Category Archives: Islam in the Americas

11 Muslim students face charges in UCI protest

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OCREGISTER:

By VIK JOLLY, ANDREW GALVIN and SALVADOR HERNANDEZ
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

SANTA ANA – Eleven students were charged Friday with conspiring to disrupt a speech last year by the Israeli ambassador to the United States at UC Irvine.

The incident occurred Feb. 8, 2010, when Ambassador Michael Oren was the featured speaker on campus at a meeting co-sponsored by several organizations. Eleven Muslim students were arrested in the incident.
Article Tab : criminal-outside-ambassad
UC Irvine students, local muslims and supporters, many with mouths taped rallied outside the Orange County District Attorney’s office Feb. 1, 2011. They protested potential criminal charges against UCI Muslim student union members arrested last February after disrupting a speech in by the Israeli Ambassador to the United States. The sign says, “Stand with the 11.”
>JEBB HARRIS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
MORE PHOTOS »

“This case is being filed because there was an organized attempt to squelch the speaker, who was invited to speak to a group at UCI,” District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said in a statement. “These defendants meant to stop this speech and stop anyone else from hearing his ideas, and they did so by disrupting a lawful meeting. This is a clear violation of the law and failing to bring charges against this conduct would amount to a failure to uphold the Constitution.”

Each defendant is charged with one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to disturb a meeting and one misdemeanor count of the disturbance of a meeting, according to a news release from the District Attorney’s Office. If convicted, each faces a sentence that could include probation with community service or fines or up to six months in jail.

They are scheduled to be arraigned on the charges March 11.

The defendants are: Mohamed Mohy-Eldeen Abdelgany, 23; Khalid Gahgat Akari, 19; Aslam Abbasi Akhtar, 23; Joseph Tamim Haider, 23; Taher Mutaz Herzallah, 21; Hakim Nasreddine Kebir, 20; Shaheen Waleed Nassar, 21; Mohammad Uns Qureashi, 19; Ali Mohammad Sayeed, 23; Osama Ahmen Shabaik, 22; and Asaad Mohamedidris Traina, 19.

While eight students charged are from UCI, Akari, Herzallah and Nassar were students at UC Riverside.

“We don’t think they deserve to be charged,” said Mohy Abdelgany, 50, of Irvine, Abdelgany’s father. “They simply stood, made a very short statement and left the room peacefully. … In the same event there was heckling and threats by other audience members with the opposite view of the protesters.”

Abdelgany added that his son is on vacation and not available to speak.

The younger Abdelgany, who was president of the Muslim Student Union at UCI, is accused of meeting with other members of the group in the days before Oren’s speech to plan to disrupt it, prosecutors said. He is accused of sending an email to the group’s message board saying “we will be staging a University of Chicago Style disruption of the Ambassador’s speech.”

Two days before the speech, Abdelgany is accused of sending an email to the group’s message board with a “Game Plan” for disrupting the event, and advising in the email that “to the outside,” the disruption was to be portrayed as done by individuals, not the Muslim Student Union, in order to “put up an obstacle” against the UCI administration in case it was to “come after the MSU” afterward, according to prosecutors. Continue Reading →

Sharia in Canada: Muslim parents want kids excused from music, co-ed gym.

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From The Ottawa Citizen

Muslims want children excused from music, mixed phys-ed classes

By Nick Martin, Winnipeg Freepress

February 5, 2011

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The school division has alerted Education Minister Nancy Allen about the situation because music and phys-ed are compulsory in the province’s elementary schools. Photograph by Max Whittaker/The New York Times XX

WINNIPEG — A dozen Muslim families who recently arrived in Canada have told Winnipeg’s Louis Riel School Division that they want their children excused from compulsory elementary school music and coed physical education programs for religious and cultural reasons.

“This is one of our realities in Manitoba now, as a result of immigration,” said superintendent Terry Borys. “We were faced with some families who were really adamant about this. Music was not part of the cultural reality.”

Borys said the school division has alerted Education Minister Nancy Allan about the situation since music and phys-ed are compulsory in the province’s elementary schools.

There have been no issues so far with children of middle-school or high-school age, he said.

