“Unfortunately, one of the effects is to engender fear and suspicion toward Canadian Muslims. The message is that anywhere Muslims gather — even when at home with their families — there is a possibility they may be transformed into hateful, violent radicals bent on destroying Canada”

In a January 3 news item, the National Post profiled a Canadian Security Intelligence Services (CSIS) report released under the Access to Information Act. The report concludes that Islamist extremists are radicalizing Canadians at “a large number of venues.” The heavily redacted document offers a few general examples of “non-traditional venues” where this radicalization allegedly is happening — including prisons, and within families.

However, what we do not find is any evidence to justify these sweeping statements, nor are we privy to any of the research that has led to such conclusions. There may be context in the unredacted CSIS report. But more than half of the document was blacked out before release, so we have no way of knowing.

Unfortunately, one of the effects is to engender fear and suspicion toward Canadian Muslims. The message is that anywhere Muslims gather — even when at home with their families — there is a possibility they may be transformed into hateful, violent radicals bent on destroying Canada. One web site commenter, for instance, opined: “Hey, we allowed [these people] in. Now [we’re] paying the price. I often wonder whether the guy working out next to me in the gym is saying to himself ‘Buddy, soon enough you’ll be bowing to me and calling me master.’”

Remember that the mass killings perpetrated by Norway’s Anders Breivik in 2011 were not the work of a Muslim, but rather an anti-Muslim radical who was convinced that Islam was a threat to Western civilization. Recent incidents in the United States also show us where fear-mongering can lead — including the murder of an innocent Hindu man, Sunando Sen, by a woman on a subway platform who said she hated Hindus and Muslims because of 9/11. Or the Indiana man who said he set fire to an Ohio mosque after watching coverage of wounded soldiers overseas (authorities said he’d carried a gun into the mosque, but no one was inside at the time).

Canadians are not immune to this. Reports of vandalized mosques, and threatening behaviour toward Muslim men and women on the streets and at workplaces continue across the country.

The Ministry of Public Safety writes on its website that “citizens need to be informed of the threat in an honest, straightforward manner.” Indeed. However, the release of this latest CSIS report and its ensuing coverage is not “straightforward.” Rather, it speaks more to the saying that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

There have been countless studies that offer context and background to our understanding of radicalization. Demos, a UK-based think tank, produced an in-depth study in 2010 based on interviews with British and Canadian convicted terrorists and religious radicals. One of the study’s conclusions pointed out that holding radical ideas did not necessarily lead to violence, and that in fact “religious radicals” are distinct from terrorists, and can even be key allies in the fight against those who would promote the use of violence.

The U.S. Department of Defense released a study in 2010 that concluded: “Identifying potentially dangerous people before they act is difficult. Examinations after the fact show that people who commit violence usually have one or more risk factors for violence. Few people in the population who have risk factors, however, actually [commit violent acts].”

Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Centre has indicated that “while Islam can be used to justify acts of terrorism, radicalization is not caused by Islam” (as chronicled by academic Deepa Kumar, in her book Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire).

In other words, context is key. In a world fraught with fragmented information, we need it now more than ever to safeguard against violent radicalization of any kind.

Originally published in the National Post

Amira Elghawaby is the human rights officer at the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations based in Ottawa.

You are not going to reform any society if you don’t love the people with whom you live.  You should be a mercy to the worlds.  How can you be if you come with minds that judge and not with hearts that love?

Highlighting the Islamic teachings of giving and contribution, a leading Muslim intellectual has called on the Muslim community in Canada to play a positive role in promoting the welfare of their society.

“The very essence of faith is not to look at yourself through your weaknesses but look at yourself through your potential power,” Professor Tariq Ramadan told the audience at the annual winter dinner of the Islamic Institute of Toronto.

“The power of this faith is to have a positive perception of yourself.”

In a speech themed “Reflections from the Heart” last week, Ramadan spoke of the moment when Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) received the first revelation from Allah, through the Angel Jibreel.

“You come to the experience of the Prophet, peace be on him, and you get the sense of this journey,” he said.

“Allah took him from a very specific situation and, step by step, helped him to understand, through the revelation, the very essence of our religion.

