Coren and Fatah on Omar Khadr's useful idiot friends

Tarek Fatah: The worldwide cancer of terrorism by some Muslims is inspired by the teachings of Islam

"As a first step we will have to unlock our language and learn, once more, how to call a spade a spade. The worldwide cancer of terrorism by some Muslims is inspired by the teachings of Islam. To deny this fact is intellectual dishonesty. As long as you, and the rest of the non-Muslim world, permit Muslims to tippy toe around the doctrine of “armed jihad”, you won’t be able to take the second step, that is, confronting this death cult ideology on its merits, while resisting the temptation to be xenophobic and thus wrongly develop a hatred towards all Muslims."

Tarek Fatah: Why Ignore the Pakistan Nuclear Threat?

The Pakistani Threat: Why is Israel Blind to What’s beyond Iran?

From Tarek Fatah:

Being a Muslim who defends the right of Israel to exist as a ‘Jewish State’ within secure internationally guaranteed borders does not help me generate a fan club among followers of Hamas. However, the fact I oppose the continuing presence of the IDF in the West Bank and my unapologetic support for a Palestinian State also ensures that many Jews see me with suspicion, thus ensuring an unenviable position where what I say has little resonance on either side of the debate.

As a friend of the Jewish people as well as the Arabs, the thought of a nuclear device exploding over Israel gives me the jitters. The fact is that it won’t just be Jews who will die in such an attack; millions of Arabs will be eviscerated, too. The problem is made worse by the fact that Israel is obsessed solely with the Islamic Republic of Iran that does not have a single nuclear warhead, while completely ignoring the real threat lying just east of Iran in the form of a fanatical army of Islamic zealots in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Read the rest HERE 

Tarek Fatah on Zafar Bangash and the others who celebrate `Iran`s Hitler` in Canada

Twenty-five years ago this month, 5,000 Iranian political prisoners were executed on the direct orders of the then-Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini. 

Their crime? They were feminists, communists, socialists, students, Kurds, Baha’is, Ahwazi Arabs, Azeris and Baloch; all arrested for distributing leaflets and organizing protests against the Mullahs who had stolen the 1979 revolution against the autocratic monarchy of The Shah. 

It was the summer of 1988. The exhausting eight-year long Iran-Iraq War was staggering to a close. With the UN distracted in drawing up a post-war ceasefire, Khomeini decided to wipe out the existence of any opposition. He issued a fatwa to execute all political prisoners who refused to accept his rule. After 10-minute mock trials, the condemned were the hung on cranes or shot by firing squads, with their bodies dumped in unmarked mass graves.

Toronto Star's "Mad Dog" Siddiqui upset about a rabies shot

The Toronto Star's resident Islamist (as Tarek Fatah refers to him), Haroon Siddiqui, is upset with Robert Fulford for pointing out the obvious.

A Siddiqui column described Stephen Harper's support for Israel as being "rabid." Fulford noted that the simple-minded fanaticism of the anti-Israel horde merits that description far better than anything suggested by the Canadian Prime Minister.

Employing what might be described as Taqiyya, as form of lying permitted by Islam to further Islamic goals, Siddiqui, in a letter to the National Post, protests he "is a supporter of Israel." If by supporter, Siddiqui means he has not outright called for the elimination of Israel and the death of all Jews, he may have an obtuse point.

But for someone who has unrelentingly taken the side of Israel's enemies in virtually every instance, "Mad Dog" Siddiqui's howl of protest sounds a bit hollow.

The Enlightened Islamist, Tariq Ramadan at the University of Toronto

Tariq Ramadan is probably the world's best known living Muslim academic since the death of Edward Said.  Last week, he appeared at the University of Toronto to deliver a lecture on ethics and the role of religion in the public sphere.

Asking for indulgence from the crowd gathered in the fully attended lecture theatre in Northrop Frye Hall, he explained he was a bit disoriented, having just arrived from the airport. It was nonetheless a bit surreal to hear Ramadan spend the first five minutes of his talk discussing how various interpretations of the definition of 'human being' make the concept of his talk difficult. It would have more logical to speak of the varying ways people define what is "ethical.," But Ramadan is a philosopher,  whose field of study seeks logic and frequently takes a convoluted path to arrive at it, on those few occasions it actually does. In this instance, defining ethics may have been redundant since, as it eventually became clear, Ramadan sees that definition predetermined for each of us based on our religious affiliation.