The families accept physical education, as long as the boys and girls have separate classes, but do not want their children exposed to singing or the playing musical instruments, Borys said. The division has suggested they could instead do a writing project to satisfy the music requirements of the arts curriculum.

However, a local Muslim leader says there is no reason for young kids to be held out of music or phys-ed classes based on religious and cultural grounds.

“Who is advising them? My first concern would be who are these new immigrants talking to?” said Shahina Siddiqui, executive director of the Islamic Social Services. “This is the first time I am hearing this; I’m not very happy about it.”

Siddiqui said there is no problem with elementary-school children taking coed phys-ed, at least “not with little kids under the age of puberty.”

She said when some middle-school and high-school students have asked not to mix genders, they have been accommodated by schools.

Siddiqui acknowledged that music can be an issue — but only for a few people.

“Music is controversial in our community; this is a North American phenomenon,” she said. “There is a minority view that music is forbidden. (That view) is not accepted by the majority.”

Borys said that there had been one or two requests for kids to be excused previously, but this year a dozen families came forward at six schools.

Borys said that school division contacted a member of the Islamic community whom the parents suggested, consulted the Manitoba Human Rights Commission and looked at what other jurisdictions are doing about accommodation, particularly Ontario.

The division is trying to figure out what issues might arise when the children enter junior high or high school, he said.

Music is optional beyond Grade 6, but phys-ed is coed right through Grade 12.

© Copyright (c) Winnipeg Free Press

Fugitive Somali Muslim Murders Native American Family in North Dakota

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From The New English Review:

One of the issues we raised in the Jan. NER article, What Rep. Peter King Could Do About Radicalization of American Muslims was  the broken humanitarian refugee program run by our State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Immigration Control and Enforcement agency and Department of Health and Human services, Office of Refugee Resettlement.  We drew attention to the example of Somali Muslims who have posed terrorist threats here and abroad, rejected assimilation and lived off of taxpayer-funded welfare and MEDICAID while sending hundreds of millions of dollars home to war-torn Islamist Somalia wracked by civil war perpetrated by al Qaeda affiliate,   Al Shabaab.   Further, we noted Somali community leaders in Minneapolis engaged in millions of dollars of Medicare fraud, arrests of a Somali in Las Vegas running a smuggling operation involved with a Class A drug, Khat, and Somali thugs engaged in human trafficking indicted in Federal Court in Nashville last November. Then there was the instance of an honor killing perpetrated against a step sister in Fort Morgan, Colorado by a Somali meat packing plant worker from Greeley, Colorado.  These are just a few of many examples of Somali Muslim blatant disregard for our laws and human life.

The latest devastating and distressing story, courtesy of Ann Corcoran of Refugee Resettlement Watch, concerns a fugitive Somali who murdered an entire Native American Family in North Dakota.  The story illustrates the reasons why such occurrences happen and literally fall through the cracks of our broken refugee and immigration laws. It is illustrative of  why we raised this matter to Rep. Peter King’s House Homeland Security staff. This incident cries out for an investigation as to why these events occurred increasingly involving Somali Muslim refugees who reject everything we stand for.  This is a grisly act of one violet Somali Jihad’s mass murder.

Here is Ann Corcoran’s post at RRW:

North Dakota: Somali man held as “person of interest” in murder of Native American family

Looks like our immigration system failed this poor family—four dead.

FromAP at Inforum:

A Somali man with a history of violent crime has been interviewed as “a person of interest” in the deaths of his daughter’s mother and three others and is being held by U.S. immigration officials, authorities said Thursday.

Omar Mohamed Kalmio, 26, is the father of an infant girl found alive last week in the Minot apartment of 19-year-old Sabrina Zephier, who was found dead Friday, Minot Police Chief Jeff Balentine told The Associated Press on Thursday. Sabrina Zephier’s mother, Jolene Zephier, 38; brother, Dillon Zephier, 13; and Jolene Zephier’s boyfriend, Jeremy Longie, 22, were found slain in nearby mobile home less than an hour later.

“We have interviewed (Kalmio), and he is a person of interest,” Balentine said.