“The first thing that was converted with Jibreel coming to the Prophet was the self-perception – what you think you can’t do alone, with Him you can,” he added.

“This is the power of faith – you can do it, bismi rabik.

“If you think of yourselves in the light of the others, if you think of yourself in the light of the attacks and responding to questions coming from people, you end up at the periphery of your religion,” he said.

“You end up responding to questions coming from outside and not at the heart of your tradition.

“It is important not to be focused and obsessed with ‘what shall I say if I am asked’ but what should I understand when I am alone with Allah.”

Liberation

Ramadan spoke of the ‘conversions’ that Muslims should go through to experience the essence of their religion.

“The power and the strength that came to the Prophet, peace be on him, as the chosen, the purified, as the beloved is in fact the understanding that Allah took him step by step and made him understand the essence of Islam,” Ramadan said.

“The very essence of this religion is liberation.

“Change the way you look at yourself, change the way you look at the world and change the way you look at the society,” he told the audience.

The second conversion Ramadan mentioned in his speech was how Muslims relate to the natural world.

“Second, look at the world around you. You have in this country, nature and this environment – celebrate this,” he said.

“But to celebrate the environment, it means you have to study.

“There is nothing in the world that is not prostrating to Allah. If you look at them with your minds you do not get it but you get it if you look at them with your heart,” he said.

Ramadan is one of Europe’s leading Muslim thinkers and has often condemned terrorism and extremism.

An author of 20 books and 700 articles on Islam, he was named by Time magazine as one of 100 innovators of the 21st century for his work on creating an independent European Islam.

Serving Society

Professor Ramadan passionately spoke of how Canadian Muslims should relate to the society.

“Change the way you look at the society – don’t try to talk to the rich and powerful to change, be close to the poor – these are your people,” he said.

“When you serve the poor you educate the heart,” Ramadan said.

“If you serve somebody who has nothing, it means that you might be close to Allah.”

Professor Ramadan then asked the audience to reflect on their presence in Canada.

“You should know why you have to thank Allah for being in this country,” he said.

“You can keep on thinking about the countries of origin that you left but you have to convert this into something – thank Allah for being in Canada.

“And if you don’t know why you have to thank him, you must start checking and looking for an answer.”

The prominent intellectual also spoke of the role of Canadian Muslims in their society.

“You are not in Canada by accident; there are many things in this society that are better than in Muslim majority societies – say thank you and start working,” he said.

“The best way to thank Allah is to serve the people in all the fields and it has to come with generosity,” he urged.

“To believe is to give – to give to anyone who is in need; to give to women who are facing discrimination or violence – we give and we support and we protect.”

Prof. Ramadan concluded his presentation by asking the crowd to carefully consider their relationship to their fellow citizens.

“You are not going to reform any society if you don’t love the people with whom you live,” he said.

“Some of us Muslims are in this binary vision; we are Muslims – we are good and them – they are not.

“You should be a mercy to the worlds,” Ramadan said. “How can you be if you come with minds that judge and not with hearts that love.

“You will not complete your faith if you don’t love for your fellow human beings what you love for yourself – so in the name of God, serve Him, love and give.”

Muslims make around 2.8 percent of Canada’s 32.8 million population, and Islam is the number one non-Christian faith in the country.

A recent report from the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life said that Muslims are expected to make up 6.6% of Canada’s total population in 2030.

Promoted at this table: 

*The Centre for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE), White Ribbon Campaign, Muslim Presence, Authors Fred Reed and Monia Mazigh

Anas ibn Malik, a Companion of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) once said, “I have never seen anyone kinder to one’s family than the Prophet Muhammad.” (Sahih Muslim).

This kindness is something to reflect upon as Muslims listen to Imams across the country today delivering sermons for the Friday prayer, and raising awareness on the serious issue of violence against women in Canada.

This across Canada action is in response to the Muslims for White Ribbon Campaign, part of a larger world-wide, grassroots effort to end violence against women.

The objectives of the campaign are to break the silence on violence against women in the Muslim community, promote healthy relationships through education, and create partnerships among Mosques, women’s organizations, and social agencies to create a future without violence against women.

