ICYMI: Beware of the Muslim Brotherhood, expert warns

2015/05/21 1 Comment

US security expert on the Muslim Brotherhood activities and strategies in North America and the narrative used that he argues prepares the ground for violent extremism:

Authorities should be concerned about the unseen hand of the Muslim Brotherhood gripping sections of Canada’s diverse Muslim community, says a U.S. security expert.

The movement has planted its revivalist interpretation of Islam, political ideology and activism among some Muslims here and sees itself as a minder and broker between them and the rest of society, Lorenzo Vidino, who specializes in Islamism and political violence, told the Senate’s national security committee recently.

“They basically aim to be the gatekeepers to Muslim communities, that whenever politicians, governments or the media try to get the Muslim voice, if there were such a thing, they would go through them, sort of the self‑appointed leaders of Muslim communities,” he said.

Vidino is director of the program on extremism at George Washington University and author of The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West (Columbia University Press, 2010). He sees no direct links to terrorism among the group’s western supporters. In fact, some work to prevent violent radicalization, he said.

“It would be an analytical mistake to lump them, as some do, with al-Qaida or ISIL. These are not organizations that plan attacks in the West, and actually in many cases they do condemn them.”

The problem is more indirect, Vidino said. “Generally speaking, the movement has not abandoned violence as a tool to advance its agenda.” Tactically, it doesn’t pursue violence, “but it’s not heartfelt,” he said.

“They have this narrative where they lump together foreign policy issues with issues like cartoons and so on as part of a big narrative that proves this point that the West hates Muslims and Islam. It’s that mainstreaming of this narrative which is very much the staircase to violent radicalization and the brotherhood does mainstream that. It provides somewhat of a fertile environment.

“That kind of narrative in the mind a 16- or 18-year-old is extremely dangerous, because violence is justified when Muslims are under attack. If it’s OK in Gaza and Afghanistan, why is it not OK in the West, where you’re also telling me that Islam is under attack?”

…. To start, there is no group calling itself the “Muslim Brotherhood” in North America. Instead, a few hundred sophisticated, politically savvy and well-funded supporters in Canada have over the past 50 years created vocal and visible organizations that represent a very small part of the Muslim community. They exert a disproportional influence over mosques, schools and spaces where Muslims come together, said Vidino.

While they don’t take orders from any Arab capital, they “are part of an informal network where you have strong links based on personal and financial connections, and at the end of the day what matters the most: ideology. They all embrace a certain world view.”

Groups sometimes go to great lengths to sever or hide such ties, Vidino told the committee. He said they include the Muslim Association of Canada and what used to be called CAIR-CAN, now the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

Another group he identified is The International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy – Canada, IRFAN. Its charitable status was revoked after the government alleged the organization sent almost $15 million to groups affiliated with the Palestinian terror outfit Hamas between 2005 and 2009. IRFAN has since been listed as a banned terrorist organization in Canada.

Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of the NCCM, said Vidino is misinformed.

“The NCCM is an independent, non-partisan and non-profit grassroots Canadian civil liberties and advocacy organization with a public track record spanning 15 years,” said Gardee. “The NCCM is not a religious group and does not and has never had any affiliations, links, ideological or of any other kind, with the Muslim Brotherhood or any other overseas group.”

Beware of the Muslim Brotherhood, expert warns | Ottawa Citizen.

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Half a century of terrifying Canada: Before jihadists, other extremists carried out hundreds of attacks

2015/05/20 Leave a comment

A good reminder that violent extremism is more common, and with more varied motives (e.g., various religions, Quebec separatism), than the current focus on Islam-inspired extremism:

The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia shot a Turkish diplomat in Ottawa in 1982. Neo-Nazi skinheads beat a man to death with baseball bats in Montreal in 1992, believing he was gay. A Vancouver doctor who performed abortions was shot in his kitchen in 1994.

These are some of the attacks catalogued in a first-of-its-kind database of Canadian terrorism launched at Carleton University last week. Available online to researchers, policy makers and the public, the inventory was created to promote a more scientific understanding of Canada’s experience with terrorism.

Described by its creators as “the largest collection of incidents involving terrorism or violent extremism in Canada that’s ever been compiled,” it will be analyzed for years to come, but it already has something to say about the past half-century of Canadian terror: there has been a lot of it committed by a lot of different groups.

“Canada has had much more terrorism than most Canadians are familiar with,” says project leader James O. Ellis, a research affiliate at the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society, based at the University of British Columbia.

“I think I’ve also been surprised at the diversity from which violence has come.”