Authorities had lost track of the“person of interest” in 2006 and found him again in 2010:

Shawn Neudauer, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Kalmio was arrested Tuesday in Minot for failing to abide by the terms of supervised release stemming from an assault charge. He declined to give details, citing privacy issues.

Minnesota court records show Kalmio was convicted in 2006 of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, a felony, and sentenced to one year and one day in prison with credit for 143 days served. Kalmio and a group of other Somali men attacked a man in Minneapolis in January 2006, and Kalmio stabbed him three times in the back with a knife, according to a criminal complaint in the case. The victim also was stabbed in the face and shoulder and suffered a collapsed lung and concussion.

That same year, Kalmio was convicted of theft and ordered to pay a fine. Court records show he lived in the Twin Cities suburb of Eagan when the crimes happened.

Minneapolis police said they have had no contact with Kalmio since 2006.

Kalmio had been ordered to report to immigration officials in Grand Forks last August but failed to do so, Neudauer said.

Ahhhh!  Detained in 2010, he was released from custody thanks to a US Supreme Court decision!

Please click over to NER for the rest of this article:

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VMI Celebrates Muslim Invasion, Brutal 781-year Occupation of Spain

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Get your anti emetics ready.

From Big Peace:

Stonewall Jackson is rolling over in his grave.

Next month his beloved Virginia Military Institute will be convening a celebration commemorating the 1300th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Spain under the Muslim warlord Tariq ibn Ziyad in 711 A.D. The March 23-25 celebration entitled “711-2011: East Meets West” and organized by VMI’s Center for Leadership and Ethics, is scheduled to feature standard Muslim apologists Reza Aslan and Akbar Ahmed. VMI Superintendent Gen. J.H. Binford Peay has even filmed an invitation to the celebration.

No word if VMI’s World War II commemoration will be entitled “Germany meets Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Belgium, France, Norway, The Netherlands and Russia”.

Event organizers describe the event as follows:

We celebrate the 1300th anniversary of Tariq ibn Ziyad’s crossing of the Straits of Gibraltar, setting into motion the fusion between two worlds.  The agenda will tell the vital story of the achievements when Muslims, Christians, and Jews thrived side by side in Western Europe, building a society that lit the Dark Ages. Experts will discuss how to transform education, promote tolerance, political reform, and advance human development so that we can emulate the spirit and triumphs of the early years.

Reza Aslan is scheduled to speak on a panel entitled “‘Al-Andalus’ – an ageless Model of Tolerance“, but it is doubtful that Aslan and his co-panelists will be discussing the widespread persecution of Christians and Jews under Muslim rule that led to the establishment of an entirely new class of Roman Catholic martyrs, “the Cordoba martyrs“, or the 1066 massacre of Jews and crucifixion their leader Joseph ha-Nagid in “tolerant” Cordoba. The great Jewish scholar Maimonides and his family fled “tolerant” Cordoba after the Muslim conquest of the city in 1148, when the new occupiers gave Jews the option of converting to Islam, death or exile. A similar persecution emulating the Almohad’s “model of tolerance” prompted Maimonides to write his famous Epistle on Forced Conversion to the Jewish community in Yemen. The myth of “the Golden Age of Muslim Spain” has gained recent attention from the attempts by the Ground-Zero mosque promoters to appropriate the narrative in support of their “Cordoba Initiative”.

Restoring ‘“Al-Andalus’ – an ageless Model of Tolerance” has been the stated goal of Al-Qaeda (Reza Aslan and Al-Qaeda – together at last!). In September 2007 Ayman al-Zawahiri issued an audio tape calling for the reconquest of “Al-Andalus” and more recently called for the “cleansing” of North Africa of Spaniards and the French as preparation for the reoccupation of “Al-Andalus”. An al-Qaeda-linked cyber-jihadist group that targets US companies with hacks and computer worms styles themselves as “The Brigades of Tariq ibn Ziyad”, named after the invader and occupier of Spain.

For the rest, if you can take more.. Please click the link at the top to Big Peace.

H/T to The New English Review

‘Al-Qaida on brink of using nuclear bomb’

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Many thanks Richard for the link

Vancouver Sun:

Al-Qaida members participate in military training in Afghanistan in this file photo.

