Canada: Who, Please, Are We Helping?

by Sohail Raza
September 7, 2016 at 6:30 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8800/canada-islamists

At this fraught time in the history of Islamist radicalism, extremism and terrorism, it is important that Canadian authorities -- especially the police and security services -- not inadvertently confer legitimacy and credibility on organizations and individuals whose histories and associations raise legitimate questions about their ideological background, links and agendas.
According to a US court, "The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine ("IAP"), and with Hamas." Under Canadian and US law, Hamas is a designated terrorist organization.
In July 2013, CAIR-CAN announced its change of name to the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), some specialists regarding this as a way of masking the connection to CAIR or to its history as part of CAIR
Like its American mother organization, NCCM/CAIR-CAN has on occasion been thought to embrace a victimhood narrative that risks alienating Muslims in general -- and Muslim youth, in particular -- from their non-Muslim fellow citizens. The propagating of the word "Islamophobia" has been regarded as especially unhelpful, and condemned by some as a means of silencing Muslims and non-Muslims who would warn of the growing hazards of Islamist radicalism, extremism and terrorism.

At this fraught time in the history of Islamist radicalism, extremism and terrorism, it is important that Canadian public authorities -- especially the police and security services -- not inadvertently confer legitimacy and credibility on organizations and individuals whose histories and associations raise legitimate questions about their ideological background, links and agendas.

One way in which authorities unintentionally assist in building the credibility of undeserving groups and individuals is by sponsoring and attending meetings and events involving such persons and organizations. It is therefore important for those in positions of authority to acquit themselves properly of their responsibility to meet due diligence obligations, when it comes to screening those involved in such events.

On April 10, 2016, police acknowledged that it had been an error to invite a controversial Muslim Group, the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), to an event organized by the Council's Communications Director, Ms. Amira Elghawaby, and attended by the Durham Regional Police Service and the Regional Municipality of Durham, Ontario. The event, on March 31, 2016, was described as a workshop, "Human Differences: Islamophobia," and was to be attended by employees of the Regional Municipality of Durham.

There are many, including the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow (MFT), who strongly believe that the NCCM is an unsuitable connection for Durham Regional Police Services and Durham Region to maintain, and to have participated in a public, tax-funded proceeding.

In this regard, various, apparently credible, sources have made claims and observations along the following lines:

The National Council of Canadian Muslims was established as the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Canada, CAIR-CAN, CAIR.CAN), the Canadian chapter of the American-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR, a Saudi-funded organization that was designated an unindicted co-conspirator in the successful Holy Land Foundation prosecution, often described as the biggest terror-funding trial in United States history. Despite the court's misgivings about the government's having made the designation public, the court upheld the unindicted co-conspirator designation imposed on CAIR.

According to a US court, "The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine ("IAP"), and with Hamas." Under Canadian and US law, Hamas is a designated terrorist organization.

Several CAIR-connected personnel, including its national civil liberties' coordinator, were sent to prison following terrorism-related convictions.

In 2003, CAIR-CAN founding Chair Dr. Sheema Khan stated under oath that CAIR-CAN was under the direction and control of the US-based CAIR mother organization.

In July 2013, CAIR-CAN announced its change of name to the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), some specialists regarding this as a way of masking the connection to CAIR or to its history as part of CAIR; a CAIR-CAN July 6, 2013 news release quoting NCCM/CAIR-CAN Executive Director Ihsaan Gardee as saying "We remain the same organization our constituents and partners have come to rely on," is now unavailable at its original NCCM/CAIR-CAN website URL. Continuity in senior CAIR-CAN and NCCM ranks is evident, including in the presence of Mr. Ihsaan Gardee and Ms. Amira Elghawaby in NCCM/CAIR-CAN.

NCCM/CAIR-CAN has maintained significant involvement with the Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) annual conventions, at least some of which have involved presentations by individuals known for radical views. Among a number of other troubling people featured at RIS conventions, was William W. Baker, sometimes referred to as a neo-Nazi and who had reportedly favoured "the creation of a united Christian-Muslim front against Jews and other groups."

Another was India's Dr. Zakir Naik, about whose divisive ideological extremism a Muslim scholar asserted, "in India, Sunnis and Shias have joined together against the destructive efforts of Zakir Naik".

It has recently been reported that "Dr Naik suggested that Muslims men may rape their slave," -- "a disturbing echo," wrote a journalist, "of the doctrines of the Middle East's Islamic State insurgency." The appearance of some public officials, including a now-disgraced former RCMP Commissioner, at RIS conventions, has been attributed by some to politics, failures of due diligence and other such lapses.

A long-term CAIR-CAN official was Dr. Jamal Badawi, a former member of the Muslim Association of Canada board, who was himself named a US unindicted co-conspirator and was on the executive of the US Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an American unindicted co-conspirator organization. He has been alleged to support polygamy and to have publicly advocated light physical punishment for misbehaving wives.

