CBC, CAIR, CAIR-CAN and Islam as the victim

Here is an interesting clip from the CBC where CAIR-CAN is referred to as, “A well respected organization”.

I have added some text to set the record straight and there is more below the MORE but the entire clip is there. I have not edited the content or order of the CBC clip. Only added text and highlighted the CAIR sign.


CALGARY HERALD

Letters

Evasive

December 17, 2008

 

Re: “Bah, humbug to Tarek Fatah,” Ihsaan Gardee, Opinion, Dec. 14.

Ihsaan Gardee evades the questions I raised about CAIR’s links to Saudi Arabia and the fact it was listed as a co-conspirator in the Texas Terror trial. Instead, Gardee trivializes CBC’s blunder of associating with pro-sharia organizations with links to the Muslim Brotherhood. He tries to distance his group from its U. S. parent, claiming CAIR-Can was “formed as a sister organization of the U. S.-based CAIR; the two remain completely distinct and autonomous . . .”

Far from being “completely distinct,” court documents suggest otherwise. In a sworn affidavit in 2003, Sheema Khan, former CAIR-Can chair, states that CAIR USA has “direct control over the character and quality of all activities” of its Canadian chapter. She admits CAIR Canada “uses the trademarks CAIR-Can and the name Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada under licence from CAIR United States.” Khan writes that in 1996, a Canadian chapter was established in Montreal to promote awareness about the American CAIR through the distribution in Canada of CAIR newsletters. She takes pride in the fact that under her leadership, more than 2,000 Canadian Muslims became members of CAIR USA.

The fact that his group’s former chair would sign a sworn affidavit stating American CAIR had “direct control over the character and quality of the activities” of its “Canadian chapter,” exposes Gardee’s attempt to distance CAIR-Can from its American parent’s tarnished reputation. Both CAIRs seem to sing from the same jihadi hymn book.

Tarek Fatah,

Toronto

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

Tarek Fatah, “Evasive,” calgaryherald.com, 17 December 2008, http://www.calgaryherald.com/Evasive/1084809/story.html (dead link) (accessed 17 December 2008).

 

INVESTIGATIVE PROJECT ON TERRORISM, WASHINGTON, DC 

Heritage Canukistan?

by Farzana Hassan
for IPT News
March 23, 2009

http://www.investigativeproject.org/1011/heritage-canukistan

Things are heating up in the sweepstakes for the most incompetent department of Canadian government to face Islamic radicalism. For a while, bets were on Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, which, for 11 years, had the president of the extremist-sympathizing Canadian Arab Federation – big on Hamas and Hizballah – on its board. His job there was to decide who was too dangerous to let into the country.

But now “Heritage Canada,” a Canadian government department whose bid for the title is made with the help of the Calgary-based independent Centre for Faith and the Media (CFM) has jumped in the fray.

Heritage Canada pushes a multiculturalism agenda, and the CFM seems to be a one-employee outfit with a volunteer Board of Directors of sympathetic religious people – with one exception. Positioning itself as a link and information clearinghouse between journalists and religious communities, CFM has been decisive in moving Heritage Canada into committing blunders.

The current fiasco started when Heritage Canada funded the Centre to start something called “The Muslim Project.” This initiative involves a series of cross-Canada “roundtables” prominently displaying CFM’s sole paid employee, Executive Director Richelle Wiseman, as moderator. The end-product? A “study” of media portrayals of Muslims and Islam in Canada, due out within the next year or so.

Heritage Canada bureaucrats would have known something could go wrong with a Muslim-oriented project dealing with this subject if they’d only looked at a “journalist’s guide” to Islam on the sponsoring CFM’s website. The Islam “guide,” which was pulled from the site last month, recommended that Canadian reporters seek out the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as an authoritative source of information about Muslims and Islam. CAIR, of course, is the Washington, DC radical-Islamist organization that is funded by the Saudis and qualified by the US Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial. A parade of its senior officials and affiliated people has made its way into penitentiaries on criminal charges and an FBI agent testified that it was a front organization for Hamas.