Al-Qaida members participate in military training in Afghanistan in this file photo.

Photograph by: Agence France-Presse Files, National Post, With Files From News Services

Al-Qaida is on the verge of producing radioactive weapons after sourcing nuclear material and recruiting rogue scientists to build “dirty” bombs, according to leaked diplomatic documents.

A leading atomic regulator has privately warned that the world stands on the brink of a “nuclear 9/11”.

Security briefings suggest that jihadi groups are also close to producing “workable and efficient” biological and chemical weapons that could kill thousands if unleashed in attacks on the West.

Thousands of classified American cables obtained by the WikiLeaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph detail the international struggle to stop the spread of weapons-grade nuclear, chemical and biological material around the globe.

At a Nato meeting in January 2009, security chiefs briefed member states that al-Qaida was plotting a program of “dirty radioactive IEDs”, makeshift nuclear roadside bombs that could be used against British troops in Afghanistan. Continue Reading →

FLORIDA PROFESSOR AND MOSQUE LEADER PLEADS GUILTY TO TALLAHASSEE ATTACKS

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ANTI-HATE GROUP, WHOSE CHAIRMAN WAS VICTIM OF ATTACKER, SAYS BASSEM ALHALABI UNFIT TO TEACH FAU’S STUDENTS

(Tallahassee, FL) In a plea agreement filed earlier this week, Bassem Abdo Alhalabi, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and a director for the Islamic Center of Boca Raton (ICBR), admitted guilt to two separate attacks taking place in Tallahassee, Florida on March 11, 2010 (See ‘Assault on Muslim Capitol Day’).

Alhalabi, a former research assistant for Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist Sami al-Arian, had been charged with one count of battery on Americans Against Hate Chairman Joe Kaufman and one count of assault on cameraman J. Mark Campbell. The attacks took place approximately one hour from each other.

The first attack was on Kaufman, after he was coming out of a meeting with the Florida Attorney General’s office, in the Rotunda (lobby) of the State Capitol Building.

At the time of the attacks, Alhalabi was participating in an event sponsored by United Voices for America (UVA), a political lobby group of CAIR-Florida, headed by former Executive Director of CAIR-Tampa Ahmed Bedier.

A warrant was issued for Alhalabi’s arrest on March 19th. He was taken into custody on March 22nd and released from prison on March 23rd.

According to the plea agreement, which was secured by Leon County Assistant State Attorney Tiffany Cruz, Alhalabi will have to perform community service and take an anger management course.

This was not the first time Alhalabi became in trouble with the law. In June 2003, the U.S. Department of Commerce found Alhalabi guilty of illegally shipping a $13,000 military-grade thermal imaging device to Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism.

Joe Kaufman stated, “With everything that Bassem Alhalabi has been involved in – from his association with terrorists to his illegal exporting activities and now to his physically violent confrontations – it is high time that FAU part ways with this radical. Alhalabi is a danger to others and should not be trusted around any university’s students.”

Americans Against Hate (AAH) urges all those concerned to immediately contact Florida Atlantic University (FAU). Click here for contact details.

Joe Kaufman is available for interview. E-mail: in**@******************te.org.

‘Allah made me one tough cookie’

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???