"Islamism" conjures mental images of enraged Jihadis whose closed minds are filled with violence and hatred.  Tariq Ramadan is the opposite of that stereotype in every conceivable way. He is a soft-spoken, engaging Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University. Emphasizing the need for religious ethics in public life, he referred to the common ethical cores, but also noted differences in the substance of Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

The evening could have been a model for the type of multi-faith approach reasonable academics have extolled for ages.

But there were a few ominous hints in Ramadan's speech that suggested Canadian Muslim reformer Tarek Fatah might not have been far off the mark when he called the Oxford professor "a man committed to the goals of the worldwide Islamic jihad as laid out by his mentor, Sheik Qaradawi, and his father, the Trotsky of world Islamism, Said Ramadan.."

Calling for religious values, and the implication being that meant Islamic religious values in particular, to have a greater role in politics and the public sphere, the philosophical groundwork for Sharia Law's being accepted as a facet of Western multiculturalism is the logical extension.

He will have enablers in the media and among liberal academics who shriek and decry whenever a Christian politician talks about faith-based values, yet these same people embrace Ramadan's aim of increasing Islamic influence in the public sphere.

Ramadan didn't discuss that influence in terms of religious practice, but rather in those of "ethics", but as he noted that the term had different meanings within religions and cultures, religious practice is the most likely explanation for the aspiration he expressed.

Saying he didn't want to change Islam, but "the minds of Muslims", Ramadan, while repudiating violence, held on to fundamentalist tropes such as how the hijab, a head covering meant to enforce modesty among Muslim women, could be "freeing" for them.

From the many hijabs in the audience, as well as the number of questions from students discussing their own experiences as Muslims, the crowd appeared to consist mainly of students from U of T's Muslim Students Association, which co-sponsored the talk.

In response to one of those questions, when discussing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Ramadan, who implied that the fault was one-sided, with all the "injustice" perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians, said it was not a religious conflict but a political one.

While religion is quite obviously a facet of that conflict, there is also a clear hypocrisy at best in the way Ramadan characterizes it.

Why else would the  treatment of the Palestinians be more of a concern to him than the even worse than the "political" discrimination faced by Palestinians in Lebanon? No honest person discussing the issue of Israel/Palestine doubts for a moment that were both Israelis and Palestinians all Muslims and if the conflict were ethnic rather than religious, the Muslim world would care no more about it than they do about the discrimination faced by Kurds in Turkey, Baha'i and Zoroastrians in Iran, and Shia in Saudi Arabia. All these face brutal oppression at the hands of Muslim governments, among many other examples of such Islamic state-sponsored discrimination.

Though he implied otherwise, it is obvious that Ramadan's interest in the Palestinians is that of a Muslim promoting Muslim interests.

According to Tarek Fatah, Ramadan has said, “We (Muslims) should all be careful not to be colonized by something which is coming from this consumerist society … It should be us, with our understanding of Islam, our principles, colonizing positively the United States of America.”

By promoting that goal with charm, smiles and wit rather than animated proselytising or threats, Ramadan may create an environment more accepting to Islam as a political force in the west. Whether the honesty of his aims are articulated by him or perceived by others remains to be seen.

Bully Bloggers are heroes in the War of Ideas

The history of mankind is really a chronicle of the conflict of ideas.

In the end, the hope is that good ideas will triumph over bad ones and that truth will unseat lies and deception.

The belief that truth will prevail explains in large measure why those societies we look back on as being the most repressive, cruel and unjust were the most censorious.  It has been and is fear that their support would crumble when confronted by ideas and facts challenging theirs that inspired guardians of the likes of Communism, Nazism and The Inquisition to the prohibition of dissenting speech and publications.

The right of Free Speech was the founding principle in that culmination of The Enlightenment, the American Revolution, and is something most of us in Canada take for granted. But we shouldn't. 

As the recent Supreme Court of Canada's Whatcott decision highlighted, there is an ongoing battle about just which ideas are permissible in a country that is supposedly based on principles of freedom and fairness.

That any idea other than those that specifically incite violence or commit libel should be banned is something many Canadians find not only offensive, but a dangerous indication that more rights may be usurped in the slide to the crushing of individual liberty.

