Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Monday that Canada's open and diverse society is its greatest weapon against terrorism.
The ostriches are preaching again.
Harper noted that Canada has been criticized by some U.S. politicians who claim the country is vulnerable to terrorist attacks because of lax border security and immigration laws. That criticism has been heightened in recent weeks with the arrest of 17 terror suspects in the Toronto area.
"I believe exactly the opposite is true," Harper said, rejecting calls for Canada to be less open to immigration as a way of curbing terrorism. "I believe, actually, the opposite is true," Mr. Harper told the opening session of the United Nations' World Urban Forum here. "Canada's diversity, properly nurtured, is our greatest strength."
The terrorists and their vision will be rejected "by men and women of good will and generosity in all communities," Mr. Harper affirmed to loud applause. "And they will be rejected most strongly by those men and women living in the very communities that the terrorists claim to represent, as we have already seen in Canada since those arrests."
Let’s talk about “nurturing” and “rejecting” in the Muslim community of Canada. In fact let’s hear from Robert Spencer on the subject. In his article on FrontPage magazine entitled ‘The Complicity of Muslim Silence’, Spencer points out how the defense against nurturing and rejecting played out in the Muslim community as it pertained to the terrorist plot by 17 Canadian born jihadists.
- There is mounting evidence that many Canadian Muslims did know – and yet did nothing to notify Canadian authorities of the plot. The Toronto Star reports that another suspect, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, actively spread the jihad ideology at the Ar-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education in southern Ontario. But by the account of mosque officials, because Jamal unlocked the mosque for daily prayers and they valued his services as a caretaker, they did nothing to stop his preaching.
- Yet another imam in Toronto, Sayyid Ahmed Amiruddin, noted that three of the plotters, Saad Khalid, Zakaria Amara and Fahim Ahmad, “would enter into the mosque to pray, and they would pray in a very aggressive manner, and they would come in military fatigues and military touques and stuff.”
- According to the CBC, “Amiruddin, a Toranto iman said many mainstream Muslim organizations in Canada are really part of the problem, standing by as extremist propaganda spreads in the mosques.” But while Amiruddin points out that these young men would attempt to win others over to their point of view, he says nothing about having done anything to stop them, or about resisting jihadist recruitment in general -- much less working with authorities to help them apprehend jihadists.”
- According to the Star, some of the plotters belonged to a school Muslim association in which they “discussed at an association gathering whether suicide bombing was permissible in Islam. Their views were so violent that the other association members threatened to have them banned.” But they apparently did not actually have them banned, or alert anyone to their violent views.
- Likewise another Toronto Muslim, Mohammed Robert Heft. Heft said that one of the plotters, Fahim Ahmad, “believed the 19 people involved in the World Trade Center bombings were martyrs and he was handing out DVDs openly of wills and testimonies of those 19 people suggesting what they did was right.” “For the last two years I’ve been involved in this mentality. I was dealing with it on a grassroots level. All it takes is a little education and sorting out who to take religion from.” Yet he too apparently did nothing to alert Canadian authorities to Ahmad’s views.
So we ask the question again, Mr. Harper, if believe the open, no-questions asked immigration policy that embraces the sacred cow of multiculturalism is the answer to terrorism, why didn’t it work in the case of the jihadi 17? Where were the “men and women of good will and generosity” who should have “rejected most strongly by those men and women living in the very communities that the terrorists claim to represent”?
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From The Truth Project:
At some point our collective heads will come up out of the sand, probably by the force of an explosion; and we'll stand, mouths agape like so many fish out of water, trying to comprehend a situation we've done our best to ignore.
-Anonymous, 2005
Canadians hold fast to multi-culturalism because it fills a longstanding vacuum. The country has never had much of a real identity: no great historical events or heroes, no particular national mythology, and traditionally an uneasy cohabitation between English and French cultures. About all you could say was that Canada was the not-America.
The worship of multi-culturalism changed all that -- instead of nobody in particular, Canadians were everybody! They were the world! The United States thought it was a melting pot? Ha! Canada could melt down more ethnicities on a bad day than the U.S. could on its best day. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Yanks.
To acknowledge that Canada's ultra-balkanized ersatz nationhood doesn't work in reality the way it's supposed to in ideology, that not all cultures have similar values and one doesn't even accept that there is any good in other belief systems, would leave most of today's Canadians emotionally bereft. The existential barrenness would descend again.
Sometimes I almost wish that the Toronto 17 hadn't been rolled up, that they'd done what they are accused of setting out to do. A distasteful thought, certainly, not one I like myself for having. But Canadians apparently need to experience first-hand the ghastly effect of their miscalculation before they can let go of the suicidal faith in immigration and multi-culturalism that is central to their self-image.
The Canadian intelligence services and police seem to have done a noteworthy job of stopping a very big terror operation. It should cause Canadians to question their assumptions, but it looks like even a supposedly conservative prime minister can't manage that much of a mental shift.
exsqeeze me but "pray in a very aggressive manner" - what the heck does that mean or look like?
The basic premise of multicultralism is sound if all groups agrree to the rules. A give and take and a sharing of cultures. Not one trying to dominat the other. When confronted with a domineering culture that doesn't want to play by the rules, multicultralism goes limp and it's worse parts come to the surface.
Truepeers and Charles Henry write about Canadian culture and identity at htt;://covenantzone.blogspot.com/ in a way that is interesting and highly informative. I write prose so heavily veiled it would embarass a Saudi peasant.
We're looking specifically for Canadians to join us in that on-going discussion. Please join us there or at no dhimmitude for more.
Hi Rick.
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