The Campaign will run from November 25, 2012 [International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women] and culminate in White Ribbon Days at Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) Convention at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (December 21 – 23).

These actions need to be taken immediately as the facts and figures on domestic violence and abuse are staggering.

On average, every six days a woman inCanadais killed by her spouse/intimate partner. On any given day inCanada, more than 3,000 women (along with their 2,500 children) are living in an emergency shelter to escape domestic violence.

Each year, over 40,000 arrests result from domestic violence – that’s about 12% of all violent crime inCanada.  Since only 22% of all incidents are reported to the police, the real number is much higher. Half of all women inCanadahave experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16.

As Muslims who base our values and behavior on the teachings of the Quran and the authenticated example of the Prophet, there is absolutely no room within these teachings for any person to seize physical control over the life of another human being in a family.  Domestic violence and, the extreme practice of killing to “restore family honor” clearly violates a non-negotiable Islamic principle, and should be categorically condemned.

Let us make a pledge to never commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women, girls and families.

Men being men, vigilance must be the watchword. In his philosophical essay Human, all too Human, Nietzsche enumerated several of the characteristics of the human being above and beyond religions, philosophies, cultures and beliefs.

They included a hypertrophied ego, a taste for power, gregariousness, pretension, social role-playing, etc.: a never-ending human comedy in which men create illusions, lie to themselves, and deceive themselves and others.

The common man is nothing more than this, claimed Nietzsche; only the exceptional artist can rise above the human condition.

The moral philosophers, from ancient Greece to Kant’s practical reason—by way of the Confucian, Hindu, and Buddhist spiritual traditions, as well as the three monotheistic religions—also affirm that such is the human’s sorry state, the single cardinal difference being their claim that the common woman and man possess the intellectual and ethical capacity to overcome their state.

Humankind is in shadow; if it aspires to full existence and to light, it must seek education and critical intellectual mastery, the counter-power of the individual and collective conscience.

Mankind must be positively and constructively wary of mankind, of their fellow man, of their families, of the members of their faith community, of their fellow-citizens. Depending on whether they are alone or in a group, they are not the same; not the same in a minority as in a majority; not the same in power or in opposition; theirs are not the same victims, the same executioners.

The same persons, wearing different hats, are no longer the same: beware of self, and keep an eye on those like you.

The final verses of the Qur’an, seen in this light, are troubling: at the end of a revelation of light and of the moral horizon, the repeated appeal for the protection of the Unique against mankind delivers up the secret of our societies: with or without God, alone or in society, oppressed or oppressors, we remain human, all too human. Dangerously human.

History is replete with ideologies of freedom, justice, liberation of the downtrodden and the exploited, that have been turned against the very people they had mobilized, or that have reproduced the same logic of exclusion and terror toward those whom they claimed to set free.

No civilization, no political philosophy, no religion can claim a monopoly of its contradictions, of its opportunism, of the hopes dashed, despoiled, manipulated. The liberal and financial illusions of capitalism, the promises of equality and justice of socialism and communism, the moral ideals of the Islamists have been invoked and shown to be empty… All have guilty blood on their hands. No exceptions.

The great capitalist democracies protect their interests and sow death and dictatorship in the name of their “civilizing mission;” the socialist and communist resistance, in the name of justice, as inVietnam(and so often repeated) end up exploiting, killing, torturing.

Yesterday’s victims of extermination, who lay claim to such status, have become today’s oppressors, as withIsrael(and with so many other peoples and ethnic groups around the world).

Muslim leaders, self-proclaimed reformers, Salafi literalists or violent extremists, who had promised the Islamic ideal of peace and justice end up enmeshed in power struggles, conflicts of ego and self-serving interpretations, reproducing little more than repression, the death of intelligence, and the elimination of their opponents.

Grim realities; grim truths.

While we speak of liberating uprisings in the Middle-East and in Africa, while we speak of universal consciousness, while the shared values of democracy or the ideology of the free market and the liberal economy seem to be imposed on all of us, we must remain more than ever vigilant. Those who, in the West, yesterday supported dictators now support the people in the name of the same logic of self-interest.