The Islam guide was copyrighted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada (CAIR-CAN), the Canadian chapter of CAIR. It isn’t clear whether Canadian bureaucrats were confused by CAIR-CAN’s usual disinformation about “distancing” itself from CAIR – which then-CAIR-CAN Chair Sheema Khan acknowledged in a sworn December 2003 affidavit was her chapter’s mother organization. No one can figure out whether Heritage Canada and the Centre for Faith and the Media “interfaithers” knew that CAIR-CAN refuses to name and condemn the Hamas, Hizballah and other killers placed by Canada’s own government on a list of banned terror groups. Or that CAIR-CAN is a defendant in a 9/11 New York lawsuit. Or that CAIR – including CAIR-CAN – had been responsible for all-out attacks, through the use of “silencing” libel lawsuits, on the constitutional rights of virtually any Canadian and American media that dared to ask about the organizations’ links and agendas. This looks like a pretty weak “partner” for a Centre that aims to help the media.

Much worse was to follow, and it indeed appears that the CFM’s Muslim Project might be substantially in the hands of those who would be most reviled by moderate members of the very Canadian faith community in whose name the Centre hopes to work. A review of available roundtable announcements and other evidence, for example, makes the case. One gets the impression that an intimate and symbiotic relationship seems to have developed between the well-meaning, but apparently unaware CFM, and CAIR-CAN.

One example suffices. Among several public roundtables featuring CAIR-CAN operatives was a “media training” session in Montreal. The event consisted of the CFM Executive Director as moderator, and three panelists: CAIR-CAN Executive Director Ihsaan Gardee, Sameer Zuberi – somewhat misleadingly advertised in one source as a human rights advocate and student – and a cleric named Sikander Hashmi. Elsewhere, Zuberi was better known only weeks before as CAIR-CAN’s communications coordinator and “human rights” advocate. Meanwhile, Hashmi was described as a “freelance journalist and Imam”; his very few internet articles include one slavishly quoting from a CAIR-CAN communications officer … Sameer Zuberi. There couldn’t have been much for CFM moderator Wiseman to “moderate” as she sat in the middle of this hard-line trio.

Add to this the fact that the sole Muslim Director on the CFM Board was Nova Scotia-based Dr. Jamal Badawi – or had been until the entire list of CFM board members was yanked and “went to black” on about March 17, 2009, as rumours of strange links had the Centre in a swirl. There is also the disturbing fact that Badawi is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial, as is the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), on whose executive he sits. He has also been on the board of directors of CAIR-CAN.

This mess has several serious implications.

First, under cover of a multi-religious, if essentially Christian institute, CAIR-CAN is being permitted to project itself as “moderate.” Its representatives pontificate as “Muslim leaders” – to use CFM’s website terminology – at taxpayer-supported public roundtables that even include media representatives of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Canadian Television Network. With roundtables targeting journalists and journalism schools, Heritage Canada, through the CFM, is inadvertently allowing the Canadian wing of a US unindicted co-conspirator to groom the present and future generation of journalists. In the process, they are squeezing off the stage those few moderate Canadian Muslims who have been determined enough to stand up to the CAIR-CANs and ISNAs of North America.

Second, the Wahabbi lobby, of which CAIR-CAN and ISNA are prominent members, has led in radical and unjustified efforts to portray Canadian Muslims as victims of mass-prejudice and bigotry. Ignoring the objections of the moderate Muslim Canadian Congress and solid law-enforcement statistics that refute such advocacy, these organizations push this destructive myth, regardless of the resulting risk to social cohesion, of alienating Muslim youth, of undermining security and quieting responsible debate about extremism. Needless to say, such claims are used to rationalize emotional and never-ending demands for state-sponsored privileges that are rightly withheld from other religious communities.

It is a good guess that CAIR-CAN’s endgame is a Centre for Faith and the Media “study” that certifies, once and for all, the truth of the contrived word “Islamophobia” and the victimhood of Canadian Muslims – particularly at the hands of media. This outcome would put further pressure on journalists to watch their step, especially in the context of Canada’s free speech-repressing “human-rights” commissions whose excesses have been revealed in the Maclean’s – Mark Steyn case. Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsmagazine, found itself under siege for publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s bestselling America Alone. The radical Canadian Islamic Congress laid formal complaints before human rights commissions in various Canadian jurisdictions, multiplying the costs to the magazine of defending – successfully, as it turned out – against this doubtful use of quasi-judicial administrative systems.

Consistent with attempts of the international Organization of Islamic Conference to impose, through the United Nations, worldwide Sharia blasphemy norms, an Islamist-influenced CFM report would set the stage for further attempts to bring Canadian reporters and others into line.