Edmonton terror suspect’s Canadian wife insists her husband is innocent

By Paula Simons, edmontonjournal.com January 30, 2011 6:55 AM


A court sketch of Sayfildin Tahir-Sharif at his first appearance in an Edmonton court on Jan. 20, 2011.
Photograph by: Amanda McRoberts, Global Edmonton
“It was like a slap in the face,” Cara Rain says. “It’s shocking. Surreal. Unbelievable.”
For the last three years, Rain, a 35-year-old mother, has shared her life with the man she knows as Sayfi ldin Tahir-Sharif. She calls him Sayf — and safe is how he always made her feel.
They lived together in her apartment in northeast Edmonton. Together, they raised her four children from a previous relationship: a 14-year-old son, and three daughters aged eight, six and five.
He worked as a stuccoer. She worked at a local supermarket. He did most of the cooking, she says, and most of the cleaning. They were, she says, the “normal-est” family — except, perhaps, for the fact he was an Iraqi Kurd, and she was Stoney and Cree, raised on a reserve west of Edmonton.
And then, two weeks ago, the roof caved in on the life they’d made together, and on all her certainties.
RCMP arrested her common-law husband. They searched the apartment. They seized his computer and Rain’s laptop, their bank records, their papers. Now, Tahir-Sharif is in segregated secure custody at thEdmonton Remand Centre, accused of being part of an international Islamic terrorist. American authorities want to extradite the man whom they call Faruq Khahil Muhammad ‘Isa to New York to face charges of conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals and providing material support to terrorists.
“It’s so surreal. I can’t believe this is happening to me and to Sayf,” Rain says. “What can I say? I lived with the guy and I’ve never seen anything like what they accuse him of. I don’t believe anything that they say about him. He’s innocent. And I’ll support him a million per cent until they can prove to me that he’s not.”
For a week now, she’s been hiding from the media, afraid even to go back to her apartment for fear of being ambushed by reporters.
“I was being harassed. I couldn’t even go home to change my clothes. I felt lost, upside down. I didn’t know who to talk to. I was in shock.”
Until now, she’s only spoken to her family and a few of her closest friends about what’s happened. But she wants people to know that there’s more to her husband than the grim courtroom sketch, than the allegations of terrorist activities.
“I’m not doing this for the media. I’m only doing this for Sayf because I believe he’s innocent and people need to see him in a different light.”
“He’s a good man. He’s a good father. He’s a good husband. He’s a hard worker. What can I say? The person in these (court) papers, that’s not anybody that we know.”
“He’s a very very affectionate, loving person. He’s my companion — and my cheerleader.”
I don’t know exactly what kind of woman I expected to meet when I got word Rain had agreed to speak with me. But she’s no meek victim, no dutiful unquestioning gull. She’s articulate, self-assured, a handsome woman with a broad smile, deep brown eyes, and a tremendous force of personality. She wears a brown hijab over her hair, and a modestly cut top with a high neckline and long sleeves — paired with a pair of blue jeans and stylish black leather boots.
“Allah has made me one tough cookie,” she says. “I left an abusive relationship. I lost both my parents at a young age. I’ve been through a lot of stuff in my life. It’s made me a stronger person. I’ve gone through so much in my lifetime and I’ll probably have to go through a lot more. Continue Reading →

Clare Lopez returns to Nick Vandergragt’s show Jan 23rd 2011

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This was quite good. The calls and the information were all very good. For me, the most interesting call was the fellow who was being ethnically cleansed from his own neighbourhood and was having a very hard time admitting to himself his own experience.

Untitled from Vlad Tepes on Vimeo.

RCMP outreach or outrage?

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Several years ago the RCMP developed a variety of outreach divisions designed specifically to engage members of minority communities in Canada. One such division, The National Security Community Outreach program, was created to ‘ensure that all persons are treated with equality and respect’, a fundamental component of RCMP national security criminal investigations. ” The protection of our national security requires the awareness and involvement of all citizens. We encourage invitations to meet with community groups and welcome opportunities to work more closely with cultural and ethnic community representatives”.

Sounds good. What responsible police force wouldn’t want to strive to provide to all an opportunity to become informed of their rights and freedoms as well as the activities the RCMP undertakes to protect them? And certainly befitting to the present day climate of political correctness, diversity, outreach, dialogue and round table discussions appear apropos. The trouble is, whose sitting at the round tables?

In February 2007, ‘The Cross-Country Roundtable on Security’ was held in Toronto hosted by both the RCMP and CSIS. It was a raucous affair, complete with attendees that should never have been invited, or the uninvited told to leave. Among the cultural and ethnic community representatives in attendance was none other than controversial Imam Aly-Hindy of the Salaheddin mosque in suburban Toronto. Imam Aly- Hindy boasts of openly performing polygamous marriages, illegal in Canada. In a May, 2009 National Post Full Comment, columnist John Turley-Ewart writes:

‘Hindy is using polygamy as a proxy for his fundamentalist version of Islam, something he wants to see legitimized in Canadian society as a whole. It is part of an attempt at empire building, a bid that if successful will enhance his influence within the Muslim community and demonstrate that Ontario and Canada is too ignorant and too afraid of Islam to uphold its own laws. He has admitted as much, challenging Ontario’s government to dare stop him. “If the laws of the country conflict with Islamic law, if one goes against the other, then I am going to follow Islamic law, simple as that.”