Those who yesterday supported the peoples may well end up supporting dictators, as in Syria or in the petromonarchies, in the name of dark interests and calculations.

The mass movements, the emotions, the shared illusions are dubious councilors; the crowd can be carried away, can become collectively blind, blinded, and dangerously ignorant, easily manipulated.

The world is a complex place and the influence of the media in its representation and its power of communication and interpretation is a remarkable amplifier of emotions, and of illusions. Instantaneous and mass communication is the mother of mass naivety.

Should we then lose hope? Is there any hope? But to lose hope is as dangerous as to nurture false hope. Where then can we find hope that is responsible?

In relation to ourselves, to our neighbors and to societies, we must develop counter-powers, spaces of spiritual, intellectual, social, political, cultural and economic resistance.

True critical consciousness begins precisely with this essential requirement: an ethics of counter-power that observes and seeks to master and to forestall the slippage of its own ego, the potential betrayals of its sisters and brothers in faith and in struggle.

A counter-power that resists the excesses of power but does not hesitate to identify the latent oppression that slumbers among the minorities, the oppressed and the victims of today.

The ethics of counter-power require an ethical counterpower: in the name of the overreaching principles of freedom, dignity, and justice, the humanity of humankind must be submitted to ethical judgment, one that is never compromising, compromised or selective.

Such a position cannot mean that we flee human society, social or political commitment: quite the contrary. In the light mankind’s destiny, and of its human, all too human characteristics, there can be no question of offering power to those who will abuse it without counter-parties, without requirements.

To power we must hold up the demanding and determined mirror of resistance, and of counter-power, one that will make no concessions, neither to our brothers, nor to our foes.

This is the awareness that, in the final analysis, is the cradle of just and reasonable aspiration, where the oppressed, the poor, women, the excluded, who so often count for almost nothing in the circles of power, emerge as subjects of their own history, and become the motor of historical change.

The power of counter-power is but another name for conscience, a synonym for faith.

Originally published in  the Arab Gulf news and reprinted here with permission of the author.

I regularly read the advice column by David Eddie in the Globe and Mail. He puts a hilarious spin on the problems people face in their everyday lives.

Recently, a woman wrote in because her daughter -in- law was refusing to speak to her. The reason? She wouldn’t stop giving unsolicited advice about parenting. It had come to a point where the two women were no longer on speaking terms.

It reminded me of the Muslim community, who have made an art out of giving unsolicited advice. Walking into the mosque literally feels like one is entering into a minefield of judgments, looks, or pushes.

The judgment: “Sister, don’t you know that nail polish is haram?” “Brother, control your children, they have no manners.” “Sister, pants are not allowed when you pray.” “Brother, your feet stink.”

The look: that peripheral vision thing, staring at you from the corner of the eye. I call it the Muslim glare. It looks at your hands to see what kind of jewelry you have on; it looks at your feet to check out your pedicure, and it looks you up and down to see if your fashion sense is too western.

The push: you’re in the throes of ecstasy, with the best connection to God ever and suddenly you get pushed out of your reverie to stand closer to the person beside you.

In fact, one of the above just happened the other day. At the mosque, I hear a few sisters chastising a woman on her attire. Glancing over, the girl seems completely fine to me. Two days in a row, the women bring a long skirt for the girl to wear. The girl responds politely and keeps praying. After that, I never see her again. This incident provided the impetuous to write this article.

Can you blame the sister for staying away ? Eddie, in his advice column says that it is a curious and extremely annoying impulse: airing your views on how other people should live their lives, eventhough they haven’t asked.

From an Islamic perspective, Muslims believe they are following the example of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and exercising their Islamic duty to Nassiha (good advice).

The Prophet (pbuh) once said:“The religion is (built on) advice.” The people listening asked, “To whom?” The Prophet replied, “To Allaah, to His Book, to His Messenger, to the leaders of the Muslims, and the common folk,” related by Al-Bukhaari and Muslim.

However, this concept is being implemented with little education or  insight as to the strict conditions required for giving advice. If these rules are not followed, then “[For] whoever pursues the shortcomings of people, Allah will pursue theirs” (At-Tirmidhi).