Thus might Heritage Canada’s government money and an unsuspecting media center be maneuvered to constrain media freedom and the free flow of ideas. It might even bring a reprise of the embarrassing – and one hopes, long dead – immediate post-9/11 experience of watching members of the tactless Royal Canadian Mounted Police National Security outreach unit, completely unschooled in issues of radical Islam, quoting in public briefings from CAIR-CAN’s own deceptive “victimhood” material.

There are also implications, here, for citizens’ ability to rely on well-meaning religious and quasi-religious institutions in interfaith matters. For the most part, the CFM board that has overseen these developments has consisted of a range of distinguished, highly-intelligent and honourable Canadians, from former Alberta legislator Jocelyn Burgener and respected Calgary Herald journalist Licia Corbella, to religion writer Joe Woodard and the Canadian Readers Digest’s Peter Stockland. But, in the end, the organization has been used as a welcome mat for radical Islamism.

Neither is Heritage Canada or the Centre for Faith and the Media alone. Canada’s Manning Centre, another respected institution, scurried along to join the post-9/11 penchant for interfaith outreach. Led by conservative political icon Preston Manning, but without apparent familiarity with difficult Islamist issues, the Manning Centre established an interfaith unit that stumbled. At last report, the Manning Centre had given a special place in its consultations to associates of the Islamic Society of North America, and the resulting embarrassment cannot be far behind.

Given current trends in the Canadian government and NGO sector, there will be a great deal of embarrassment to go around.

Farzana Hassan is a Toronto-based freelance writer and author of “Prophecy and the Fundamentalist Quest.” She is the former president of the Muslim Canadian Congress, an organization representing progressive and secular Muslims. She can be reached at fa***********@gm***.com.

 

Farzana Hassan, “Heritage Canukistan?,”  investigativeproject.org, 23 March 2009, http://www.investigativeproject.org/1011/heritage-canukistan (accessed 23 March 2009).

 

 

 

Statement

on

Immigrant Integration, National Security and Public Safety

to the

Standing Senate Committee on

Social Affairs, Science and Technology

David B. Harris

Director, International and Terrorist Intelligence Program

INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc

Ottawa, Canada

3 February 2011

Victoria Building

Senate of Canada

140 Wellington Street

Ottawa, Canada

 

 

 

 


Statement on

Immigrant Integration, National Security and Public Safety

to the

Standing Senate Committee on

Social Affairs, Science and Technology

David B. Harris

Director, International and Terrorist Intelligence Program

INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc

Ottawa, Canada

3 February 2011

 

 

Mr Chair, Honourable Senators:

 

Only a decade or so ago, I testified before a United States’ congressional subcommittee that Canada was a land of 29 million; today, that number has rocketed to almost 34 million.  Canada’s immigration intake is the biggest per capita in the world, at about 250,000 per annum. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney boasted that we welcomed 519,000 newcomers altogether in a single, recent year.

 

One cannot discuss immigrant integration in the national security and public-safety context without appreciating the sheer magnitude of Canada’s immigration, refugee and related intakes.

 

Such numbers may not be an issue on planets rejoicing in peace and prosperity, but here on Earth, in Canada, things are different.  Mass immigration of Canada’s kind has potential adverse consequences for security and stability.

 

Population movements are relevant to many Canadian security challenges.  CSIS Director Richard Fadden signalled concerns about China’s political influence operations, operations that can involve expatriates and others, and go directly to the sovereignty and independence of this nation.  Regarding terrorism, Ontario’s appeals court recently reflected with foreboding on the broadening vistas of violence in an age of mega-terror: we face an existential threat, warned the judges.  Indeed, Iran, with its nuclear weapons’ development and thousands volunteering for suicide missions, has an aggressive presence in this very city, variously relying on and victimizing its expatriates.

 

Let me focus on one of the leading threats: Islamic terrorism, and its handmaiden, Islamism – radical Islam.  This particularly instructive issue involves direct risks of violence, but also an ideology that, even in a nominally non-violent form, presents a challenge to social cohesion and constitutional rights.

 

In recent years, tens of thousands came to Canada from Muslim-majority lands.  At a time when radical Islam is a threat and nine of ten Canadian Muslims are foreign-born, one must ask about the attitudes newcomers bring from source countries.  This, especially when Mr bin Laden has targeted our country.