He took advantage of the outreach event by complaining that six Muslims did not obtain security clearance for sensitive government jobs. Hindy’s mosque made headlines this week when the National Post learned that Salaheddin has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Middle East donors since 2009. The mosque is described by the RCMP as a “focal point for Toronto Islamic radicals” and by the New York Police Department as a “known radical mosque”. Hindy said that by securing overseas funds the mosque was “preserving Muslim culture”.

The Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) also made an appearance at the Sheraton Hotel. This group formed in 1967, represents the interests of Arab Canadians with respect to the formulation of public policy in Canada. With over 40 member organizations, it seeks to ‘combat hate and racism’, is vocal against what it perceives to be anti-Arab and anti-Muslim activities and issues position papers to the government on it’s policies in South Asia and it’s domestic immigration affairs. It also boasts of promoting the richness of Muslim and Arab culture. Not a group to sit idly by, it appears to seek out controversy. It too complained, primarily about Canada’s Mid East policies and the Muslim ‘brothers’ being deported for terrorism.

This past week the now defunded and ostracized CAF appeared at ” Exposing Israeli Apartheid and the Violation of Palestinian Rights” held at the University of Toronto. The groups president Khaled Mouammar took no time at all to vent his hatred for Canada and the mistreatment his organization has suffered under the Conservative government. Mr. Mouammar finds respect illusive; it may have something to do with the fact that he called Immigration Minister Jason Kenney a “professional whore” and insisted on flying the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah at a rally in Toronto. In addition to Mr. Kenney’s decision to review or eliminate funding to the group, he further stated ” We should not be rewarding those who express views that are contrary to Canada’s best liberal values of tolerance and mutual respect”.

Last August, one day after RCMP investigators searched the homes of three arrested terror suspects, it’s outreach office in Ottawa called a swift meeting of the cultural diversity consultative committee to apologize to local Muslims. They felt it necessary to apologize that the bust had taken place during Ramadan. More than a dozen meetings were held with Muslim groups including visits to mosques, community centres and several meals to break the Ramadan fast. It’s difficult to determine which groups were in attendance, however representatives from the Tamil, Sikh, Asian, Jewish, Muslim and First Nations communities were present. The Canadian Islamic Congress carries on it’s web site an article claiming the apology ‘never happened’ despite claims to the contrary. Nazira Naz Tareen writes:

“At no time was an apology asked for by anyone present, nor was one given by any officer of the RCMP or the Ottawa Police. One question raised during the presentation was: “Since the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the RCMP had been investigating the three (detained) individuals for over a year, why were the arrests not made before or after Ramadan?” When one of the officers from the panel explained the reason, all of us accepted the answer as reasonable in the circumstances”.

” To show support to our Muslim brothers and sisters during Ramadan, there will be no food or or drink during this most important meeting. The meeting is for one hour only, in order to observe prayer time and the breaking of the fast during Ramadan”, wrote Cpl. Wayne Russett, the RCMP’s aboriginal and ethnic liaison officer in Ottawa. Prime Minister Harper responded to the apology given by saying “”In fairness this is an operational matter for the RCMP and I wouldn’t pretend to know all the details and aspects of the story. But the general approach that this government would expect to see (from law enforcement agencies) is that the law, our important laws, are enforced every day of the year.”

In October of last year, the RCMP was told to drop the extreme event billed as “Just and Sustainable Peace- A Global Challenge”. The ‘peace conference’ was promoted by the ethnic liaison office to members of the national force, with one of the participants a member of the cultural diversity committee. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews stated ” Let me be clear. Canada’s national police force must have no involvement in any event organized by those who promote extremism or hatred”. “As soon as I learned about this event, I asked the RCMP to explain its involvement. I have asked it to immediately cease any participation”. The listed speakers included Davood Ameri of The Islamic World Peace Forum, a group whose website contains graphic anti-Semitic cartoons, complete with articles calling the United States a terrorist state and several professors from the University of Tehran closely linked to the regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The moderator for this event was Imam Zijad Delic of the Canadian Islamic Congress. His speaking engagement at the Department of National Defence was cancelled earlier in the month after Defence Minister Peter MacKay deemed both Zelic and his outfit extremist.