The 1,815 incidents, which caused 450 deaths, were carried out by religious groups, ethnic groups, separatists, leftists, rightists, supremacists, environmentalists and anarchists. Ellis said the “cosmopolitan, diversified demography of Canada is reflected in the variety of violence that’s occurred here.”

The Canadian Incident Database, online at extremism.ca, was put together in a year-and-a-half by a team from UBC, Simon Fraser University, Carleton University, the University of Waterloo and the Université de Montreal, with funding from Public Safety Canada and Defence Research and Development Canada.

Half a century of terrifying Canada: Before jihadists, other extremists carried out hundreds of attacks

Database link (which unfortunately does not allow searching by motivation/reason):

extremism.ca

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Keeping faith: The changing face of religion in Canada

2015/05/20 Leave a comment

Just as immigration is driving population growth, it is driving growth in some religions:

University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald W. Bibby has spent several decades surveying Canadians about their attitudes on faith.

He isn’t optimistic about a Protestant turnaround anytime soon.

“The United Church, the Anglicans, the Presbyterians and the Lutherans were all being fed with these wonderful immigration pipelines for an awfully long time with people coming from Europe.”

“What’s happened,” says Bibby, “is those pipelines have been shut down.  And the reality is unless those groups do some proselytizing, they are going to continue to decline rapidly as far as numbers.”

Proselytizing — not to mention their often livelier church services — may have helped some Evangelical Christians buck that downward trend.

The Angus Reid survey, which Bibby co-designed, suggests roughly 12 per cent of Canadians are members of an Evangelical group, and unlike other Protestant groups, that percentage has kept relatively constant with population growth.

Catholics, as well as non-traditional religions in Canada, such as Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists, have fared far better than Protestants in terms of overall numbers.

Roughly, one in five immigrants — particularly those from the Philippines and South America — come to Canada and bring their Catholic faith with them.

“No question the whole religious scene in Canada has been lit up a lot by immigration,” says Bibby.

So, in spite of an overall drift away from organized religion, he notes there are some religious hot spots.

Keeping faith: The changing face of religion in Canada – Canada – CBC News.

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How a change of heart led to a backlash from the ‘Church of Nasty’ | Michael Coren

2015/05/19 Leave a comment

Michael Coren on the backlash against his leaving the Catholic Church and becoming more liberal in his social views. Well worth reading:

It’s been an interesting two weeks. I was fired from three regular columns in Catholic magazines, had a dozen speeches cancelled and was then subjected to a repugnant storm of tweets, Facebook comments, emails, newspaper articles and radio broadcasts where it was alleged that I am unfaithful to my wife, am willing to do anything for money, am a liar and a fraud, a “secret Jew,” that my eldest daughter is gay and I am going directly to hell. As I say, an interesting two weeks.

The reason for all this probably seems disarmingly banal and for many people absurdly irrelevant. At the beginning of May it was made public that a year ago I left the Roman Catholic Church and began to worship as an Anglican. More specifically, from being a public and media champion of social conservatism I gradually came to embrace the cause of same-sex marriage, more liberal politics and a rejection of the conservative Christianity that had characterized my opinions and persona for more than a decade. I’d won the RTNDA Broadcasting Award for a major radio debate where I opposed equal marriage, I was the author of the bestselling book Why Catholics Are Right, I was Michael Coren, for God’s sake — certainly not someone who would ever appear in the pages of the Toronto Star!

The change was to a large extent triggered by the gay issue. I couldn’t accept that homosexual relationships were, as the Roman Catholic Church insists on proclaiming, disordered and sinful. Once a single brick in the wall was removed the entire structure began to fall.

I refused to base my entire world view and theology, as so many active Catholics do, around abortion, contraception and sex rather than love, justice and forgiveness. Frankly, it was tearing me apart. I wanted to extend the circle of love rather than stand at the corners of a square and repel outsiders. So I quietly and privately drifted over to an Anglican Church that while still working out its own position on many social issues, is far more progressive, open, relevant and willing to admit reality.

But social media being what it is I was “outed” by some far-right bloggers and the gates of media hell opened roaring wide. Thus the comments above. Actually, my daughter lives with her long-term boyfriend in Paris, not that her sexuality matters to me and shouldn’t to anyone else. I am far too ugly to cheat on my wife and we’re very much in love. My dad was Jewish but I’m not and never have been really, secret or otherwise. I’m boringly honest and have never defrauded anyone. I’ve lost a substantial amount of money through lost work because of all this, so if financial gain is the purpose I’m pretty dumb. As for going to hell, I suppose that’s still open to question.