An unlikely group of Canadians are at the forefront of the fight for the principle that ideas should be allowed to be freely expressed while exposing the hypocrisy of the would-be censors. They are a collection of activists and writers who have been disparagingly described by Bernie Farber,  the former Canadian Jewish Congress head and rumored successor to Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Barbara Hall, as "Bully Bloggers."

These so-called Bully Bloggers are characterized, in certain cases incorrectly, as "right-wing." What they do share is a belief that there are hypocritical, dishonest public figures in politics, unions and the media who are trying to shape opinion and influence culture and legislation, while attempting to suppress the free expression of ideas that dissent from theirs.

Lacking the resources of big media, government grants, wealth and powerful institutions possessed by those they criticize, the Bully Bloggers' tools are the Internet, cameras, computers and knowledge, operating in the idealistic hope that exposing hypocrisy and dishonesty can shift the flow of public opinion.

Sometimes that hope is in vain, but sometimes it is not. The mainstream media, despite publicly eschewing the Bully Bloggers, monitors their blogs closely and frequently steal stories from them when a tipping point is reached.

That happened when Bully Blogger Blazing Cat Fur brought to light information such as the practice of a Toronto public school using its facilities as a mosque during school hours, how the Toronto District School Board was promoting a group that advocated using vegetables as sex toys, and a Canadian Islamic School which had anti-Jewish slander as part of its curriculum.

It's not that all of the mainstream media or all public officials don't oppose such things, but they have conflicting interests and the safety of politically correct appeasement is often the expedient choice they make.

Fortunately, Bully Bloggers, who use their own time and resources to expose matters of public interest, have no such constraints. And their shedding the initial light on such matters can be the excuse that sympathetic members of corporate media use to give them wider exposure.

There are costs to putting oneself on the line for one's principles. The Bully Bloggers are exposing people who have powerful and wealthy connections in politics and the media. Frequently subject to hatred and threats, but sustained by the belief that getting the truth out is worth sacrifice, these dedicated citizen journalists soldier on.

Among the particular characteristics Bernie Farber attributed to Bully Bloggers were :

Targeting minorities, namecalling & attempts at intimidating r bully-bloggers stock & trade.

While one could easily dispute some of Farber's assertions about his Bully Bloggers (whom he never identifies by name), he fails to recognize the value of such things as name-calling in public discourse.

Jack Layton and the NDP decried the nickname "Taliban Jack" as a smear, but in our YouTube and Internet era of short attention spans,  people tend to think in shorthand. In two words, Taliban Jack conveyed the idea of a leader and a political party that was soft on Islamic extremism and Canada's commitment to fighting terror. It stuck - and not only because it was catchy, but because it was truthful.  And in the end, that reflects the Bully Bloggers' hope that the truth will get a hearing.

In some cases, name-calling is a very important tool. The people Bully Bloggers insult are those that would like to have authority or influence over the rest of us. As a general principle, the ones who seek out such power are the ones who deserve it least. Exposing and insulting them when they behave stupidly, viciously or hypocritically helps diminish the undeserving in the eyes of the public and keeps them away from the power they covet and all-too-often abuse.

So when Loony Libby Davies makes statements that effectively deny Israel's right to exist, or when she promotes 9-11 conspiracy theories in the House of Commons, it is in the public's interest to have a reminder that she may not deserve their respect.

When Crazy Muslim Mohammed Elmassry says that all Jews in Israel over the age of 18 are legitimate targets for murder, then it's useful for the public to have a mental trigger that he and the terrorist-supporting Canadian Islamic Congress he founded are contemptible.

When Sideshow Sarah Thomson makes implausible, self-serving accusations against Rob Ford, or Captain eHealth George Smitherman tries to regain public attention, it's relevant that both of those two people want to attain significant political power. That relevance is all the greater when considering that their records show how little they deserve such authority.

Critics of the Bully Bloggers accuse them of being racists and Islamophobes. These are two distinct and significant accusations that are often conflated and intentionally deceptive. To examine and refute those accusations, they need to be addressed one-by-one.