Using examples from Prophet Muhammad’s life (pbuh), we learn that he was very gradual in his approach to giving advice so that it would be deeply rooted in the hearts and minds.

He would say that prior to enjoining what is good and forbidding what is evil, mutual trust and friendship must be established.

“And true believers, both men and women, are friends to one another. They urge one another to what is good and forbid what is evil.” (9:71)

The Prophet was so right. A recent internet poll reveals the same thing.  Asking the question, Do you generally like unsolicited advice?  6% said “Yes”, 56% said “No,” and 38% said “Only if the right person gives it.”

He knew that when giving advice, the individual on the receiving end should truly feel as though the advisor cares; they should be psychologically ready to hear the counsel.

Usually, people don’t react that well to unsolicited advice because justifiably or not, it can come across as criticism, distrust, one-upmanship, or assertion of superiority.

Psychologist Peter Gray takes it further, explaining that we as humans don’t like getting unsolicited advice because we are trying to protect our own freedom, something we naturally crave.

The Prophet (pbuh) understood this.  He would give his undivided attention to the person he was speaking to, pick the right time, the right context, listen to opposing points of view, and not make any assumptions.

He couched his advice in politeness, not revealing people’s mistakes in public and never targetting any one individual, “What has happened to the people that they do such acts.”

He knew that public shaming would make it much less likely for the advice to be heard and digested.

Imam Shafa’ee (rad) reiterated this point, “Whoever advises his brother in confidence, has advised in a true sense and showed respect to his brother. The one who advises in public has in fact insulted his brother.”

Ibn Abbas (rad) was also very cognizant of how advice should be given, saying that people need to be ready to be spoken to, so they are open to listening. (Bukhari, No: 5978).

Another requirement for giving advice is to be humble.  The Prophet (pbuh) once said: “The man who looks at himself with admiration and at others with disdain is proud.”

And finally, we have the excellent example in the story of Imam Hasan and Husayn (RAD) on the wisest way to give advice: through modeling behavior.  When they saw an elderly man making errors while performing wudu, they asked the man to judge between them as to who was doing it correctly. In doing so, the man automatically realized his own error.

As for the woman who was perceived to be not properly attired at the mosque? The issue was raised directly in a Khutba once word got around of the incident. The sisters were counseled to cease and desist in God’s house of worship.  Ie: stop harassing people.

Now that’s good advice.

On Thursday, February 9th, 2011, Bell Media, owners of CTV and CFRA Radio in Ottawa, fired talk show host Michael Harris. Harris is a journalist of the highest integrity, a Woodrow Wilson Scholar and award winning author of numerous books, four of which have sparked Canadian Royal Commissions. He has been outspoken on Palestinian rights, environmental issues and the Harper government’s undemocratic behaviour just to name a few.

The station also fired 15 others on the same day but they were not controversial, high-profile individuals of Mr. Harris’ calibre. Bell Media, of course, denies that he was fired because of his views and cites corporate restructuring as the reason for all the dismissals. An examination of the facts indicates otherwise. Two extremely right-wing talk show hosts were retained while Harris was fired; one, Lowell Green, is 75 years old and in poor health and the second, Nick Vandergragt, is a recent hire and right-wing militarist who comes to the air waves with a strong background in truck driving.

John Counsell, another right-winger in the 10 p.m. to midnight time slot was also kept on. It is doubtful that Counsel gets any ratings worth mentioning as he actually shouts through the whole two hour program. Why fire a mid-day host and not a late night host? Ten to midnight is a relatively unimportant time slot that on many stations is filled with syndicated programming. Are we to believe that keeping three right wingers and firing the one balancing voice was purely a business decision? No media organization will admit to firing someone for their views unless the individual made a blatantly racist statement (although Muslims and Arabs seem to be fair game these days). In light of the facts, can anyone be blamed for believing that Harris was fired for speaking truth to power.