But on a serious note, why? Why would the religious and political change of what is at best a mid-level Canadian journalist and broadcaster cause such visceral anger and aggression in so many people? Their disappointment is understandable, of course, but that they would troll my children’s Facebook pages and make up lies about my family says something far greater and more worrying about contemporary religion and politics and in particular the conservative right.

Over the years I have been attacked by various people in various camps, but I have never witnessed such an organized, personal and unkind campaign — all from men and women who claim to follow the Prince of Peace, a Messiah who preached turning the other cheek, empathy and endless light. I’m trying to forgive because as a Christian I’m in the forgiving business. But I tell you in all honesty, it’s hard.

…If any single characteristic dominates the mindset and ideology of such people it is fear. They have built themselves a hobbit-hole of seclusion, a bunker of protection against the outside world. Nor can this simply be blamed on their age because some of the fiercest and cruellest of them are fairly young. The fear is a result of their socialization, their mingling of church and state and their desire for a cause in an era they see as corrupt and immoral.
I don’t see that corruption and immorality. I see the same challenges, the same greatness and the same brokenness that has always been. But here’s the paradox: while Canada may be less explicitly Christian than ever before, it has arguably become in its sense of equality, fairness and downright decency more Christian than ever. Perhaps that’s why my new friends are so angry with me, with Canada and with pretty much everything.
As for me, in spite of, or perhaps even because of, all this I’ve never felt deeper and more content in my faith and never happier to be a Canadian. As I say, it’s been an interesting two weeks.

How a change of heart led to a backlash from the ‘Church of Nasty’ | Toronto Star.

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Khadr’s release is bittersweet for Canada’s Muslims: Sheema Khan

2015/05/19 Leave a comment

Sheema Khan, in an uncharacteristically harsh judgement of the Government, makes the point about the need for a more inclusive approach:

The release of Mr. Khadr is bittersweet for Canadian Muslims. Many were touched by the young man’s modesty and warmth. His words were genuine – much like his smile. He seemed truly grateful for the freedom so long denied, for the support of so many, for the chance to start his life anew. He expressed remorse for the pain he caused. No hint of bitterness. Only the desire to complete his education, with hopes of entering health care – a field, he noted, rooted in compassion for those in pain. We should all be cautiously optimistic for Mr. Khadr’s reintegration into society.

However, Canadian Muslims have seen this scenario before in the post 9/11 era: A Muslim swept up in the “war on terror,” denied basic rights, tortured and left to rot in legal limbo to be saved only by the noble efforts of human rights activists, ordinary Canadians and our justice system. Canadian citizens Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati, Muayyed Nureddin and Abousfian Abdelrazik were all detained abroad with the aid of our security agencies. Mr. Abdelrazik’s case was particularly vexing. The Harper government repeatedly blocked his return from Sudan (citing him as a “threat”), even after the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP cleared his name. A federal judge finally ordered Mr. Abdelrazik’s return. Meanwhile, Canadian Muslims saw the Harper government’s deferential treatment of convicted felons Brenda Martin and Conrad Black. Or, as Mr. Abdelrazik said: “The Canadian government has a racist mind. It is because I am black and Muslim.”

These words were echoed by Mr. Khadr’s lawyer, Dennis Edney, when asked why Mr. Khadr was left to languish in Guantanamo: “Mr. Harper is a bigot” and “doesn’t like Muslims.” These words were cathartic. We are the low-hanging fruit in the politics of fear. Omar Khadr is exhibit A; Zunera Ishaq is exhibit B. With an October election, it won’t be surprising to see political machinations at our expense – such as sweeping arrests of suspected terrorists and disparaging remarks against niqabs at voting booths.

Mr. Khadr asked Canadians to “see who I am as a person, not as a name.” It is a wish Canadian Muslims have for their themselves and their children: “Please see me for who I am, not as an object of fear.” An inclusive future lies in the fairness and compassion of Canadians.

Khadr’s release is bittersweet for Canada’s Muslims – The Globe and Mail.

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Don Cayo: Time for corporate boards to take diversity seriously

2015/05/16 Leave a comment

More of corporate board diversity (or lack thereof) and the work of Pamela Jeffery of the Canadian Board Diversity Council to change this:

If you, like me, think most big Canadian companies have too few women on their boards of directors, then what should we make of the under-representation of aboriginals and other visible minorities?