NCCM/CAIR-CAN, along with the controversial Islamic Social Services Association, put together what they characterized as a counter-radicalization handbook, United Against Terrorism, that recommended hardline clerics. Despite public objections and a last-minute RCMP withdrawal from the project on grounds of the handbook's "adversarial" qualities, the handbook has since been distributed, possibly by NCCM/CAIR-CAN-linked operatives, without the removal of RCMP's name and logo. The RCMP was criticized for having made the NCCM/CAIR-CAN connection in the first place.

Responding to a 2014 NCCM/CAIR-CAN letter to Prime Minister Harper, Harper's communications director said, "We will not take seriously criticism from an organization with documented ties to a terrorist organization such as Hamas." NCCM/CAIR-CAN denies any suggestion of inappropriate behavior or connections on its part, and, after some delay, sued in libel in the matter. Those being sued eventually made a motion requesting further disclosure about NCCM/CAIR-CAN's background. On December 2, 2015, Madam Justice Liza Sheard of the Superior Court of Ontario followed up, writing of the detailed nature of the defence's position:

... defence describes the incorporation of the plaintiff and its name change on June 24, 2013; it makes specific reference to the connection or relationship between CAIR-CAN and CAIR; it sets out details of its allegation connecting the plaintiff with the 2007 litigation in United States of America v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development et al. ...; it provides details for its allegation that a director of the plaintiff corporation were named on the U.S. Government List of Unindicted Co-conspirators; it sets detailed allegations that this and another director were also board members of an association that openly endorsed Hamas; it sets out details of the Canada Revenue Agency declining to grant charitable registration of another organization, the Jerusalem fund for human services; and that CRA [Canada Revenue Agency] has identified it as providing part of a support network for Hamas.

On the basis of this, among other, considerations, Justice Sheard ordered NCCM/CAIR-CAN to produce further information. The outcome of the broader legal case is yet to be decided.

Like its American mother organization, NCCM/CAIR-CAN has on occasion been thought to take a somewhat exaggerated, divisive view of the position of Muslims in society, an approach said to embrace a victimhood narrative that risks alienating Muslims in general – and Muslim youth, in particular – from their non-Muslim fellow citizens. The propagating of the word "Islamophobia" has been regarded as especially unhelpful, and condemned by some as a means of silencing Muslims and non-Muslims who would warn of the growing hazards of Islamist radicalism, extremism and terrorism.

Concerns have been raised about the possible propensity of NCCM/CAIR-CAN, primarily during its "CAIR-CAN" phase, to share its CAIR mother organization's tendency to launch libel suits that it later would agree to dismiss. To some critics, this might imply constitutionally ambiguous attempts to employ what is sometimes called "libel lawfare" in efforts to silence those asking questions about NCCM/CAIR-CAN.

It should be observed that the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow is unaware of any formal attempt by NCCM/CAIR-CAN to condemn, publicly and by name, CAIR and those persons connected to CAIR who have been convicted of terrorism-linked offences. Nor is it known whether NCCM/CAIR-CAN might open its financial and other books and records for public examination, in order to clarify certain issues and the nature of relationships. MFT cautions that, consistent with due diligence examinations of any organization, endorsements of NCCM/CAIR-CAN by persons and organizations, including human rights personalities, should be scrutinized rigorously. This, in order to comprehend whether endorsements reflect a detailed understanding of the origins, history, background and connections of NCCM/CAIR-CAN, and whether those endorsing may be, or perceive themselves to be, compromised by earlier dealings with the group.

To its credit, the Durham Regional Police Service, asserted that this error had been made by the Police Service's outreach committee. The Chief undertook to guard against any repetition of this or similar errors; proper due-diligence assessments would be conducted for events significantly involving the Durham Regional Police Service, so that inappropriate interests would not be inadvertently legitimized by association with the Service.

Given the importance in contemporary Canada of ensuring that official public outreach to Muslim communities involve only reliable representatives of moderate Canadian Islam -- especially as models for Canadian Muslim youth -- the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow respectfully requested that the Durham Regional Police Service and Durham Region immediately cease involvement with the National Council of Canadian Muslims and its officials.

Sohail Raza is a consultant involved in exposing radicalization and has appeared as an expert witness before the Government of Canada's Senate hearing on Radicalization.

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Comment on this item

10 Reader Comments

Len Vaness • Sep 12, 2016 at 16:05

Beware that, by appearing to condemn other sinister Muslim groups, a Trojan Horse is taken to our breast.

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Barbara Griffith • Sep 7, 2016 at 22:37

A few days ago the Clarion Project website published an article titled US Homeland Security Chief At Brotherhood-Linked Conference. This is none other than Jeh Johnson who is the boss over all of the Security in the U.S. It matches up to what is happening in Canada. Canada is taking in thousands of Syrians just like what President Obama has done and is doing. The U.S. is not vetting these people like they should be and I doubt Canada is doing any better. We will have thousands of unvetted Syrians just over the border from the U.S. in Canada as well as in the U.S. between our countries there is a long border that has very little security with just common fencing the between large wheat farms on both sides of the border. From what I understand there is only one Border Patrol agent every 15 miles so it is wide open too just like the border with Mexico. It speaks for it's self.