Racists are stupid people who believe individuals can be summed up and dismissed based on their race or ethnic origin. Racism is a belief system rooted in ignorance and hate and those that hold it are self-discrediting and can be easily dismissed. But race is different than culture. Culture is a system of ideas and practices and Bully Bloggers are not adherents to the fatuous leftist devotion to cultural relevance that considers all such beliefs and behaviors to have equal merit.

Confusing race with culture is a traditional facet of self-described progressives, who as a group are not very deep thinkers, so most of them have great difficulty differentiating between criticism of cultural practices and racism.

As far as being Islamophobes, some of the Bully Bloggers would plead guilty to that charge.  But before the Farbers of this world put on a smug smile and twinkle with what they might see as a damning confession by adversarial iconoclasts, they might consider that criticism of Islamic practices is a far cry from discrimination or prejudice against Muslims.

In fact, some of the people closest to the Bully Bloggers are Muslim critics of Islamism, like Salim Mansur, Tarek Fatah,  and Irshad Manji.

While the politically correct are afraid to call out Islamic terrorism as anything but extremism and an aberration, Bully Bloggers note how the promotion of violence is often a routine facet in the practice of Islam and the facts bear them out.

Much of Islamic practice is devoted to teaching fairness and integrity, particularly as the religion is manifested in North America. Naturally, the vast majority of Muslims abhor violence, are kind to their wives and daughters and are disgusted with terrorism. But there is a minority of Muslims who do not, and that minority is not insignificant in number. And how can those hateful, murderous ideologies be dealt with when they are denied by their perpetrators and swept under the rug by multiculturalist apologists?

Like Islamism's Muslim critics, Bully Bloggers are keenly aware that it is Muslims who are the most frequent victims of Islamist terrorism, totalitarianism and intolerance.

Islam, as it is preached and conducted in places like Saudi Arabia, The Palestinian Territories, Iran, Pakistan, and many other countries includes practices which are homophobic, brutally violent, racist, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic.  As Canada's Muslim population increases through immigration from those countries, in too many cases, those hateful ideas have immigrated with them.

In Canada, we have seen Islamic conferences which featured Imams who preached such hatred. And it took the Bully Bloggers to first draw that to public attention before anyone noticed.

Bully Bloggers led the charge that ended with Parliament voting to scrap the thought-crime laws of Section 13 of Canada's Human Rights Act. The removal of that blunt, totalitarian tool is something that sticks hard in the craw the professional Human Rights Industry. More so that the battle proved those people who claim to concern themselves with human rights are hypocrites with little regard for the most basic human right of free expression.

Maybe the next time Bernie Farber is schmoozing at a cocktail party, writing a mushy-minded op-ed for the Globe and Mail, or being a twittavist,  he might consider that the Bully Bloggers are on the front lines, at demonstrations, chronicling and exposing and sometimes being assaulted by the real hatemongers in Canada.

Bully Bloggers get called names and worse, but they can take it. Anyone seeking to shape public policy should be able to handle a few insults, and if they can't, they have no place in the public sphere. But in the end, assuming thoughts and beliefs and most importantly, genuine facts can be expressed freely, then we should have faith that the best ideas and people will prevail.

When they do, you might take time to consider the Bully Bloggers out there doing hard, often thankless  groundwork for those victories. And unlike being a Human Rights Commissioner, the work Bully Bloggers do actually requires backbone.

Bigot bully bloggers target the vulnerable-comments that follow are racist garbage.Fact-they just talk amongst themselves shower & move on
— Bernie M. Farber (@BernieFarber) March 9, 2013

Primer for Saturday's Hate Rally in Toronto

The Islamist and totalitarian leftist hatemongers and fanatics who support terrorists whose goal is the destruction of Israel are planning a huge gathering in downtown Toronto this Saturday afternoon. Though a ceasefire was agreed to in the current Israel-Gaza conflict, their hate for Israel and desire to see it annihilated has not subsided and they still plan on spewing their venom on the streets.

The mainstream media, some for laziness, others because of their shallow-minded, politically-correct cultural relativism, will portray the event in a different way than understood anyone who ever has seen the groups involved in action.