The numbers for these two groups are much worse. To compare:

  • Women comprise 50.4 per cent of the Canadian population, or 51 per cent in Metro Vancouver. They hold just eight per cent of the executive positions in Canada’s 500 largest companies, but their representation on boards of directors has inched up and now is 17.1 per cent.
  • Aboriginals comprise 4.3 per cent of Canada’s population, although less than half that in Metro Vancouver. They hold 0.8 per cent of big companies’ board seats — a percentage that has been stalled for years.
  • Other visible minorities comprise 19.1 per cent of the population, but the number is much higher and growing briskly in Metro Vancouver. It had reached 45.2 per cent, mostly people of Asian extraction, by 2011. In 2010, members of this group held 5.3 per cent of big companies’ board appointments, but by 2014 this number had slipped to two per cent.

Pamela Jeffery, the founder of both the Toronto-based Women’s Executive Network and the Canadian Board Diversity Council, is pleased to see at least women making progress — although not enough, in her view, and not at a fast enough rate.

But she has a sinking feeling that women’s successes in getting seats at the boardroom table may come at the expense of aboriginals and other visible minorities. When boards decide to recruit beyond their usual source of new directors — that is, their old boys’ network — the easy way is to find a well-qualified woman and then look no further.

So, to tackle the worst problem first, Jeffery is working with the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business to beat the drum for more aboriginal representation on boards that oversee Canada’s biggest companies. The council has held back-to-back summits, one in Vancouver and one in Calgary, to engage business leaders on the issue.

Jeffrey doesn’t advocate quotas, and neither do I. The problem is that quota-driven recruitment can lead to candidates being selected solely on the basis of their ethnicity, not what they can bring to the table.

But boards undermine their own potential effectiveness when all their members are near clones of each other, with similar backgrounds, experience and attitudes.

Diversity can bring new insights to the table — new ways of looking at under-served markets, whether geographically or demographically distinct from the tried-and-true, as well as ties to new talent pools that a company could tap.

Don Cayo: Time for corporate boards to take diversity seriously.

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Rex Murphy: ‘White privilege’ on the march

2015/05/16 2 Comments

Rex Murphy, in a typical rant, misses the point entirely and the evidence that “white” or European privilege exists. Yes, some academics and activists take this to ridiculous extremes but that does not mean that it does not exist, and that those of Caucasian origin should not be more mindful of any advantages that they have.

But to use historic examples of how whites suffered through famines and wars while being silent on slavery shows an incredible blindness, as does his silence on more contemporary examples like US police disproportionate shootings of blacks or Toronto police carding:

To even set up white privilege as a category is prima facie racist. It is to reduce the sum of a person, his dignity, his drive, his worth and his soul to the colour of his skin; it is to posit skin colour as the point of departure for all interactions with that person, to found judgments on that skin colour, to draw feverish and deliberately negative conclusions from it.

That such a pseudo-concept even exists, and has full annual academic conferences to elaborate on its tedious fancifulness, and undergraduate courses to inject it into half-formed sensibilities, testifies — one more time — to the modern university’s descent into fatuousness. That any institution which claims to be one of higher learning even allows such trivial exchange offends the dignity of expression, and purporting to offer “instruction” under its banner is just the latest fulfillment of Alexander Pope’s prophetic alarm: A little learning is a dangerous thing. Emphasis on little, very little.

Some universities have become parodies of themselves, shops of petty moral vanity, given to feverish exhibitions of their putative sensitivity and moral preciosity. Hence “trigger warnings” for Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the hysteria over “rape culture” and, as here, activist sideshows masquerading as academic courses. (Exhibit A, from Columbia University’s Spectator: “Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a fixture of Lit Hum, but like so many texts in the Western canon, it contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom.”)

It is to the great shame of modern universities that they have debased themselves to the pursuit of these follies

The obsession of seeing everything in race-coloured terms is itself racist. Anti-racism pursed by zealots transforms itself into the very vice it deplores. This is the cost of identity politics, and its close bedmate, victimology enterprises — the desire to judge, define, represent and indict the individual by the group he or she belongs to. Every human being’s experience in its infinite particularities and potentials transcends category.

It is to the great shame of modern universities that they have debased themselves to the pursuit of these follies, and that they do not cast this cant aside as being hollow, sublimely tendentious and utterly shameful to the idea of, or the aspiration to achieve, an educated mind. Wasn’t Doctor King’s most famous prayer that he hoped to see the day “when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?”

Fatuousness is not limited to universities as Rex demonstrates all too well.

Rex Murphy: ‘White privilege’ on the march

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‘Lack of clarity’ over level of UK antisemitism, says new report

2015/05/16 Leave a comment

A useful note of caution in interpreting the degree of antisemitism in the UK, which likely applies to other countries as well, and the corresponding need for better research and data:

The extent of antisemitism in the UK is hard to gauge because there is a lack of accurate data, according to the Jewish community’s main think tank.