Being fired is not a new experience for Michael Harris. His refusal to cease his investigative reporting into allegations of abuse at the Mount Cashel orphanage in Newfoundland led to his firing from a St. John’s newspaper. The resulting book, Unholy Orders: Tragedy at Mount Cashel won the Book of the Year, Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters award in 1991.

More recently (April 2011) he was fired from the Sun newspaper chain, (owned by the right-wing Quebecor group with strong ties to the Prime Minister’s office) after writing a series of articles critical of the Harper government. He suspects, that a column he wrote just before the May 2011 election titled “Harper no longer on high moral ground,” was the stimulus for his dismissal.

Mr. Harris has told this writer several times in correspondence over the years that he has been under attack for his support of Palestinian Human Rights. It was obvious to regular listeners who are well versed in the powers and tactics of the Zionist lobby that this was no doubt the case. There would be bursts of discussion on the Middle East followed by periods where no matter what atrocity was being committed on the ground he would not raise the event as a topic and instead engaged in more typical talk show fare; Tiger Woods, cats, violence in hockey, Valentine’s Day etc. Mr. Harris like the rest of us has to eat and pay the rent.

A year or so ago, after a particularly long silence on Palestine there was a change. One day he opened his show with a lengthy monologue about standing up for the principals that one believes in and ending with a quote by Martin Luther King, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Since that day, his shows, while maintaining balance and presenting a variety of opinion have been a right-wing ideologue’s worst nightmare.

Not only did he begin to talk about Israel Palestine again, but he also addressed with even greater intensity and more directly, topics of deep significance to our globalized world. For example, the no strings attached bailout of US banks in 2008 , the 1% that would turn us all into “corporate serfs”, environmental issues – from declining fish stocks to the Keystone pipeline, Monsanto, food sovereignty and Stephen Harper’s multi-facetted and unrelenting attacks on democracy.

In the past weeks he spoke a great deal about Caterpillar’s shutting down of the Electro-Motive Diesel plant in London, Ontario using it as a spring board to highlight the general assault on unions and the betrayal of public interests by our government. The Ontario and federal governments provided millions of dollars in incentives to Caterpillar just 18 months ago but are now taking the position that they can’t interfere with the company’s business decision and are not calling for a return of public funds.

His firing from CFRA takes place after a concerted attack from the Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA), following a detailed article he wrote last week in iPolitics highlighting Israeli human rights violations and lambasting the Harper government’s lack of balance on Middle East issues.

Was Harris’ most recent firing a result of pressure from CIJA? We will probably never know but when a child is beaten in the school yard it is only normal to suspect the school bully. Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery has opined that Israel’s policies are a petri dish for anti-Semitism. The Zionist lobby in Canada may someday find that their tactics have created some very unfavourable results. Comment boards on the websites of major news organizations such as the Globe and Mail and the CBC clearly indicate that a very large number of Canadians are increasingly aware and aghast at the influence of the Zionist lobby on our media and government and refuse to be bullied into silent complicity with Israel’s daily crimes against Palestinians.

The silencing of Michael Harris is a tremendous loss of important information and debate in the Nation’s capital but the man has resurrected from two firings in the past. While his light has been extinguished on the air waves, my bet is that we will see that bright spark rise again somewhere else soon. My hope would be a book on the destruction of Canadian democracy by the Zionist lobby.

SIGN THE PETITION TO REINSTATE MICHAEL HARRIS TO CFRA

Despite Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s statement describing the profanation of the Centre islamique de l’Outaouais in Gatineau, Québec, a Muslim house of worship, as “heinous” and “deplorable,” Mr. Harper has much to answer for, and should be further pressed to do so.

For the outrages committed in Gatineau are the direct and predictable results of the Prime Minister’s remark, to a complicit Peter Mansbridge on September 7 2011, that “Islamicism” (sic) represents the “biggest threat to Canada.”

What is truly “heinous” and “deplorable,” however, is Mr. Harper’s sly use of coded language (“Islamicism”) to point the finger of opprobrium at Muslims and their religion, practiced by more than one quarter of humanity. In fact, viewed in the light of last week’s repeated acts of vandalism, the Canadian Prime Minister should properly be regarded as the biggest threat to the peace and security of Canadian citizens.

Until he fully and publicly revokes his characterization of “Islamicism” as threat, Mr. Harper’s words, and those of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, must be regarded as hollow.

But caution must be exercised in interpreting the obscene graffiti inscribed on the mosque’s doors and walls. The ostensibly Jewish identity of the Gatineau vandal, as expressed in the symbols used, should deceive no one.

Though Zionist extremists such as the Jewish Defense League make common cause with extreme right-wing political groups, and welcomed Dutch race hater Geert Wilders to Canada last year, the crude and clumsy nature of the Gatineau incidents point in another direction. The aim of the perpetrator(s) is to incite Muslims against Jews.

Such a tactic dovetails perfectly with Mr. Harper’s unyielding support of Israel, and his own government’s provocative posture on protecting religious minorities.

These tactics, in turn, feed into the Harper government’s broad policy shift that seeks to transform Canada into a “warrior nation,” an implicitly Judeo-Christian, neo-imperialist one at that.

Having labeled “Islamicism” a threat to Canada, Mr. Harper has now declared Iran the major threat to world peace. All the elements of an aggressive domestic and foreign “warrior” policy are in place, including the implicit designation of Muslims as an enemy within.

It should come as no surprise that marginal elements or agents provocateurs choose, or are designated, to act out such a policy at the local level. In fact, more such outrages can be expected, along with wider damage to property and possibly physical injury.

Reaction among Muslim advocacy groups has been thus far cautious. They have called upon local police forces to step up protection and surveillance, and bring the culprits to justice. CAIR-CAN, a measured voice of advocacy for Canadian Muslims thanked Mr. Harper for his “reassuring condemnation.”

In normal times and circumstances, such measures would be sufficient.

But these are no longer normal times and circumstances.

Muslim advocacy groups, and ad-hoc coalitions of Imams such as those who recently united to condemn unequivocally abuse against women, should now consider discussing the wider context that has seen increasing attacks on Canada’s (and Québec’s) Muslim citizens.

Stephen Harper must not be allowed to get away with apologizing for the results of policies consciously adopted by his government and actively promoted by the ministers closest to him. It may well be time for Canada’s (and Québec’s) Muslim citizens, along with their supporters among the broader society, to consider organizing themselves into self-defense groups that would step forward where police forces are unable or unwilling to do their job.

Such a step would help focus attention on the true instigators of vandalism of houses of worship, the propagators of Islamophobia, and the master planners of armed intervention and war in the Middle East: the Harper government.

*Fred A. Reed is a journalist, literary translator and author. He received the Governer General award for his English translation of  Le temps aboli : l’Occident et ses grands récits by Thierry Hentsch (Les Éditions du Boréal / Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal).

Ramadan, a leading Islamic thinker was named by Time magazine as one of the most important visionaries of the twenty-first century.He will be signing his books (English and French), including ‘The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism’ and ‘In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad,’ at the Muslim Presence booth.

Muslim Presence is also pleased to host two distinguished Canadian Muslim authors for book signings throughout the weekend.

Fred A. Reed, an international journalist and award-winning literary translator, will be signing his latest book, ‘Then We Were One.’ A three-time winner of the Governor General’s Award for translation, plus a nomination in 2009 for his translation of Thierry Hentsch’s Le temps aboli, Empire of Desire. 

Monia Mazigh will be signing her latest publication, ‘Hope and Despair.’ Mazigh was catapulted onto the public stage in 2002 when her husband, Maher Arar, was deported to Syria where he was tortured and held without charge for over a year.

The book signings will take place at times to be listed at the booth from Friday, December 23 to Sunday, December 25.

Muslim Presence will also be running a White Ribbon Campaign at its booth. The White Ribbon Campaign (WRC) is the largest effort in the world of men working to end violence against women.

Attendees at the convention will be asked to take the pledge to never commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women and girls and wear a white ribbon to signal their commitment to end violence against women.

WHERE: Reviving the Islamic Spirit Convention @ Metro Toronto Convention Centre, South Building Booth number: 1422

WHEN: Friday, December 23 – Sunday, December 25, 2011

TIME: Check booth 1422 for schedule of book signings