Though it will be portrayed in the pages of The Toronto Star and on CBC broadcasts as a pro-Palestine or even an "anti-war" rally, the late essayist and philosopher Christopher Hitchens has these people identified correctly;  "in reality, they are straight out pro-war, but on the other side."  The other side for the Islamo-fascist/totalitarian left alliance, as we have seen in Toronto in the last few weeks, both at disruptions during Remembrance Day services and in front of the Israeli consulate, is Canada's enemy the Taliban and the terror group Hamas.

The people who will be marching will not be a reflection of normal, civilized Canadian citizenry. They are hatemongers and supporters of totalitarianism. And as they say at the ballpark, you can't tell the players without a program, so here is a primer to some of the more prominent reprobates who are likely to be there:

Zafar Bangash, the Grand Poobah of the York Region Islamic Centre. Bangash is a hatemonger and racist whom, at an anti-Israel rally, called US President Obama "that black man in the White House" and later referred to him in an article as "a perfect Uncle Tom." A hypocrite as well as a hatemonger, Bangash plays footsie with so-called progressive, anti-homophobia groups while also saying that Muslim children should not be taught that homosexuality isn't a sinful lifestyle. Bangash is a paid mouthpiece for the murderous, Iranian regime, having worked with the Iranian government on a laudatory biography of its sadistic dictator, Ayatollah Khomeini.

Bangash is one of the principal leaders of anti-Israel activities in Ontario. Many of the participants at Saturday's hate rally will be bused in from the mosque he leads as well as under the direction of the Shiite organizations with which he is closely involved.

Ali Mallah, another nasty racist and hypocrite. Mallah, like his close associate Zafar Bangash, used racist terminology, calling Muslim reformer Tarek Fatah a "house Negro" while preposterously calling those who oppose his fanaticism "racists."  Presenting as simple-minded, thuggish buffoon, he is actually an astute organizer and is the link between Islamist organizations and far left Trotskyite, anti-western groups. He has held or currently holds senior positions in The Canadian Arab Federation (defunded by the federal government for supporting terrorism and anti-Semitism), Palestine House,  CUPE, The Canadian Peace Alliance and Alternatives International.

Mallah used his position as a CUPE vice president to suppress union criticism of the Darfur genocide as it would be harmful to the reputation of Muslims and Arabs.

The Canadian Peace Alliance is a group acting for Iranian interests in Canada. One of its leaders, James Clark, has boasted about his close friendship with Zafar Bangash and the group conducts campaigns in support of the totalitarian, theocratic Iranian regime

Eva Bartlett is a strange woman with a neurotic demenour, originally from Canada, now residing in Gaza with her Palestinian husband. She is a member of the radical pro-Islamist Trotskyite group International Solidarity Movement. Her supporters refer to her as "the Canadian Rachel Corrie" although, unlike her supposed namesake, she has at least demonstrated the minimal level of sanity required to avoid playing chicken with an Israeli military bulldozer. Her efforts are supported by Mallah and a fanatical anti-Israel group with the deceptive name Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East. Bartlett maintains that while Israel does not have the right to defend itself, Palestinians have the right to launch terror attacks which qualify as war crimes because she deems them "resistance."



No One Is Illegal a depraved, Trotskyite group that has been in part funded by the University of Toronto's communist-controlled Ontario Public Interest Research Group. No One Is Illegal opposes any immigration restrictions and has close links with the violent Black Bloc, and shares membership with them.

Palestine House is a Palestinian advocacy organization that lost its federal funding due to its support for terrorism and anti-Semitism. It has been involved in massive immigration fraud.

OCAP - The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty is a radical, violent, anti-capitalist group funded by the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Its leader, John Clarke, has called for class warfare. The group is comprised largely of homeless and mentally ill individuals. OCAP frequently attracts unfortunates with no knowledge of the causes involved to its demonstrations and protests by promising them free food.

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is an anarchist/Trotskyite organization of Gays who seek Israel's elimination. Many of its membership are psychologically damaged Gay Jews who are venting rejection by their conservative families by seeking destruction of the Jewish state. The group also functions as a rare social outlet for marginalized, unattractive lesbians with few other social venues. Among its members is the author of a notorious anti-Semitic Masters degree thesis produced for the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Independent Jewish Voices is a group of socially maladroit anti-Israel Jews which was founded by and is largely comprised of 9-11 conspiracy theorists. Many of its members are Marxist academics insecure about being intellectual lightweights. Most of its members are, old, bitter, childless and resentful.

