In early 2007, as the CBC was promoting Little Mosque on the Prairie with great fanfare, I expressed my misgivings about the project. Writing in a Toronto newspaper, I suggested the CBC sitcom reflected "an Islamist agenda" that was using comedy to lull mainstream Canadians into believing all-is-well in Canada's Muslim communities, despite evidence of a rise in extremism among Muslim youth. For example, Little Mosque made no reference to "the hijacking of . . . Islam by politicized clerics affiliated with Saudi Arabia or Iran."
Although in recent months the sitcom has added new characters and plots to reflect the voice of liberal Muslims, it continues to use comedy to camouflage reality. My initial remarks may have been harsh, but news that the sitcom is now openly associating itself with pro-sharia Islamist groups, tells me my fears were not without foundation.
Last week I received an e-mail message from the Canadian chapter of the U. S.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) asking me to join "CBC and CAIRCan to fight hunger." The cast and crew of Little Mosque on the Prairie, the CBC, the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) and CAIR had teamed up to fight against hunger and were asking for donations to the Daily Bread Food Bank.
On face value, this is an admirable deed. Who can argue against using star power to motivate Muslims to donate to a charity. However, if you scratch below the surface, there is much more than meets the eye.
If CBC had to reach out to Muslim organizations, why CAIR and MAC?Why not any other Muslim group such as the Canadian Council of Muslim Women?Did CBC know about the controversy surrounding these two pro-sharia groups before allowing them to piggyback on one of Canada's national institutions?
As a fan of the CBC, a donor to Friends of Canadian Broadcasting and a defender of the public broadcaster who feels it is a crucial national institution that weaves together this vast nation from coast to coast, I am prepared to give it the benefit of doubt. I am willing to concede that this was an act of good faith. So allow me to introduce CAIR and MAC to the CBC.
CAIR-Council of American Islamic Relations--was founded in the U. S. in 1994. Despite attempts to fashion itself as a "Muslim Civil Rights" organization, CAIR is better known today as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the recent Texas terror trial that found one of CAIR's founding directors, Ghassan Elashi, and four other Muslim men guilty of using a charity to raise monies for a terrorist organization in the Middle East. A court filing by the U. S. Justice department that listed three Islamic groups as conspirators described CAIR as a present or past member of "the U. S. Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee and/or its organizations."
However, neither the "unindicted co-conspirator" label nor the conviction of its former director, has affected CAIR. Thanks to funding from Saudi Arabian and Gulf Arab sources, CAIR is expanding across North America with its website claiming it "has 32 chapters in 20 states and one in Canada."
Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal came up with a $500,000 donation to CAIR "to defend Islam in the American society."
If the Saudi donation to CAIR was a matter of concern it was small compared to what was coming in the pipe. On May 21, 2006, the official website of the Government of the United Arab Emirates disclosed a massive investment in CAIR by the deputy ruler of Dubai. This included $978,000 from the Al-Maktoum Foundation of Dubai for a property in Washington, D. C., that today serves as the head office of CAIR.
While the Arab foundation holds the rights to sell it, CAIR is said to manage the property and collects rents from other tenants in the building.
The Muslim Association of Canada --MAC --makes no attempt to hide its links to the radical jihadi group, the Muslim
Brotherhood. MAC says on its website that its "roots can be traced to the Islamic revival of the early 20th century, culminating in the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood."
If the reader is left with any doubt about MAC's links with the Muslim Brotherhood, their website makes it abundantly clear:
"MAC adopts and strives to implement Islam . . . as understood in its contemporary context by the late Imam, Hassan Albanna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood."
One has to marvel at the audacity of MAC to endorse Albanna, who proclaimed that armed "Jihad is obligatory on every Muslim," and that martyrdom in the name of Allah is better than life on earth.
To those of us Muslims who escaped the tyranny of Islamists in the Arab world and South Asia, shivers run up our spine when we see the ease with which MAC and other Islamists can fly under the radar and even manage to appropriate the CBC name and logo in their plans.
The question all Canadians should be asking is this: What good is it to send our troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan when our own public broadcaster is tricked into according respectability to Islamist organizations that share the same doctrine of Jihad?
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