 

In former days of lower numbers, a newcomer’s radical tendencies might more readily have been overwhelmed by Canada’s ambient liberal-pluralist atmosphere.  Today, however, the huge intake means a growing number of ethnic concentrations or enclaves, from six in 1981 to 254 in 2002, according to a 2004 Government study.  This hints at increasing separation of communities, some of it self-imposed, and the undermining of integrationist hopes, notably including hopes of integration of Charter values.

 

Recent Pew Global attitudes surveys looked at Muslim attitudes in several Muslim-majority countries.  One can hardly deduce from attitudes in a given country, the attitudes of émigrés from that country.  Some may leave homelands precisely because they depart from homeland attitudes – may, indeed, be bona fide refugees.  Think of Christians, Jews and moderate Muslims who for years have been persecuted under the Islamist apartheid systems prevalent in a number of Muslim lands.  Nonetheless, poll results suggest security challenges for Canada, present and developing.

 

As hundreds fly from Egypt’s upheaval to Canada, consider that fifty-nine percent of Muslim Egyptians prefer Islamists’ in charge, versus 27 percent wanting modernizers.  Eighty-four percent favour death for converts from Islam, a fact that has been noted by some fearful Coptic Christians in Canada.  Eighty-two percent want death for adultery. Seventy-seven percent want whipping and amputations for thieves.  One in five Egyptian Muslims sympathizes with our al-Qaeda enemy.  Roughly 20,000 permanent residents came from Egypt in the past ten years.

 

In Jordan, Pakistan and Nigeria those favouring death for conversion amount to 86, 76 and 51 percent, respectively.

 

Thirty-four percent of Jordanian and almost half Nigeria’s Muslims favour al-Qaeda. As for the West’s Iran-created Hezbollah enemy, 54 percent of Jordanian Muslims favour it, like 92 percent of Lebanon’s Shia Muslims and 40 percent of Indonesian Muslims.  Only about a third of Pakistan’s Muslims view unfavourably the Islamic terror organization that flailed Mumbai in 2008.

 

Does extremism travel well?  A 2007 Environics poll says 12 percent of Canadian Muslims could justify a Toronto-18 type plot calling for mass-casualty attacks in Canada, including invading Parliament and beheading the prime minister.  That means that between 49,000 and 119,000 Canadians could justify making war on fellow Canadians.

 

Perhaps such attitudes are reflected in the increasing number of terrorism cases.

 

Meanwhile, troubling interests are indoctrinating our Muslim youth.  The Muslim Association of Canada (MAC), a major group, boldly declares on its website its allegiance to the tradition of Hassan al Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood – the organization causing dread in Egypt and beyond:

 

MAC’s roots are deeply enshrined in the message of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him). Its modern roots can be traced to the Islamic revival of the early twentieth century, culminating in the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood. This movement influenced Islamic activities, trends and intellectual discourse throughout the world including those of Muslims who came to Canada in search of freedom, education and better opportunities.

MAC adopts and strives to implement Islam, as embodied in the Qur’an, and the teachings of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and as understood in its contemporary context by the late Imam, Hassan Albanna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. MAC regards this ideology as the best representation of Islam as delivered by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). [Muslim Association of Canada, http://www.macnet.ca/about-mac.php?print=Y (accessed 3 February 2011.)]

 

This is problematic.  The Muslim Brotherhood’s motto is “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”  And the captured 1991 Muslim Brotherhood strategic plan for Canada and the US declares that:

 

The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process,’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in American is kind of a grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house …

 

Among other organizations, there is also the disturbing Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN), the Canadian chapter of a Saudi-funded US unindicted co-conspirator organization.  CAIR-CAN is known for its divisive, poorly documented insistence that Muslims are subject to broad-ranging persecution in Canada.  Under its first Chair, Dr Sheema Khan, CAIR-CAN joined its US mother organization in unsuccessful “libel-lawfare” court assaults on commentators and constitutional free expression, in an effort to silence questions about CAIR and CAIR-CAN, their origins and agenda.  This record, incidentally, has not stopped the RCMP’s Community Outreach program, and a handful of other government entities, from stumbling into dealings with CAIR-CAN, much to the periodic embarrassment of officials.

