Liberals’ and NDPers’ manic anti-Islamophobia pathology

Friday, 17 February 2017

Liberals’ and NDPers’ manic anti-Islamophobia pathology
(cf. supra. The Anti-BDS motion at Parliament)


Here we go again!  Here we have it: a motion by Liberal backbencher  Ms. Iqra Khalid filed on December 10,2016, barely a month and a half after the anti-Islamophobia motion condemning  `all forms of Islamophobia”, whatever that means,   presented by Mr. Mulcair of the NDP was passed in the House of Commons on October 26,2016:

The motion reads:

“Systematic racism and religious discrimination” 

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should: (a) recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear; (b) condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination and take note of House of Commons’ petition e-411 and the issues raised by it; and (c) request that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage undertake a study on how the government could (i) develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia, in Canada, while ensuring a community-centred focus with a holistic response through evidence-based policy-making, (ii) collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities, and that the Committee should present its findings and recommendations to the House no later than 240 calendar days from the adoption of this motion, provided that in its report, the Committee should make recommendations that the government may use to better reflect the enshrined rights and freedoms in the Constitution Acts, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Assuming one can figure out the precise meaning of the mumbo jumbo wording, to me, the motion appears to be the case of one or more groups interested in securing the data sought by the motion for their own political purposes, but not willing  to their own money seek to burden Parliament with it.

The motion was debated on February 15 inst. and will be voted on later.

On the broad topic covered by the Khalid motion, two members of   the Conservative Party, Messrs. Anderson and Deltell filed the following competing motion that reads:

February 16, 2017 — Deferred recorded division on the motion of Mr. Anderson (Cypress Hills—Grasslands), seconded by Mr. Deltell (Louis-Saint-Laurent) ,— That the House: (a) recognize that Canadian society is not immune to the climate of hate and fear exemplified by the recent and senseless violent acts at a Quebec City mosque; (b) condemn all forms of systemic racism, religious intolerance, and discrimination of Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, and other religious communities; and (c) instruct the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to undertake a study on how the government could (i) develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating all types of discrimination in Canada, while ensuring a community-centered focus with a holistic response through evidence-based policy-making, (ii) collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities; and that the Committee report its findings and recommendations to the House no later than 240 calendar days from the adoption of this  motion, provided that in its report, the Committee should make recommendations that the government may use to better reflect the enshrined rights and freedoms in the Constitution Acts, including the Canadian Charter of  Rights and Freedoms.

This motion, originally scheduled to be debated on February 16,inst,  has been deferred on recorded division, until Tuesday, February 21, 2017, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions, pursuant to Order made Thursday, February 16, 2017.

The two motions are identical save for the facts that the Conservative motion (a) unlike the Khalid motion, focuses, inter-alia, on protecting Muslims as individuals as opposed to the undefined term Islamophobia which implies that Canada needs a state protection for the faiths rather than  focus on the safety of the faithful; (b) removes the term Islamophobia, and instead, enumerates all of Canada’s largest religious groups.

During the debate Ms. Khalid, refused to amend her motion to change the term “Islamophobia” to “hatred against Muslims”. This refusal tells you something about the mindset of people who push religion ahead of the welfare of the mainstream Muslim community.

Needless to say, a state protected religion, is just one step short of becoming akin to a state religion, presumably the reason for her insistence to identify Islamophobia by name.

Since the number of anti-Semitic crimes in Canada  far exceed the number of crimes committed against  the Muslim community, if one or more M.Ps’  had requested Ms. Khalid  to amend her motion by inserting

        a)  the phrase  “and all manner of anti-Semitism”, and

        b)  a request  for the study to establish the statistics and facts about the number of Jewish university students and  members of the Jewish community who have been and continue to be  victimised,  by  the very people who invoke their right to free speech  to justify their  verbal and physical anti-Semitic behaviour ,while accusing those who criticise them  for it, to be Islamophobic.

We would have had a clearer idea of what Ms. Khalid’s objectives in bringing this motion are.

But then again, the question  as to why such a request was not made, opens up another can of worms, particularly since, to date both the federal and  provincial governments have done nothing about anti-Semitism on campuses.