Community Outreach Program (COP) was created by the RCMP INSET in May of 2005 to prevent terrorism through the engagement of partners in all sections of society. Law enforcement agencies and security officials are increasingly coming under scrutiny, bombarded by Islamic activist groups intent to ensure that ‘fairness and justice is afforded to Muslims’, as if it were denied them and given instead to all others. CAIR-CAN has made it their goal to breathe life into exaggerated claims of rampant and escalating Islamophobia, to the point of creating publications and kits. The Ramadan kit is boasted in CAIR-CAN’s Annual Review 2007 as an essential in any Canadian Muslim media activist’s toolbox. Over 100 copies of The Educators Guide to Islamic Religious Practice were ordered by one school board and over 400 ‘Know Your Rights’ booklets sent to one conference. Similar guides for journalists, employers and health care providers are revamped with a new look with one also written for correctional services and the law enforcement community. CAIR-CAN works to “foster an accurate understanding and greater appreciation of Islam in Canadian society through community education and outreach”. It states it’s full independence from its sister organization, Washington based CAIR, although “the two coordinate on areas of mutual concern”.

A document found on the RCMP website entitled “Words Make Worlds” is designed to “stimulate discussion among RCMP members along with their counterparts in other agencies, particularly with regard to the need for a common language to describe terrorism adequately”. The introduction continues to say “Just as critical is the need for a comprehensive understanding of the process of radicalization and the manner in which we may intervene”. Much of what is written leaves one with an adequate sense of the reality pertaining to radicalization and the issues and observations the author suggests surround it. Yet when referring to the distinction between Islam and Islamism, the Muslim Brotherhood appears as a rather benign, quasi-secret society:

“It’s (MB) founders and chief ideologues were predominantly anti-Western and tended to characterize Islamic political aspirations as fundamentally counter to democracy. Increasingly however, the Brotherhood has repudiated radicalism and adopted a gradualist perspective which, while not aligned to Western democratic principles, (the Brotherhood is linked to Hamas for example) is more positively oriented toward them. Few members of the Muslim Brotherhood espouse terrorism and in many Muslim countries they have served as voices of moderation, channeling people away from violence and toward legitimate political and charitable activities”.

A more moderate appearance by the Muslim Brotherhood may be true, but only insofar as it’s tactics may have changed to suit present circumstances. It’s strategy remains the same. The significance of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s oft- violent offshoot entity, should not be relegated to mere parentheses, especially considering Canada has placed the organization on its list of terrorist groups. Likewise, the Muslim Brotherhood’s continued aspiration of settlement through non-violent means should not be downplayed, as a failure to recognize the inroads already made in response to Al-Ikhwan’s settlement process deliberately or otherwise, aids in the maintenance and endurance of it’s core objective.

Remaining true to it’s original goal, the Muslim Brotherhood clearly states:

The process of settlement of Islam is a “Civilization-Jihadist” process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who choose to slack.

It’s difficult to determine whether these representatives are invited to various outreach events specifically and on a regular, repeat basis or whether they respond to a more general, open invitation. If CAIR-CAN, the CIC and the CAF are on speed-dial, do the authorities presume they have something beneficial to contribute? Or is the influence and outreach the other way around? Salma Siddiqui, vice president of the Muslim Canadian Congress says the notion that Muslims need special treatment or that their religious sensibilities need to be addressed is patronizing. She adds that police diversity outreach committees should be dismantled. Tarek Fatah, author and open critic of radical outfits, agrees. He asserts too many Canadian institutions are crumbling beneath the pressures of political correctness and are making themselves susceptible to infiltration by extremists. Ikhwan should not be setting the agenda for security services. Outreach or outrage?

Grace for Vladtepesblog.