 

Reacting to news that Canadian Muslim numbers – currently 940,000 – will triple by 2030, a prominent liberal Muslim warned this week that

 

… what is different from other immigrant groups is there is a subgroup among Muslims, I call Islamists, who come here with the intention of destroying the social fabric of the country …. That is very unusual for an immigrant group and will be more of a problem in the future.

Meanwhile, a few months ago, the moderate Muslim Canadian Congress raised other issues of internal security.  It declared itself “troubled by the fact that Islamists had managed to penetrate the highest levels of the Ottawa bureaucracy and the political apparatus of all political parties.”

 

Such arresting assertions must be tested and evaluated for accuracy.  In the meantime, the combination of religious violence, sharia values, demographic shifts and associated considerations means that it is high time that Canadians ask direct questions about the managing of related policy, and the risks of failed integration.

______________

For further information, please contact:

613.233.1220   in********@ro****.com


INSIGNIS STRATEGIC RESEARCH INC.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

 

DAVID B. HARRIS

 

With three decades in the field of international security and intelligence affairs, David Harris is a Canadian lawyer involved in criminal and national security issues, and Director of the International and Terrorist Intelligence Program, INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc.  Maclean’s, Canada’s most prominent newsmagazine, calls Harris “one of Canada’s leading experts on terrorism” and acknowledges “his almost unique willingness to speak publicly and fearlessly about Islamic extremism.”

 

As a consultant, Harris has made security assessments of multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects, including energy generation and distribution initiatives.  As a lawyer, he has served as an intervener counsel at Canadian terrorism and intelligence commissions of inquiry, most recently the Air India Inquiry and the Iacobucci Internal Inquiry.  He has also consulted with intelligence organizations in Canada and abroad, and served with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in 1988-1990.

 

David Harris is a regular commentator in English and French on terrorism and national security, and has been a witness at US Congressional subcommittee and Canadian parliamentary committee hearings, his analyses receiving international media attention.   Quoted in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and international news services, Harris has appeared on television’s “America’s Most Wanted,” CBS’s “60 Minutes,” “NBC Dateline,” “The Today Show,” “The CBS News,” CNN, and FOX’s “O’Reilly Factor” and “The Big Story w/ John Gibson.”  Harris is featured weekly on CFRA Radio Ottawa’s “The Intelligence File,” and his writing has appeared in various publications.

 

In addition to his law qualification, Harris holds a Master of Science in Foreign Service degree from Georgetown University, Washington, DC, and a Master’s in Public Administration from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

 

David Harris has been honoured by the International Council of the Islamic Supremo Ordine Salomonico dei Principi di Shekal, Italy, for his role “in Canada and North America as a counterterrorism expert and security analyst committed to the defense of moderate Muslims and in the safeguard of their constitutional rights; [as well as] For his role in unmasking fanaticism and making reasoned moderation prevail … [translation]”

 

 

For further information, please contact:

613.233.1220   in********@ro****.com

INSIGNIS STRATEGIC RESEARCH INC.

 PRESS RELEASE

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

24 APRIL 2006


ISLAMIC GROUP’S LAWSUIT AGAINST FORMER CSIS OFFICIAL IS DISMISSED

 

Statement by David B. Harris, Director

International and Terrorist Intelligence Program,

INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc.

Ottawa, Canada

24 April 2006

 

The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN), the Canadian chapter of the controversial Washington, DC,-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has recently issued a press release (attached) purporting to report the outcome of a defamation lawsuit in which I was a defendant.  Readers are cautioned that the CAIR-CAN document is misleading in certain important respects.

 

CAIR-CAN and its then-Chair, Dr. Sheema Khan, sued Ottawa radio station CFRA and me for remarks I made as a regular CFRA national-security guest during an interview with host Mr. Steve Madely on 1 April 2004.  At all relevant times, Mr. Riad Saloojee was Executive Director of CAIR-CAN.  Dr. Khan and Mr. Saloojee have lately been replaced in their positions by Mr. Abdul-Basit Khan and Mr. Karl Nickner, respectively.

 

I believe implicitly in the accuracy of all that I said on the radio program.  I have withdrawn not a word, and never shall.  In the course of the interview I posed a question:  Shouldn’t someone be looking into CAIR-CAN’s relationship with its more-troubling American relative, CAIR?  For this, I was sued for libel.