Sandra Ruch is the obese owner of the Canadian Gaza Boat, dubbed by bloggers as The Sea Hitler. She frequently engages in hyperbolic and hysterically over-emotional public tirades. Her behaviour suggests a lonely, insecure person desperate for attention. As a Jew who publicly denounces Israel with the most extreme, preposterous invective, she is able to get that otherwise unattainable notice from Islamist and Marxist groups for whom destruction of the Jewish state  is of paramount importance while providing them with the pretense for deniability of their anti-Semitism.





Neutrei Karta is a bizarre Jewish cult of extremist anti-Israel Jews. Due to the small size of the cult,
the membership is frequently inbred, which partially accounts for their freakish appearance. They claim to be pro-Palestinian, but that is disingenuous. They also claim to be anti-oppression, but the only oppression anywhere they have ever expressed outrage about is that allegedly committed by Israel. The motivation for the cult's anti-Israel activities is a misguided belief that God has prohibited Jews from creating a state in Israel until the arrival of the Messiah. They seek Israel's destruction as a means of redressing that "error." The cult's hatred for Israel is so intense that they have embraced the murderous, Holocaust-denying President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with whom they share the common goal of the elimination of the Jewish state.

The cult also believes that Jews should dress like Eastern Europeans in the early 17th Century, which accounts for their clown-like costumes.

CASMO - The Canadian Organization of Shiite Muslims. The group, while denying hating Jews is overtly anti-Semitic. It has posted anti-Semitic videos by neo-Nazi leader David Duke on its website and its membership is tied to the recent case of the Hate Madrassa in Toronto which was the subject of a hate crime investigation for teaching anti-Semitism as part of its curriculum. The group is closely linked with Zafar Bangash and Ali Mallah.

Tarek Fatah on Muslim 5th columnists

Canada will burn (,) praise Allah.” Five words defacing a Toronto War Memorial on Remembrance Day, sent shock waves through the country. Memorials to our war dead have been vandalized before, but by petty thieves stealing metal plaques. This, however, was the first time hostility towards Canada was demonstrated, albeit with an Islamic angle. 

Like most Muslim Canadians, I cringed at the implications of this act. How much more will the ordinary Canuck take before, as the Quebecois put it, they reach “le point de bascule.”

More here

Islam vs Islamists

Our friend Tarek Fatah is featured in this documentary that was originally produced for the PBS series America at a Crossroads. PBS executives then tried to suppress the documentary because it didn't fit in with their politically-correct worldview.


Islam vs. Islamists from Tarek Fatah on Vimeo.


h/t Blazing Cat Fur

A fascinating talk in Toronto tonight with Tarek Fatah, Michael Coren, Carole MacNeil and Jonathan Kay

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center presents Media Perspectives on the Middle East

at the Sandford Fleming Building, Room 1105

10 King's College Road at the U of Toronto's St. George Campus

See Michael Coren, Tarek Fatah, Carole MacNeil and Jonathan Kay live!

Media Perceptions of the Middle East is a free event at the University of Toronto on Thursday, March 5th from 7 to 9 pm.

It's a live panel discussion with Jonathan Kay, Carole MacNeil, Tarek Fatah and Michael Coren.

Declarations condemning Honor Killings don't deserve praise

The past two weeks have been particularly eventful ones regarding the problematic subject of the integration of Muslim immigrants and Islamic culture into Canadian society.

The ongoing Shafia trial in Ontario has been taking up a lot of ink and appears to have been the catalyst for a declaration by about 60 Canadian Muslim groups denouncing Honor Killings. Meanwhile in Belgium, Canadian Muslim reformer Irshad Manji was violently accosted during a book tour by about twenty Islamist fanatics who spat on her and threatened to kill her.

Now before any of us get on a high horse about how much better western religions are than Islam, we should keep in mind that we too all had our centuries-long episodes of religiously-inspired violence. Islam is 600 years younger than Christianity, and when Catholicism was as old as Islam is now, the Church was torturing and burning heretics.  As recently as 300 years ago, Protestant "reformers" were burning witches. Judaism too has a well-detailed history of violence that is extolled in biblical lore.

However there are many religions younger than Islam, such as Mormonism, Scientology, Baha'i, Sikhism, etc, whose practitioners are not bent on mass murder, terrorism, or the elimination of anyone who would dare to utter a word of criticism or mockery of their beliefs.