Despite a number of surveys carried out over the years, there remains a “distinct lack of clarity”, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research said in a new report, entitled “Could It Happen Here?”, this week.

Some sources showed that the level of antipathy towards Jews was “comparatively low and stable in the UK, even though other sources demonstrate that 2014 broke all known records for the number of antisemitic incidents.”

Other data suggested that fewer British adults held antisemitic attitudes than French, but that over the previous seven years more antisemitic incidents per head took place in Britain than in France.

During conflicts such as last summer’s Israel-Gaza War, the number of antisemitic incidents in the UK is usually three times above the monthly average, JPR said.

Antisemitic incidents usually rise by 30 per cent around the High Holy-Days.

Excluding these two exceptional periods, the number of antisemitic incidents has increased from 35 per month in 2004 to 51 last year, the report found.

“They may well indicate that levels of antisemitism in the UK have climbed over the course of the past decade,” JPR stated.

“However, one cannot rule out an alternative explanation – that the increase shown is due to an increased prevalence among Jews to report incidents in the first place.”

While Islamic extremists clearly pose a threat, the report says that “not enough is known about the extent to which their ideas, even in diluted form, permeate the Muslim population as a whole and whether the danger is growing, declining or stable over time”.

Calling for investment in proper research, JPR says the “Jewish community needs to steer away from knee-jerk reactions and ad hoc research enterprises. Monitoring trends in antisemitism requires more than having ‘being concerned’ or having good intentions.”

The alternative is wasted resources and persistent uncertainty “at the expense of greater clarity and, we believe, greater safety for Jews”.

‘Lack of clarity’ over level of UK antisemitism, says new report | The Jewish Chronicle.

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Sex-ed controversy exposes how different religions, cultures fit into Ontario’s mainstream: Cohn

2015/05/15 Leave a comment

One of the better pieces of commentary on the opposition to Ontario’s sex-ed updating:

Should a minority movement be able to impose its own viewpoint — and veto — on the majority? Thousands of protesting parents withdrew their children from all classes earlier this month to protest future sex education classes, but let’s be clear on what they are demanding — and what they aren’t.
They are not merely trying to keep their kids out of sex-ed classes. They already have the right — rightly or wrongly — to deprive their children of a curriculum that teaches them how to protect themselves from sexual infections.
Anyone can claim an exemption currently. No, what these parents are fighting for is a veto on all other children benefiting from updated sex-ed classes that the protesters might disagree with — even if the majority of Ontarians support a modernized curriculum.
Consider this analogy: In some GTA schools, parents regularly withdraw their children from dance and music classes they deem to be in conflict with their faith. What if those parents demanded that all music and dance classes be banned in our schools?
An absurd notion — it would never happen — yet the latest wave of protests against sex-ed has taken on that character: Not only shall the protesters’ children not be exposed to updated sex-ed classes, neither should anyone else’s.

No matter that the 240-pages of turgid material does not provide masturbation lessons in Grade 6 (it merely offers basic teacher prompts in case kids raise the subject), or that it does not extol anal sex but rather alerts students to the risks. Never mind that the curriculum was assembled after consultations with hundreds of pedagogical experts (and thousands of parents from school councils), and that it mirrors similar updates in places like Alberta.

Sex-ed controversy exposes how different religions, cultures fit into Ontario’s mainstream: Cohn

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Advising resistance to police’s carding efforts grows more tempting: James

2015/05/15 Leave a comment

Royson James on Toronto police carding and the recent court decision:

In awarding damages to a man stopped in Moss Park and beaten up by police after he refused to engage the officer, citing his right to walk about the street without police harassment, Superior Court Justice Frederick Myers wrote:

“One who is not being investigated for criminality is allowed to walk down the street on a cold night with his or her hands in the pockets and to tell the inquisitive police officers to get lost without being detained, searched, exposed to sub-zero temperatures, or assaulted.”

You think?

Judge Myers awarded the victim, Mutaz Elmardy, $27,000 in damages in the 2011 incident.

“That police officers shattered Mr. Elmardy’s feeling of the law strikes at the rule of law itself and requires condemnation by the court,” the judge wrote.

You, sir, are a credit to your profession.

The same cannot be said of our Mayor John Tory (open John Tory’s policard). Since his election, it seems like he has done everything to perpetuate this odious police practice — from manipulating the membership of the police board, to hiring a chief committed to carry on the controversial exercise.

Tory calls carding corrosive. He says the police board is reviewing it. Yet he wouldn’t demand basic police accountability: provide those carded with a receipt of the encounter and respectfully inform them of their right not to engage.

http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2015/05/13/advising-resistance-to-polices-carding-efforts-grows-more-tempting-james.html

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