 

In the spirit of openness and disclosure, INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc. is making available, on request, relevant legal documents concerning this case, including an unofficial transcript of the interview in question.  This is being done so that media and other concerned citizens may satisfy themselves firsthand about the important issues at stake in this matter.

 

As a commentator on national security affairs, my guiding principle throughout CAIR-CAN’s lawsuit was never to compromise hard-won rights of media and media commentators to their exercise of responsible free expression under s. 2 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  I viewed this as a responsibility at a time when Canadians in Afghanistan and elsewhere are dying for such rights, and when civil liberties must be vigorously defended at home.  Through the dedication of my family and many committed civil libertarians, including courageous colleagues of Muslim background, we prevailed against CAIR-CAN and Dr. Khan.  CAIR-CAN and Dr. Khan dropped their suit, cold.  No damages, no costs, no apology, no clarification.

 

It is for others to decide why CAIR-CAN balked at the prospect of proceeding to trial.  It is unknown whether this unease stemmed from concern about the detailed review and disclosures that would derive from such proceedings.  Or whether the collapse of its mother organization’s US $1.35 million libel case against the American Anti-CAIR organization (proprietor of anti-CAIR-net.org), played a part.  We do not know whether it was the unearthing of a December 2003 court document in which Dr. Khan had sworn to CAIR-CAN’s subsidiary status in relation to the troubling US CAIR group.  Perhaps it was a concern that, on the witness stand, CAIR-CAN officials would be asked to answer the questions I had asked about that relationship on CFRA.

 

Whatever the truth, it is remarkable, in light of the dramatic indictment of my remarks in CAIR-CAN’s very own Statement of Claim (see below), that CAIR-CAN so abjectly dropped its suit against me.  My determined refusal to pen any “apology” or “clarification”, my refusal to pay damages, or any part of CAIR-CAN’s legal costs or expenses, and my commitment through the present statement and other means to keep all of this transparent, paid off.  This is a lesson to others in the media and elsewhere who face efforts to silence responsible questions.

 

Beyond this, certain features of the CAIR-CAN press release must be dealt with for the record.

 

The CAIR-CAN release boasts that “[f]ollowing the launch of the lawsuit, it appears that CFRA has not used Harris as a guest commentator since.”  This is incorrect and seriously misleading.  Indeed, I am pleased to report that I have appeared as a guest on several CFRA programs “following the launch of the lawsuit” and during the lawsuit period.  Moreover, and following the Notice of Libel, Mr. Steve Winogron, CFRA Assistant Program Director and CHUM Ottawa News Director, advised me directly that the lawsuit altered nothing of CFRA/CHUM’s longstanding and high regard for my reliability and analysis, and that I would continue to be a CFRA/CHUM guest – as, indeed, I have been.
I am also struck by CAIR-CAN’s assertion that the last word on the group’s lawsuit against distinguished Canadian journalist David Frum was an “editorial note” in the National Post.  It is a matter of public record that Mr. Frum reasserted in at least one follow-on article, that he withdrew nothing he had written about CAIR and CAIR-CAN.

 

People of good faith must look carefully at the broader implications of all of this.  In their Statement of Claim, CAIR-CAN chose to construe my question about its relationship with US CAIR, as implying that:

a.          CAIR-CAN is an Islamist, extremist sympathetic group in Canada supporting terrorism;
b.         Sheema Khan is an individual supporting Islamic, extremist causes, including the support of terrorism;
c.          CAIR-CAN is a subsidiary of its parent organization, CAIR, which itself is an organization supporting terrorism and run by individuals convicted of terrorist­ related offences. CAIR-CAN and CAIR share a common and inter-related goal of fostering their extremist views, and of supporting terrorism to achieve their objectives;
d.         CAIR-CAN and Sheema Khan falsely and fraudulently misrepresent themselves as moderate representatives of Muslim interests;
e.          CAIR-CAN and Sheema Khan are frightening moderate Islamists, and are driving young people into extremism;
f.          CAIR-CAN and Sheema Khan, as extremists and supporters of terrorism, have an insidious and chilling agenda that is furthered by portraying themselves as moderates and gaining access first to the media and then to government;
g.         Given their extremists[sic] views, CAIR-CAN and Sheema Khan should not have access to the media and government;
h.         If CAIR-CAN and Sheema Khan continue to have access to the media and government, they will continue to alienate moderate Muslims and there will be some real tragedy;
i.          The Globe and Mail acted irresponsibly in giving Sheema Khan an opportunity to be published in its newspaper, given that she is an extremist and terrorist supporter acting on behalf of CAIR-CAN, an extremist organization supporting terrorism;
j.          The media, and most notably the CBC, has acted irresponsibly in providing CAIR-CAN with air-time, given CAIR-CAN’s extremism and support for terror; and
k.         Committees of the House of Commons have acted irresponsibly in allowing CAIR-CAN, as an extremist organization supporting terrorism, to officially express its views, and further in giving credence to those views. ….

