism activist, and interfaith discussion leader
 
Raheel Raza is puzzled that in Canada expressions of hatred against Jews find no barriers erected by the Government of Canada. Canada has an increasingly large Muslim population, Its Jewish population is small, by comparison. For Canadan politicians votes can be lost when they address issues linked to voting demographics. As for antisemitic demonstrations, and acts of intimidation or violence against Jews, their emergence corresponds with the growing Muslim population.
 
Practising Muslims who know their Islamic history and values take umbrage at their co-religionists actively sowing suspicion, hatred and acts of passive and violent Jew-hatred in their adopted country which it boasts with pride is one where a multitude of languages can be heard on the street, a rainbow of pigmentation can be seen everywhere, and refugees and immigrants live in fairly reliable harmony among one another; often in cliques and districts where their ethnic and religious cultures give them comfort.
 
Among the 1,053,945 Muslims who make Canada their home, a significant enough proportion express anti-Jewish, anti-Israel sympathies which the 392,000 Canadian Jews must live with. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement enjoys great popularity among Muslim Canadians who view Canadian Jews and their attachment to the State of Israel as antithetical to their own values revolving around the conviction that Israel exists on land consecrated to Islam, and which Arab Palestinians claim as their own.
 
Slanderous invective, engagement in 'progressive' causes on university campuses that elevate Israel to the status of institutionalized violence against Palestinians, naming Israel as an 'apartheid' state has brought these hate groups adherence in the larger general population, convinced that sympathizing with the Palestinian 'cause', its opposition to Israel as an 'occupier' that targets Palestinian children for death, makes a mockery of reality. 
 
When, in fact, it is the Palestinian Authority that schools Palestinian children in hatred for Jews, convincing children vulnerable to suggestion that their highest calling is to become a martyr, and to anticipate a future where Jews will be slaughtered en masse, freeing up the land the Jewish state sits on, ancestral to Jews as ancient Judea, so that Arab Palestinians who identify as the authentic indigenous peoples of the land, to create their own state 'from the river to the sea'. 
 
That Israelis must live with the constant threat of violent attacks and indiscriminate murders by whatever means Palestinian Arabs find at hand, is conveniently overlooked in favour of disinterest in the fact that Palestinians constitute 20 percent of the Israeli population, with full citizenship. That Arab Palestinians, Christians, Druze, Ba'hai and other minorities live in Israel as citizens, freely voting for their own parliamentary representation. There are Arab Israelis appointed to judgeships, diplomatic posts and who join the Israeli police and military. So much for apartheid.
 
Participants wave Iranian flags and display a portrait of the Ayatollahs at the 2019 Al-Quds Day march in downtown Toronto.
In Canada, Palestinian sympathizers and 'activists' among the population of Muslim-Canadians feel free to mount an annual Al-Quds march, decrying the existence of the State of Israel. An event that was instituted by the Islamic Republic of Iran that has sworn to erase Israel from the Middle East, and taken up by the wider Muslim public. Raheel Raza. a devout Muslim is outraged that Canadian Muslims would defile the holy month of Ramadan, a time of quiet reflection, the antithesis of hate, vengeance, anger and violence -- on the streets of Canada.
 
She has written of her disgust for the actions of the hate-mongers among her co-religionists. She has appealed to the larger Muslim population in Canada for common sense and the need to leave old antipathies behind, along with tribalism and secular violence. She has communicated with Muslim-Canadian authorities representing different sects of Islam, to find no welcoming committee for her pleas for respect and tolerance between Muslims and Jews; all to no avail.
 
People attend an Al-Quds Day rally in Toronto in 2019.
 

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Friday, July 24, 2020

Islamist Terrorism vs Islamic Piety

"Canada is not immune to terrorist threats."
"Through an integrated law enforcement approach, the RCMP and its partners are in a better position to prevent, detect, deny and respond to threats to Canada's national security."
RCMP Superintendent Stacey Talbot, Alberta division 

"It's important that law enforcement send a message that there is no immunity for Canadians who go abroad to commit acts of terrorism, to victimize the innocent and, in some cases, to also attack Canadian military personnel."
"I hope there are other ongoing investigations because we do know that there were dozens of so-called Canadian foreign fighters who went abroad to join ISIS and similar deeply hateful terrorist organizations."
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney
"Collecting information in Syria that could hold up in a Canadian court of law is very difficult. To find evidence that he joined a listed terrorism agency from that period would have been enormously difficult for the RCMP to prove in court. So I think that's probably why it took so long."
"This added charge that they threw in there today about kidnapping likely suggests some new information that they received from another source, maybe from another country, that they now feel confident enough to use in court and charge him with those previous offences."

"It is indicative that they're playing the long game, that even after five, six years they're willing to bring charges against an individual who by all accounts that I've spoken to in Calgary, has basically moved on with his life, is not currently radicalized, is kind of just living his life with his family, just going to work and so on."
"To now charge him five years later shows that the RCMP is very much committed to following these cases through to the end ... If they can find the right kind of evidence, we might see more charges for other people as well."

Amarnath Amarasingam, assistant professor, School of Religion, Queen's University


Terrorism related charges have been laid against a Calgary man in the wake of an extensive, complex investigation that consumed the course of seven years, to charge Hussein Sobhe Borhot, 34, with participation in activity of a terrorism group and commission of an offence for a terrorist group. The accused, according to the RCMP Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, travelled to Syria to join Islamic State militants, between May 2013 and June 2014.

There, he was trained to enhance the ability of ISIS while knowingly committing the offence of kidnapping, while working alongside the terrorist group. Ordered to be held in custody, he is scheduled to return to court in Calgary in several days' time. The investigation into this man's actions is not complete; further charges and arrests in the investigation are a possibility.

A man in Southern Ontario once stood trial in Turkey, charged with having alleged links to the Islamic State group, last December. Ikar Mao of Guelph was charged with one count each of participation in the activities of a terrorist group, and of leaving Canada to take part in terrorist group activity. An estimated 190 people with connections to Canada are suspected of terrorist activity abroad-- some 60 of whom had returned to Canada, according to an annual federal report on extremism.
Imam Syed Soharwardy leads a prayer during a multi-faith service held at the Symons Valley United Chursh on Sunday, January 28, 2018. Dean Pilling/Postmedia
Imam Syed Soharwardy  /Dean Piling/Postmedia

“What happened to those guys? Why only the RCMP is finding one person after seven years? [It is] a very slow [and] tiring [process]."
"These people are walking time bombs."
"We cannot let them freely walk on Canadian soil because they have been trained for utilization of weapons. They might have committed major crimes in Syria and Iraq."
"[The revelation of Wednesday’s charges would] backfire on the Muslim community [and give those who hold Islamophobic and other racist views] an opportunity to spew out hate."
“It’s going to revive the backlash against the Muslim community, the badmouthing about our religion and all those things."
Calgary Imam Syed Soharwardy, founder, Muslims Against Terrorism, Islamic Supreme Council of Canada



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