The National Council of Canadian Muslims' propaganda for people incapable of fact checking

Back in mid-January of this year, a kerfuffle erupted when Prime Minister Stephen Harper's spokesman responded to criticism by the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) for including Rabbi Daniel Korobkin as part of an official Canadian delegation to Israel. Korobkin's unpardonable offense in the eyes of the NCCM was having introduced anti-Islam activists Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer at a Toronto event.

In response, PM Harper's spokesman Jason MacDonald said about NCCM, "We will not take seriously criticism from an organization with documented ties to a terrorist organization such as Hamas."

A publicly outraged NCCM threatened to sue the Prime Minster's Office for libel. Months have gone by and that libel suit has now been filed with the court. But its success or failure will be affected by whether an abundance of information establishes that its links to Hamas are not nearly as far-removed as NCCM would want the Canadian public to believe.

In its most recent PR effort, the NCCM has produced a somewhat lengthy video to try to make out that its links to Hamas are tenuous, like the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game which indicates that everyone is eventually linked to everyone if you are willing to stretch long enough.

Except the stretch between Hamas and NCCM is not all that much of a stretch. No, the NCCM is not smuggling bombs to Hamas, nor is it advocating suicide bombing as an organization. But despite the misleading information in the NCCM video, one of the directors of its previous incarnation, CAIR-CAN, has in fact advocated "combative Jihad" (read suicide bombings) against Israel.

NCCM webpage redirected to CAIR-CAN

That director, Jamal Badawi, who was listed in a directory of members of The Muslim Brotherhood,  Hamas' parent organization,  was listed as a Director of CAIR-CAN as recently as recently as four months ago, when the NCCM was still redirecting visitors to its website back to the old CAIR-CAN site.

According to investigative journalist Patrick Poole, former CAIR-CAN Board Member Badawi "was a featured speaker at a conference in Qatar honoring Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi, where Badawi shared the speaker’s podium with Khaled Mishaal, the head of Hamas and a designated terrorist by both the U.S. and Canada."

Another factor in the links between Hamas and NCCM are that as CAIR-CAN, the Canadian group was the northern branch of the US-based CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) which was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land terror-financing trial. Naturally, the NCCM is trying to downplay its relationship with the CAIR claiming in the video that they were completely independent of one another and that the use of the CAIR name was only related to a verbal agreement for trademark purposes.

But is that NCCM claim true?

Only if former CAIR-CAN boss Sheema Khan was lying in an affidavit filed with the Ontario Supreme Court.

As the Point de Bascule blog reported:

In 2003, (former CAIR-CAN leader Sheema) Khan swore an affidavit for the Ontario Supreme Court in connection with a trademark dispute. In the affidavit Khan, (former CSIS Strategic Planning Head David) Harris testified, “states categorically that CAIR-CAN is under the direction and control of the American CAIR organization.” Moreover, Khan, while a senior official of CAIR-CAN, also served on the board of CAIR.

Part of the obfuscation the NCCM is offering in its video is its mocking of Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird's suggestion that Canadians can "Google the group in question, and do some research on their own and come to their own conclusions."

via Point de Bascule

The NCCM video would have you believe that information on the Internet is so unreliable that it's effectively worthless.

Yes, there are a lot of falsehoods and deception online, as the NCCM video itself is an ample example. But it's also a research tool filled with credible sources providing information that can be verified. So when the NCCM tries to mock a Canadian government Minister for telling people to "research on their own and come to their own conclusions," and instead mindlessly accept what the Muslim advocacy group tells them, it's not hard to figure between the two which is the more credible and honest.