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Juanita Skelton

Barbara Griffith • Sep 8, 2016 at 07:19

Thank you, Ms.Griffith. This is a factoid that isn't being discussed. Keep the masses calm is probably the primary motive. When you say that we, the USA, is not vetting these Syrians properly, do you have more specifics? I am NOT questioning your logic or statements...just curious. Our global democracies and our freedoms are being thrown up in our faces. The argument always seem to be evolving around the accusation that we are exempting Islamists from total freedom under our own Constitutional Law. So, we swallow our American pride, hang our heads and...now....look the other way when we supposedly vet these people?!?

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Podargus • Sep 7, 2016 at 17:18

Our PC Pixies in Australia also love these terms of abuse - like racist and Islamophobic etc. They continually scream abuse at all those who question their fashionably mindless views. This behaviour gives them carte blanche to ignore and denigrate any rational view which is focused on the welfare of the nation as a whole. These Pixies should volunteer their services in Islamic countries. I'm sure they will be OK until their money runs out.

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Patti Gardner • Sep 7, 2016 at 17:12

I was surprised that you failed to mention a prominent politician's deep involvement with the "Reviving the Islamic Spirit" conventions. That politician would be our sorry PM, the Right Dishonorable Justin Trudeau. He was keynote speaker at one of these events, and a prominent attendee at at least one other. This is proof positive that our government at all levels is being infiltrated and is unduly involved with NCCM/CAIR-CAN.

And then there's the Canadian media. The Toronto Star and Crescent has openly admitted that they stopped using the term "ISIS" at the behest of NCCM/CAIR-CAN. All media have removed reader comments sections, likely on NCCM's orders as well, to silence any criticism of the government sponsored invasion. Both our government and our news media are being run by a terrorist group, and so is our educational system, since NCCM is now dictating to provincial school boards that teachers must teach kids to embrace their radical ideology. They even wrote up a curriculum to indoctrinate schoolchildren, with the assistance of teaching staff.

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Juanita Skelton • Sep 7, 2016 at 16:52

One thing that I could not determine from this article, was what constitutes proof in a court of international law as to whether or not a connection exists between CAIR and HAMAS. It certainly is not the burning issue of this article. What does jump out to me is the connection CAIR-US and CAIR-CAN both have to Islamic leadership that promotes polygamy and corporal punishment or "beatings" to be administered to wives or, even worse "SLAVES"! Are we going to be a nation, or a group of democracies unable to stand up against these practices?
"Victomhood"... another interesting point of conflict. I can promise you this. As an American, born and raised, if I SEE, or HEAR of any one human being victimized, Muslim or not, I cannot remain silent. At the same time, let me be clear about a very huge historical fact. Since the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979(?,or there about), innocent human beings have been "victimized" by radical Islamic Sharia Law pronouncements! The city of New York and it's citizenry, in the state of New York, have sustained multiple hits by these radicalized zealots. "Islamaphobia" will probably, and rightly so, HAVE to be a byword in regions, countries, and nations that at the very least hold EQUALITY as a value.

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Mike • Sep 7, 2016 at 16:07

Islamaphobia, if it is even a word, is not applicable as commonly used. A phobia is a psychiatric term indicating an unreasonable, unreal and unsupported fear of something which the person is not at risk of being harmed. Therefore that term is not applicable to Islam as there is reasoned, real and supported fear that it could harm a non-Muslim or infidel, and even Muslims themselves if they are not abiding by Sharia law.

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El Cid • Sep 7, 2016 at 14:48

The article demonstrates the principle that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. These well-funded, Jihadist organizations fill in the political power vacuum.

Compare the political actions of various Christian groups from the Middle East like the Copts or Chaldeans, etc. etc.

There is NO organized protest. I have tried in vain to find Christian activists to support. Why is it? Because they do not have a political agenda. They don't appear to even know how to organize.

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Gerry • Sep 7, 2016 at 11:46

It's my hope as a Canadian that law enforcement agencies everywhere will approach such groups with caution and properly investigate the claims of ties with such groups to terrorist organizations. Too often the approach of groups that can't stand scrutiny is to resort to name calling and shaming in the hopes of having the critics go away. We must stay the course and work with law enforcement and with proper public entities that seek to prevent any groups with radical Muslim tendencies from taking root in either Canada or any other western country. The adage that says "See something, say something" is appropriate. Law enforcement and politicians cannot be seen to be endorsing such groups with ties that at best, may be seen as questionable. Optics is very important.

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V.Balakrishnan • Sep 7, 2016 at 09:29

Majority Muslim community who lives anywhere in the world will not adjust with the people of the country which shelter and feed them. That is the Islam. Now these Islamists polluting both America, Europe and soon Canada, if Canada government does not wake up in time.

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