Canada’s Growing Jihadi Cancer: Unbalanced but captures one perspective – The Daily Beast

Dana Kennedy, former correspondent at ABC, Fox News and MSNBC, presents a one-sided account of perceived ‘jihadi cancer,’ citing the usual suspects (Farzana Hassan, David Harris, Tarek Fatah, Raheel Raza), with no attempt to balance that with other views, apart from Mubin Sheikh.

It appears her views reflect more her experience at Fox than the other networks:

The usual Canada’s new telegenic Prime Minister Trudeau, 43, the ultimate anti- Donald Trump, was pictured last week warmly greeting the first of an estimated 25,000 Syrian refugees arriving between now and March 2016. (Canada’s population is about one-tenth of the United States, so that’s as if 250,000 Syrian refugees were arriving in the U.S. in the space of just four months.)

But some worry that the feel-good photo op for Trudeau and his Liberal Party could portend trouble for Canada.

“In a technical briefing for journalists this week, Canadian immigration officials said not a single applicant has been rejected yet,” right-wing activist and lawyer Ezra Levant told The Daily Beast.

“This is a national security threat to Canada, and to the United States, which shares the world’s longest undefended border with us,” said Levant. “The Islamic State has repeatedly named Canada as a target; dozens of Canadian Muslims have gone to Syria to become terrorists. And yet Canada is rushing refugees through, far in excess of our capacity to properly vet them. We simply don’t have sufficient intelligence personnel, let alone those who function in Arabic.”

Toronto attorney and human rights activist David Harris said the new influx of Syrian refugees is part of a “gigantic and overly generous immigration policy,” coupled with a lax vetting process and a philosophy of encouraging newcomers to retain their cultural traditions, that has negative connotations for Canada.

“It’s very interesting to see how the deteriorating situation in Canada and the implications for northern America border security has not been recognized,” said Harris.

“Massive immigration here has created an immigration-industrial complex with all sorts of publicly funded language schools, settlement organizations and lobbying groups that have sprung up like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” said Harris. “Because Canada is so much smaller in population, there are areas of the country starting to resemble tribal homelands and the loyalty is not to Canada. Canada is extremely vulnerable to extremism and terrorism.”

“This is all a Saudi-funded cancer spreading across the world.”

Brian Levin, a former NYPD officer turned counter-terrorism and extremism specialist at San Bernardino State, concurred.

“People talk about Mexico,” said Levin. “They totally overlook Canada. Nobody has any idea what’s going on up there. In my opinion it’s a bigger threat than Mexico.”

Given Prime Minister Trudeau’s good looks, his political pedigree, a one-time TV-anchor wife who the New York Post called “the hottest First Lady in the world,” and his headline-making cabinet featuring many women and minorities, he recently scored a spread in Vogue.

But he’s come under fire at home for what some see as pandering to the Muslim vote and an extreme political correctness. He has said he will revamp aspects of C-51, the controversial anti-terrorism bill that the Conservative Party enacted this year.

Trudeau visited mosques all over Canada as part of his political campaigns leading up to his recent win. He visited a notorious Montreal mosque in 2011, a month before the U.S. classified it as an al-Qaeda recruitment center. He addressed a mosque with ties to Hamas and, unlike his Conservative Party predecessor, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he defends the right for Muslim Canadian women to wear the niqab, a veil covering the face, when they take their citizenship oaths.

In 2011 Trudeau objected to the word “barbaric” in a Canadian citizenship guide for new immigrants that included the passage: “Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, honor killings, female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other gender-based violence.”

“There’s nothing the word ‘barbaric’ achieves that the words ‘absolutely unacceptable’ would not have achieved,” said Trudeau, who later retracted his statements after a Twitter firestorm.

…But, at least so far, homegrown attacks in Canada are fairly rare.

Mubin Shaikh, a former Muslim extremist turned counter-terrorism operative who went undercover for Canadian intelligence to infiltrate the Toronto 18, says the low incidence of terror attacks is precisely because of Canada’s policy of multiculturalism.

“Our multiculturalism is a protective factor and one of the reasons why Canada has seen lower numbers [of terrorist incidents]is largely due to the fact that Muslims are treated very well,” Shaikh told The Daily Beast.

“This is the whole point, that when you actively prevent isolation and marginalization, so too do you see a low level of extremism,” said Shaikh. “The problem in the UK is that although there is multiculturalism, there is a colonial history that grievances-centered people can take advantage of.”

Others disagree and say multiculturalism has spawned a more subtle type of fundamentalism taking over some communities to the point where they look like areas of the Middle East with a corresponding mind-set—and dangers.

“If you’ve been out of Ottawa for just two months, you’ll come back and be astonished at how many more hijabs and niqabs you see on the street in just that short amount of time,” said attorney Harris. “There’s a significance and symbolism to that whether you believe it or not.”

Source: Canada’s Growing Jihadi Cancer – The Daily Beast