A handbook entitled United Against Terrorism, supposedly aimed at preventing youth radicalization, was endorsed last week by the U.S. Department of State, according to a report by Andrew McCarthy in National Review Online.
The handbook, however, released at a mosque in Winnipeg (Manitoba), Canada, is an alarming joint venture between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police [RCMP] and the National Council of Canadian Muslims [NCCM], formerly CAIR-CAN -- now conveniently renamed -- which has connections to terrorism.
CAIR-CAN is the Canadian branch of CAIR [Council on American–Islamic Relations], which was designated an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the largest terrorist financing trial in U.S. history -- the Holy Land Foundation trial.
The handbook has already caused dissension among the RCMP, which now is backing away from it, due to its "adversarial tone" -- and also possibly the embarrassing fallout.
There is still, however, the outstanding question of why Canada's RCMP would ever even have considered partnering with an organization shown to have highly questionable roots.
One possible answer is that the RCMP seeks multi-faith dialogue and community outreach, making it prone to having groups such as these use it to advance their own ends. The RCMP once even apologized for making terrorism-related arrests during Ramadan.
A Canadian report reveals that RCMP headquarters in Ottawa initially directed Mounties in Manitoba not to attend the unveiling of the handbook because of the "adversarial" tone. No specifics were provided. But a section of the handbook advises that co-operation with Canadian Security Intelligence Service [CSIS] and the RCMP in investigations is "voluntary," with "no obligation" to answer questions or give personal information about family and friends.
The handbook recommends staying away from linking the words "terrorists" and "jihadists," and balks at the use of the word "moderate" to describe Muslims -- presumably to make the word "Islamism" indistinct and thus harder to identify and target.
The handbook recommends going further: to discontinue using the words "Jihad" and "terrorism." By "labeling terrorist as 'jihadis'", it states, "we are playing into the hands of violent extremists."
It goes on to warn that, "by equating terrorism with Jihad and by calling terrorists 'jihadis' the media, law enforcement, intelligence agencies and politicians have confused the discourse, and this has been counterproductive in challenging the extremist narrative in the minds of the young and vulnerable."
The term "moderate Muslim," the handbook goes on to say, "is an oxymoron. We never hear the term 'moderate Christians' or 'moderate Jews' or 'moderate atheists.' Why is this adjective then attached so frequently to the word 'Muslim'?"
Some possible answers are that moderates -- including Christians and Jews -- do not seek to obliterate a nation, Israel, because it is a Jewish state; they are not rampaging through countries beheading and murdering indiscriminately -- recommended in the Koran's Sura 47:4: "So when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds..." -- as ISIS is doing now.
Moderates do not massacre Christians globally and pretend that nothing is happening. In 90% of the countries where Christians suffer persecution, according to the watchdog group Open Doors, it is due to Islamic extremism.
Moderates believe in full equality for women, as well as in resisting barbaric practices such as female genital mutilation, stonings, acid attacks, honor killings, domestic violence, home seclusion and women being covered. Instead, as they did in the film Honor Diaries, they call out and combat these atrocities.
Moderates do not hide atrocities; they do not commit them in the name of a religion in the first place. And moderates do not attack the truth, when exposed, by calling it "Islamophobic," "anti-Muslim" or "racist," as did CAIR.
Moderates are not seeking to supplant democracies and replace them with an Islamic Caliphate or sharia law, as outlined in the Muslim Brotherhood's [MB] plan for North America, a project already quite advanced.
Moderates do not try to abuse their critics or silence Westerners through lawfare or lawful Islamism.[1]
Moderates also steer clear of "Islamist groups linked to Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood;" they are not "unindicted co-conspirators" in terror-finance cases and they do not advocate a non-violent political Islam. Instead, moderates practice their faith on a personal level and support the advancement of Western democracies, which includes corrections for past wrongs against minority groups and genuine efforts to promote diversity in multicultural societies.
Unlike Islamic regimes, in which black slavery and other human rights abuses still exist, moderates fight racism. It is therefore not an "oxymoron" to use the word "moderate;" rather, the word makes noteworthy distinctions more apparent.
A Quebec-based research group, Point de Bascule, has chronicled an "operating relationship between a Hamas front group, the Islamic Association of Palestine, with CAIR and CAIR-CAN." In addition, Point de Bascule revealed that three directors of the NCCM have endorsed the Muslim Brotherhood and its ideology, which is "to settle Islam and the Islamic movement" so that Islam can be "enabled within the souls, minds and the lives of the people of the country."
In an explanatory memorandum on the Muslim Brotherhood's general strategic goal for North America, MB operative Mohamed Akram listed like-minded "organizations of our friends," who shared the common goal of dismantling American institutions and turning the country into a Muslim nation. These friends, according to Akram, would help convince Muslims "that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands ... so that ... God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions." They would thus convert North America from a House of War into a House of Islam, from a Dar al-Harb into a Dar al-Islam.
NCCM director Khadija Haffajee has held positions with the Islamic Society of North America [ISNA], deemed a Muslim Brotherhood entity by the U.S. Justice Department. The Canada Revenue Agency stripped its Canadian chapter of its charitable status in 2013 due to evidence of funding Pakistani terrorists.
In 2011, during Parliamentary Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, counter-terrorism specialist and lawyer David Harris testified that it was "regrettable" to have to talk "in terms of moderates versus others, but there are many individuals and groups who masquerade" as moderates, who are really "faux-moderates."
In addressing Canada's Senators, Harris explained a "Civilization-Jihadist Process" of which the Muslim Brotherhood's work in America "is a grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house."
Yet, as Andrew McCarthy further notes, "[t]he State Department, throughout the tenures of Secretaries Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, has been second only to the White House itself in championing the Muslim Brotherhood."
Harris goes on to discuss CAIR-CAN and the RCMP in his speech:
"Among other organizations, there is also the disturbing Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR-CAN, the Canadian chapter of a Saudi-funded U.S. 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 U.S. 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." (Full speech)
Pursuing diversity initiatives may have been the intention of the RCMP, but given the information revealed in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the case of the handbook also highlights the danger of "tolerance" gone too far when combined with carelessness.
Many supporters of political Islam try to escape detection by protesting against violent terrorism, thereby diverting attention away from themselves. Although these supporters may be non-violent, they enable and embolden those who are violent, and have the same objectives, often by using intimidation, a victimology subterfuge or lawfare to increase their foothold while attacking our Western freedoms.
Words such as "jihad," "terrorism" and "Islamism" identify serious crises facing our world. Racism and labeling are indeed social ills, but a different issue altogether. They are not to be used to hide the face of Islamism, jihadism and terrorism under a veil of trying to marginalize or silence whoever points them out as "Islamophobes" -- even as violent jihadi terrorism rampages throughout the world.
[1] An article in the Ottawa Citizen, entitled, "Muslim Group Indulging in Lawfare Jihad?" reports that the NCCM demanded that Rabbi Daniel Korobkin -- senior rabbi at Toronto's Beth Avraham Yoseph Congregation, the largest Orthodox congregation in Canada -- be excluded from Prime Minister Stephen Harper's delegation to the Middle East. Korobkin's offence, according to the NCCM, was to introduce two critics of Islam, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, during a lecture in Toronto a year earlier. When Harper's chief spokesman, Jason MacDonald responded to the NCCM, "We will not take seriously criticism from an organization with documented ties to a terrorist organization such as Hamas," the NCCM threatened Harper and MacDonald with a libel suit -- or "lawfare," the use of frivolous or malicious lawsuits to prevent one's critics from speaking out -- for suggesting the NCCM had links to Hamas.