If the liberal and NDP members of the House are so keen on combatting systemic racism and religious discrimination, it is hard to figure out why so much time is being devoted to the issue of “so-called” Islamophobia which has yet to be defined in a precise manner and absolutely none to anti-Semitism. On this score, Mr. Trudeau talks the talk but does not seem in the slightest interested walking the walk, a subject for another day.

And if you think the Khalid motion is the last of its kind, disabuse yourselves by reading what M. Samer Majzoub, President of the Canadian Muslim Forum (CMF), who initiated the electronic petition in response to which Mr. Mulcair moved his motion based in part on the wording of the petition has to say.

After the motion passed, Mr. Majzoub indicated that: “The next step is for the federal government to set up policies and orientations to address and deal profoundly at all levels, social, economic and political, with Islamophobia symptoms that present themselves strongly in our society” (Italics mine)..While, Mr. Majzoub did not care to disclose what he meant by the phrase “profoundly at all levels” we now are getting a little bit about it from the Khalid motion.

He spoke obliquely about his objectives in securing the passage of the motion, during his interview with Hussein Hobollah, Chief Editor of Sada Al -masreq (“Levantine Echoes”) spelled as Sada-al-Mashrek in Quebec).

The relevant part of the narrative of the interview published in the paper reads:

“Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end but the beginning, like Mr. Samer Majzoub puts it. Having launched the petition first, the interviewee says ‘We need to continue working politically and socially and with the press.’ They used to doubt the existence of Islamophobia, but now we do not have to worry about that…In the offing, we need to get policy makers to do something…especially   when it comes to the Liberals…After condemnation, policies must be made.’ Mr. Majzoub says.”All of us must work hard to maintain our peaceful, social and humanitarian struggle so that condemnation is followed by comprehensive policies.” (Italics mine).

Humanitarian struggle? What exactly is this struggle about?, for what, with and against whom?

Comprehensive policies? What kinds of policies and to what end? 

What then does the term “Islamophobia” mean for Mr. Majzoub?


Historically, the term Islamophobia” was first introduced as a concept in the 1991 Runnymede Trust Report. The term was coined in the context of Muslims in the United Kingdom in particular and Europe in general and formulated on the more common “xenophobia” framework. The concept was defined as “unfounded hostility towards Muslims, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims”. The report tied this definition to the then prevailing attitudes that incorporate the following beliefs: Islam (a) is monolithic and cannot adopt to new realities;(b) does not share common values with other major faiths;(c) as a religion is inferior to the West: it is archaic, barbaric, and irrational; (d) is a religion of violence and supports terrorism, and (e) Islam is a violent political ideology.

On this question, the first thing to be noted is Mr. Majzoub’s curious attempt to wash away and sanitise the stench of the killings perpetrated by terrorists in the name of Islam. He sought to do that by denying that they are acting in the name of Islam and instead describing Islam as “the religion, the beliefs and the desire of Muslims to co-exist in peace with all the peoples of the world”.

The fact of the matter is that the distinction between false and true Islam to which Mr. Majzoub resorted in order to market his petition, is a distinction without a difference. Turkey’s President  Erdogan, whose credentials as a devout Muslim and an Islamist are impeccable, to almost all, save  to the Shiite Muslims, demonstrated this when he said :”These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam, and that’s it. ”. As one writer put it: “There are extremist Muslims and non-extremist Muslims, but there is only one Islam.”

As the initiator of the motion, Mr.Mazjoub surely has his own definition of the term and of the phrase ”all forms of Islamophobia”. He did not provide them in the narrative of the petition he launched and was not about to disclose them orally by an abundance of caution, lest he snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Nor  for that matter did he disclose them after the motion was passed, discretion being the better part of valour, so to speak.

Interestingly enough, both the Khalid  motion and the previous anti-Islamophobia  motion that was passed were debated after a serious incident occurred.