 

 

Yet, having formed that view of my question, CAIR-CAN dropped the suit and swallowed their costs.  Why?

 

 

 

–  END OF STATEMENT  –

 

 

BIO:  DAVID B. HARRIS

 

A lawyer involved in criminal and national security matters, David Harris is Director of the International and Terrorist Intelligence Program, INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc.  He is a former Chief of Strategic Planning of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).  As a commentator on terrorism and national security, and  witness at Congressional subcommittee hearings in Washington, his analyses have received international media attention.  Quoted in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and international news services, Mr. Harris has appeared on programs ranging from television’s “America’s Most Wanted,” CBS’s “60 Minutes,” “NBC Dateline” and “The Today Show,” to “The CBS News with Dan Rather” and CNN’s “Wolf Blitzer Reports”.

 

 


David B. Harris

Director, International and Terrorist Intelligence Program

INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc.

 

 

 

 

P.O. Box 615, Station B

Ottawa, Canada

K1P 5P7

 

in********@sy*******.ca [now invalid; use: in********@ro****.com]

tel.: 613.233.1220

fax: 613.233.4464

© 2006 INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc.

 

The truth about Hamas – and its followers

 
David Frum
National Post


Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Over the past two years, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its Canadian affiliate, CAIR-Canada, have filed a series of lawsuits against journalists and others who have traced the connection between CAIR and the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas. Among the targets of these lawsuits have been the Web site Anti-Cair-net.org, the Canadian terrorism expert David Harris, and this newspaper and myself.

On April 12, CAIR-Canada settled its lawsuit against Harris. The lawsuit ended without retraction or apology by Harris. The suit against Anti-Cair-net was settled a few days earlier. Although the terms of Anti-Cair’s settlement are confidential, Anti-Cair’s Web site has likewise issued no retraction or apology. The words that triggered the lawsuit remain posted on the Anti-Cair site: Anti-Cair stands by its charge that CAIR is a “terrorist-supporting front organization … founded by Hamas supporters” that aims “to make radical Islam the dominant religion in the United States.”

The lawsuit against the National Post and myself was settled with an editor’s note that likewise offered no apology or retraction.

The settlement of the Harris lawsuit should be of special interest to Canadians. David Harris is one of Canada’s leading experts on terrorism: a former chief of strategic planning for CSIS and now president of the Insignis consulting firm. His views are regularly heard on television and radio. Now he has recovered his full freedom to speak and to alert Canadians to the dangers in their midst. This should establish once and for all that media organizations can broadcast his carefully chosen words without legal risk.

These lawsuits represented a very considerable gamble for CAIR and its Canadian branch. So long as they lasted, it’s true, they inhibited media organizations’ ability to speak about CAIR. But once they terminated, as they were bound to do, the full facts of the case would become matters of public record.

By coincidence, just as the Anti-Cair and Harris lawsuits were being shut down, Yale University Press released the most detailed study of the Hamas terror group ever offered to readers without a security clearance. The book is Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad; the author is Matthew Levitt, the chief intelligence officer of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and one of the world’s leading experts on Hamas.

Levitt’s book was excerpted on these pages a few weeks ago. The Post excerpts described Hamas’s indoctrination of young people, Hamas’ electoral strategy in the Palestinian Authority and the close co-ordination between Hamas’ social-welfare projects, its terrorism and its overall ideological mission of building a global Islamic caliphate.

