Sun chain gives great shout-out to blogs

Peter Mackay and the cancelling of Imam Delic

brian.lilley – October 4th, 2010

There are stories that the mainstream media miss until they blow up. The case of Zijad Delic and his invitation to speak at an Islamic History Month event at military headquarters is a case in point.

As far as I can tell, no major media outlet picked up the story before Delic, an Imam and executive director of the Canadian Islamic Congress, had his appearance cancelled.

Now there is speculation mounting that conservative Christian groups, led by people like Charles McVety were the ones orchestrating this. That’s not exactly the case here.

The move against Delic started in an email campaign, the first notice of which I spotted around September 29^th. It urged a call to action, for people to complain to the government that Islam was being given a privileged place over other religions with an official celebration of Islamic History Month at National Defence Headquarters. It also included the original DND announcement.
ISLAMIC HERITAGE MONTH CELEBRATION – 04 OCT 10

Join the Defence Visible Minority Advisory Group (DVMAG-NCR) on 04 October
2010 at 1000 hrs in the concourse of the  MGen Pearkes building (101
Colonely By Drive, Ottawa) to celebrate Islamic Heritage Month.

Delic was scheduled to give a 20 minute talk, there were to be a pair of “cultural demonstrations” and cultural food tasting. While the rest of the program does go ahead, the talk by Delic will not.

One of the main questions in the early emails I received on this was “Why is Islam being given special treatment?”

Going on to point out that other religions are not given special months at National Defence Headquarters. It’s true there was an Anglican bishop that read a prayer when the new Governor General was sworn in last week but he could not even say the name of his God, referring to “Creator Spirit” and generally sounding like he was reading a United Nations brochure.

From the email campaign the story was picked up by bloggers such as Blazing Cat Fur, Five Feet of Fury, Free Canuckistan and others with similarly colourful names. These bloggers and their readers pushed the story for two or three days until the talk by Delic was cancelled late on Friday. As far as I can tell none of these bloggers is the Charles McVety type. They may be conservative but they are not card carrying members of the religious right.

That’s not to say the McVety did nothing to push for Delic’s cancellation and the pastor and activist certainly has lots of followers but this was hardly all his doing. McVety is simply an easy scapegoat or punching bag for people still stuck on the idea that Stephen Harper is some kind of religious zealot as opposed to a guy that sometimes goes to a church.

In truth some of the push-back against Delic’s appearance came from within the military and some from Mulsim groups like the Muslim Canadian Congress.

So was Delic’s cancelled because he is a radical? Doesn’t seem that way, seems like it has more to do with the company he keeps.

Of course if you’ve followed this story at all you know about the comments from the former head of the Canadian Islamic Congress. In 2004 then president of the CIC, Mohamed Elmasry, appeared on Sun columnist Michael Coren’s television program and said repeatedly that every Israeli over 18 is a valid target for Palestinian attacks.

Elmasry is not alone among Delic’s friends in causing the Imam difficulty. Late Sunday it was confirmed to me that the government was more worried about Delic’s associations than what he himself has said.

Among the other sponsors of Islamic History Month is the Muslim Association of Canada. On its website MAC states plainly that it follows Islam in the style of the Muslim Brotherhood, “MAC regards this ideology as the best representation of Islam as delivered by Prophet Muhammad .”

The Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Egypt and was involved in a major terrorism financing trial in the United States, it is also a controversial group among Muslims.

There have been claims put forward by the aforementioned bloggers, with links to back up some of their claims, that among the friends of Delic in organizing Islamic History Month are some 9-11 Truthers who are convinced that President Bush and those Israelis were really behind the 9-11 attacks.

Zijad Delic may well be the moderate people claim he is, there is no proof to say otherwise at this point other than he has some friends the government doesn’t want to been seen supporting.

There is surely more to come on this story so stay tuned.