Even in Canada, up until the imposition of the multicultural, non-assimilating Trudeaupia, we had an extremely well-integrated Ismaili Muslim population that exhibited virtually none of the extremism that has become a somewhat factually-based caricature of contemporary Islam.

What has happened to the west in the last 40 years or so is the mass immigration of Muslims from what, in non-cultural relativist terms, one might refer to as backwards Muslim countries. The problem the west faces is not really Islam so much as it is the culture of these third world countries which happen to be predominantly Islamic. And the challenge we face is that the narrative of contemporary Islam has increasingly been dominated by those who hold on to those cultures' regressive interpretation of that religion.

Where we are failing miserably is by allowing that narrative to continue.

If a group were to make a grand announcement declaring that they believed it was wrong to rape cats, and tried to organize a campaign to denounce cat rape, people would, quite rightly, view them as crazy. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence and moral sense knows it's wrong to rape cats and no sane person would do such a monstrous thing. It shouldn't require anyone to speak out against it.

Yet when Canadian Islamists declare that it's wrong for Muslims to murder their wives and daughters, they are embraced by the mainstream media as being progressive.

This truly is a sign of the soft bigotry of low expectations. When a community feels the need to make a pronouncement opposing infanticide and domestic violence, and the addled minds of an enabling media behave as if this is some significant achievement, it bespeaks a disgusting rot in our entire culture.

What's worse is that the trend to try to accommodate the troglodytes in the Islamist community tacitly undermines genuine Canadian Muslim reformers like Manji, Tarek Fatah, Salim Mansur, and many others. Most Canadian Muslims are not extremists, but when we engage and praise extremists, merely for meeting the minimal standards of civilized behaviour, it sends out a message that is not only condescending, but implies that the extremists are the mainstream. That message allows the real reformers to be marginalized as radicals within the Muslim community.

We should not be engaging extremist groups who have been denounced by the government for anti-Semitism and support for terror, like the Canadian Arab Federation or the Canadian Islamic Congress, whose president recently spoke at a multi-faith conference at the University of Toronto. Engaging them merely allows reformers like Irshad Manji to be tagged with the description "controversial." What should be controversial is that the president of a group that expresses support for terrorist organizations was welcomed at Canada's most prestigious university.

This whole matter points to the challenges facing and the many failures of Canadian multiculturalism whose guiding philosophical moral relativism is poorly adapted to responding to inherently bad cultural practices.

When Canadian Islamists feel the need to condemn the murder of women in their community, our response should not be, "aren't you wonderfully progressive!," it should be: "What the hell is wrong with a culture that needs to say that in the first place?"  

Three brave women speak out against Islamicism and the hypocrisy of leftist western feminists

An organization called Advocates for Civil Liberties conducted a panel Monday night in Toronto's tony Yorkvile neighborhood dealing with the suppression of women's rights under Islamic rule. Raheel Raza and Nsatasha Fatah are both Canadian Muslims of Pakistani origin who have seen the way threat Islamism has creeped into Muslim cultures in the last three decades. They attribute the phenomenon to the aggressive agenda of Wahhabi Islam that originates in Saudi Arabia and whose spread has been funded by that country's oil wealth which has skyrocketed since the 1970's.

Fatah, a writer who is the daughter of renowned author and human rights activist Tarek Fatah and Raza, who is a former head of the Muslim Canadian Congress, both noted that in their native Pakistan, only a couple of decades ago, it was extremely rare to see women dressed in the body casing of the burkah or niqab, whereas now it is commonplace there. The practice has no basis in religion, but is an Arab tradition that Saudi influence has spread to Muslim countries outside the middle east and even to pockets of Muslim communities in western countries like Canada.

The most harrowing accounts came not from a Muslim woman but a Catholic who lived under Islamist rule in Iran. Marina Nemat grew up in Iran under the Shah, where despite repressive activities directed at political dissenters by his secret police, the Savak, the average citizen enjoyed the same rights and individual liberties as citizens of western countries. With the exception of Turkey, women's rights in pre-Revolutionary Iran were unrivaled in the Islamic Middle East. Nemat spoke of a childhood with dancing to Bee Gees music, mini-skirts, swimming at the cottage in her bikini, dating and a life that would be indistinguishable from that of a girl in places like France or Austria. The changes that the Khomeini regime brought about seemed gradual, but were horrific in the end result. First, behaviour like singing and dancing were banned, then women were prohibited from wearing bright colors and short skirts. Then they were forced to cover themselves and not allowed to show their hair in public.