But Levitt also has a good deal to say about Hamas’ operations in North America. “[U.S.] Federal investigators have uncovered a surprisingly large number of front organizations supporting Hamas in the United States,” he observes, and proceeds to explain an intricate network of fundraising and ideological advocacy dating back to the 1980s. One Hamas front organization, the Holy Land Foundation, raised $57-million between its founding in 1992 and its final shuttering by the U.S. government in December 2001. Another Hamas front group, the Islamic Association for Palestine, engaged in advocacy and propaganda work.

The leadership of the Holy Land Foundation and the Islamic Association for Palestine in turn interlocked with the leadership of CAIR. CAIR’s co-founder, Omar Ahmed, had previously co-founded the Islamic Association for Palestine. CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, is a self-described “supporter of the Hamas movement.” Lower-level CAIR officials have been arrested and indicted on terrorism-related charges in the United States; one accepted deportation rather than face trial.

Nobody associated with CAIR-Canada has been charged with any criminal misconduct. Internal CAIR-Canada documents uncovered during CAIR’s litigation against the National Post suggested, however, that 70% of CAIR-Canada’s revenues were forwarded to CAIR in the United States.

Canada’s new federal government has acted decisively against international terrorism. The Harper government has announced that aid to the Palestinian Authority will be suspended so long as it is governed by Hamas. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day has added the Tamil Tigers to the list of prohibited terrorist organizations — a move Mr. Day has described as “long overdue.” And the days when Prime Minister Paul Martin sought advice from CAIR-Canada have mercifully been left behind.

Now, with these libel cases closed, Canadians can freely join a larger conversation, not just about terrorism, but about the larger problem of ideological extremism from which terrorism emerges. Canadians owe David Harris thanks for winning that freedom. Now Canadians owe him something even more urgent: their attention to his words and warnings.

df***@ae*.org

© National Post 2006

 

 

David Frum, “The truth about Hamas – and its followers,” Canada.com (National Post), 25 April 2006, http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=0677d74a-9ef4-4ae9-8f54-aaf1e39afbbc (accessed 27 April 2007).

 

 

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

5 Replies to “CBC, CAIR, CAIR-CAN and Islam as the victim”

  1. Excellent post..

    Details like this can’t be left out…..or be allowed to slip through the cracks…..as the old saying goes…”those who forget history are condemned to repeat it”…

    Lets not forget the terrorist front group, CAIR and CAIR-CAN

    Regards, Don Laird
    Edson, Alberta, Canada

  2. Richard,

    Your reference to internal idiots reminds me of the words of Marcus Cicero, a Roman philosopher, statesman and noted orator….

    “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”

    ? Marcus Tullius Cicero
    Roman, 106 BC – 43 BC

    Now, having read that, think of the minions at CBC and the likes of vulgar forms of life like Justin Trudeau, Obama, the members of CAIR-CAN and so many many others…..

    Regards, Don Laird
    Edson, Alberta, Canada

  3. Excellent work.Thank you for compiling this information. It is a revealing and informative post and I hope many will read it and take appropriate action.

  4. BEST WISHES FOR THE NEW YEAR! GOD BLESS AND PROTECT YOU!

    The following item has been sent to blogs, if you feel comfortable with the content, please assist us by forwarding it to your associates etc..

    Perhaps slightly off topic, but most blogs worry as to when Islam will have some majority, to impose their rules and religion on the country. Remember that Germany was ruled by 3% Nazis Members in taking power. The Soviet Communist Russia was about 5% card carrying members, when taking control of that country. The U.S.A. will probably lose its Democratic Constitutional Power processes, when Islam and Card Carrying Members are in control of Key Offices. This is already a Major activity because of Obama’s TREACHERY, with background Muslim Threats and Aggression.
    Remember that Communists and Islamists, have no respect for the vote of the People, once controlling key sectors. America and Europe are deeper in the Swamp of a Totalitarian take over, than is perceived.
    We are facing a tremendous WAR or will Succumb to the insanity of Islam, for our children and all future generations.
    The greatest stupidity is that Leftists will face the similar activity found in Iran since the Komeini takeover. That is 170,000 + Individuals Imprisoned and vast numbers Executed, Women debased and Homosexuals often hung, Amputations as punishment.
    GUARDIANS OF DEMOCRACY, ARISE, OR ELSE!
    Start by signing the “Ban Islam” petition at: http://www.petitiononline.com/MYSTIC/petition.html

    Sincerely,

    Lorenzo Bouchard
    la********@sh**.ca
    http://mypage.direct.ca/l/lbouchar/