In an article published by the well -known Egyptian journalist and author Saied Shoaaib, a Muslim who suffered a great deal at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt,(cf.  To the Muslim Brotherhood : Quit Shouting Islamophobia and Quit attacking Muslim Families, Gatestone Institute, December 15,2016 issue) ,in which the photograph of Mr. Mazjoub figures prominently, Mr. Shoabib claims that both  Mr. Majzoub and the CMF have a long history of dubious connections to Islamist groups  and the foreign money used to support them. This includes   the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical extremist Islamic organization. After describing, in his words “the types of nefarious machinations of the Islamist front groups in Canada”, Mr. Shoaaib predicted that “the first victims of the motion will be secular and modernist Muslims of Canada who oppose extremism-and their families”.

Stay tuned for the outcomes of the two motions and for the continuing saga of the implementation of Mr. Majzoub’s  grand plans. 


Sequel to Liberals’ and NDPers’ manic anti-Islamophobia pathology

MEF Research and Writing

Canada's Islamophobia Motion Targets Moderate Muslims

by Tarek Fatah
The Toronto Sun
February 14, 2017

http://www.meforum.org/6534/canada-islamophobia-motion-targets-moderate

^{Originally published under the title "Islamophobia Motion Will Target Moderate Muslims."}

The Canadian parliament voted February 15 to approve a motion by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid (center left) calling on the federal government to condemn and battle "Islamophobia."

In the wake of the tragic massacre at a Quebec City mosque that killed six Muslims, a motion will be debated in the Canadian parliament Wednesday asking MPs to "condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination." [It has since been approved]

Many in the mosque establishment and right-wing Islamic groups in Canada are celebrating this as a victory.

But Muslim critics of the so-called "Motion 103," which mentions only Islamophobia by name and not any other form of religious persecution, are in disbelief that so few members of parliament have objected to this giant step backward and the watering down of our freedom of expression.

Perhaps, since the motion is being put before the Commons by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid, a Muslim Canadian, MPs don't want to be seen as insensitive to Muslim victimhood. Opposing the motion risks being labelled racist, misogynist, and, of course, "Islamophobic."

Khalid introduced her motion on Dec.1, 2016, before the Quebec City massacre on January 29, 2017.

That said, popular TV host Asif Javaid argues that it "echoes the agenda of Islamists and Islamic extremists in North America who are shamelessly taking advantage of the Quebec City tragedy to advance the international Muslim Brotherhood agenda to silence any critique of Islamism."

TV host Asif Javaid argues that Khalid's motion "echoes the agenda of Islamists."

In a post on his Facebook page, Javaid wrote: "(E)xtremist Muslims who came here as refugees are making preparations to turn Canada into a ... nightmare."

As for the motion to be debated in parliament, I wrote to Khalid asking her to define "Islamophobia," since her motion does not.

Would Muslims who denounce Sharia law as barbaric fall into that definition, I asked?

I asked if she believed "declaring the Islamic doctrine of armed jihad as an outdated concept that needs to be renounced" was Islamophobic?

She has not responded to my questions as of this writing.

Any threat to Islam's unofficial papacy by

moderate Muslims is met swiftly by threats

of death and fatwas.

Moderate and secular Muslims today are similar to the Christian followers of Martin Luther in 1517, whom the Catholic clergy condemned and later excommunicated.

Despite the fact Islam is without an equivalent to papal authority, Islamic clerical authority in the West works through transnational networks such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami, whose cadres operate cells in schools, universities, and NGOs to help infiltrate the system.

Just as in the Europe of the 1400s, any threat to Islam's unofficial papacy is met swiftly by threats of death and fatwas.

If systemic racism was an issue for Khalid and other MPs, I asked her why she did not, to my knowledge, react when it was reported that an Islamic cleric in Montreal uttered the following words to a congregation:

O Allah, give victory to our brothers who engage in Jihad

O Allah, give them victory over their enemy

O Allah, destroy the accursed Jews

O Allah, make their children orphans and their women widows.

If this prayer was in fact spoken to a congregation, then perhaps MP Khalid will have the courage to amend her motion and include a denunciation of this prayer, variations of which are read at most mosques every Friday.

Will she label such hateful statements as an example of systemic racism that is anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-Hindu, and anti-atheist?

Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and columnist at the Toronto Sun, is a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum