Canadian terrorism probe widens
"It was another example of when conservative Muslim groups were speaking with a more extreme voice," says Libin, "than moderate Muslims who were saying they came to Canada to get away from sharia law." The Ontario government ultimately voted against instituting sharia but also outlawed all other religious tribunals, including the Jewish tribunal that had been in place for decades.
In a press release issued yesterday, CAIR-CAN's executive director, Karl Nickner, said that his organization "joins all Canadians in expressing relief" that the potential terrorist attack had been averted.
"As Canadian Muslims," added Nickner, "we unequivocally condemn terrorism in all of its forms."
In a talk given at a Marxism conference this year in Toronto titled "Islamaphobia, the Left, and the Canadian State," Elmasry said that for Canadian Muslims, freedom of religion "is less assured" than it was five years ago and that Muslims have encountered more discrimination and harassment in the workplace or schools.
"The government and media," Elmasry said, "have shown they couldn't care less." Elmasry said that young Canadian Muslims, especially women, "are made to feel like strangers, foreigners, and aliens in their own country."
Elmasry told U.S. News that his message to Canadian Muslims is that if and when the 17 suspects are proved guilty of plotting terrorist attacks, "the community should not feel guilty by association and the media and the public should not find the community guilty by association." Elmasry says his message to youth and to parents has always been to beware of dangerous influences. In a campaign titled "Be Safe Than Sorry," the CIC has, says Elmasry, distributed fliers saying that "Some misguided Muslims may try to recruit Canadian Muslims, especially our young people, and use them to commit crimes against our country, or abroad." Elmasry says he has always advocated that Muslims who want change should pick up a ballot rather than a gun. As for his controversial comments regarding all Israelis as potential terrorist targets, Elmasry said he was quoted out of context. "I never said the words," said Elmasry, "the media is saying."
Some say these controversies have had a chilling effect on Canadian politicians' willingness to deal with radical Islamists and to deal with the country's massive immigration and refugee problems. "Some of our politicians," says Harris, "had been playing footsie with radical and terrorist sympathetic elements."
Case in point: In 2002-2003, the Canadian government published a list of organizations that are deemed illegal under the Canadian Criminal Code because of a terrorist nexus. There was no mention of the Palestinian groups Hamas or Hezbollah. Canada's foreign minister at the time, Bill Graham, speaking on behalf of the cabinet, defended the right of these organizations to exist legally in Canada, based, he said, on the need to distinguish the military wings of these groups from their social-work wings. The government finally declared that Hamas and Hezbollah were illegal only after a citizens' organization threatened to sue the government.
But Friday's arrests and other recent developments are viewed as a sign that the newly elected conservative government in Canada is taking terrorism more seriously than its liberal predecessors. Case in point: Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers terrorist group, responsible for assassinating Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, has been outlawed in many western countries. Until recently, Canada remained the exception. The Tamil Tiger hub in Canada is in Toronto. One widely used think-tank estimate says Canada has the one of the largest concentrations of ethnic Tamils in the world outside of Sri Lanka, including as many as 10,000 former trained Tamil Tiger guerrillas. But just weeks ago, the new conservative government outlawed the Tamil Tigers, another sign that Canada is taking terrorism threats more seriously.
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