Political repression magnified, and as a teenager, Nemat was arrested for participating in an anti-government demonstration and what happened after that was horrifying and irreversible. She, along with hundreds of others, were jailed in in Iran's Evin prison, the most disreputable torture centre in the world whose abuses exceed that of the USSR's Lubyanka. Canadians may recognize that name as the place where Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was murdered after being raped and tortured by her jailers. That fate befell many of Nemat's friends. The Iranians believed that a virgin was guaranteed a place in heaven and not wanting an enemy of the Islamic Republic to receive that privilege in the afterlife, they raped young girls and teenagers like Nemat was at the time. She was also subjected to brutal torture like having the soles of her feet lashed repeatedly by guards who would shout "Allahu Akbar!" with each vicious stroke.

Eventually, Nemat was able to escape Iran to warn of the breed of Islamicism that Iran wants to spread throughout the middle east, but tragically it is often falling on deaf ears. Shockingly, much of that deafness comes from western so-called "feminists" who have provided ideological support for some of the most brutally misogynistic regimes in the world.

The trio of Raza, Fatah and Nemat al decried the hypocrisy among many in the west as a tacit form of racism that accepts Islamist mistreatment of women as being to to an inate inferiority, whereas they would never accept such behaviour from white Christians. The phenomenon of making Muslim women, or Muslim Divas such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji who speak out against Islamism into heroes was counterproductive as far as they were concerned. Such discourse needs to be part of the general conversation and it speaks poorly of Muslim society that there are so few.  All three called upon people of every religious, national and cultural background to speak out against the abuses occurring in the name of Islamist radicalism. They said that Muslim women cannot do it on their own and every free citizen should take whatever action they could, including making elected representatives aware of concerns about the erosion of women’s human rights wherever Sharia Law is imposed or people propose its implementation.

The Blaze covers Tarek Fatah's speech at IdeaCity

Interesting read (watch the videos too)

Tarek Fatah's daughter Natasha on her dad's health

Tarek Fatah is a brave voice of true liberalism and reason in a culture that, as Liberal MP Justin Trudeau has recently unintentionally reminded us, is fraught with the stupidity of cultural relativism and moral equivalence.

Tarek's daughter Natasha wrote a moving article about her father's ongoing battle with cancer and their family's use of social media during the ordeal.

I would encourage you to read it (link here) and if you're one of Tarek's many facebook friends, remember to send him a note!

Tarek Fatah talks to Dennis Miller

Who's that dude next to Tarek Fatah?

The interview from last month is available here.




Tarek Fatah talks about his book, The Jew is not my Enemy, and radical Islam.

Here's a great quote you'll hear from Tarek: "The Koran is very Zionist in its nature"

Doofus blogger appears on Michael Coren Show

Many Thanks to SdaMatt2 and Blazing Cat Fur:

It's hard to make "the religion of peace" argument when stories like this keep coming out

From The Express Tribune -

PESHAWAR:   A prominent cleric on Friday offered a reward of half a million rupees for executing Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman who was sentenced to death by a court on charges of blasphemy.  

Maulana Yousaf Qureshi, the Khateeb of the historic Masjid Mohabaat Khan in Peshawar, offered a Rs500,000 reward for anyone who kills Aasia, Online news agency reported.  

Qureshi also warned the government against any move to abolish or change the blasphemy law. 

“No president, no parliament and no government has the right to interfere in the tenets of Islam. Islamic punishment (according to Muslim jurisprudence) will be implemented at all costs,” said Maulana Qureshi.  

“We will strongly resist any attempt to repeal laws which provide protection to the sanctity of Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH),” Qureshi is reported to have told a rally. “Anyone who kills Aasia will be given Rs500,000 in reward from Masjid Mohabat Khan.”  

“We expect her to be hanged and if she is not hanged then we will ask the mujahideen and the Taliban to kill her.”

h/t Tarek Fatah