Will The Defendant Please Stand?

Fascinating; B'nai Brith, the original anti-discrimination group whose singular but not sole purpose it is to defend Jewry against the manifest anti-Semitism that tends to poke its ugly head up now and again and too-often-again, has now been accused of fomenting hatred against another identifiable group: Muslims. In Canada, in any event. Which tells us yet again that one can never be too careful, never too cautious in any kind of undertaking lest one be labelled racist.

Or, in this particular instance, anti-religion - since it is Islam and Muslims and their place in society, and in particular instance the undeniable phenomenon of fundamentalist Muslims harbouring a none-too-secret desire to wreak havoc on any and all vestiges of Western imperialism evinced by the United States and her allies playing the heavy in Arab and Muslim countries.

Of course, that too is not quite correct, since the occurrence of jihad against non-believers, Jews and Infidels superseded the war in Afghanistan and the following Iraq war. Each of which owed to the spectacularly disastrous (for America) destruction of New York's World Trade Towers, the attack on the Pentagon, and the foiled attempt on the White House.

Not to mention attacks on western interests elsewhere in the world. Muslim rage at the West and most particularly so against the United States has been taken seriously since 9-11; it is no longer a sidebar in unsettling world events. The terrorists whose militias and whose single-minded dedication to wreaking havoc on ordinary Muslims, Jews and "infidels" are overwhelmingly Muslim.

These dedicated Islamist attackers, suicide bombers, bloody-minded shaheeds have brought the rest of the world to regard Muslims with no little alarm. They have - in their fanatical embrace of death deliverance in the name of Islam, in purported obeisance to Allah and the dictums of the Prophet - demonstrated the militant jihad-bent side of Islam, not the peace-loving side its faithful declare it to represent.

Which is why it presents as absurd in the extreme that B'nai Brith Canada now stands accused of Islamaphobia for having set up a conference in Winnipeg in 2003 for the purpose of educating first-responders to terrorist-inspired disasters. The Higgins Counter-terrorism Research Center of Arlington, Virginia, was the presenter, and while B'nai Brith had a representative at the conference, not all sessions were attended by them.

Some one, or some individuals who did attend all the sessions of the conference, must have come away from the experience personally convinced that Muslims were unfairly targeted. Absurd in and of itself, in that it cannot be denied on the evidence that most terrorists espouse Islamic jihad, and prosecute their death-dealing in the name of Islam. Yet those individuals, or that single individual expressed outrage at the perceived slight to Islam.

The result of which was the Manitoba Human Rights Commission received a complaint from Shahina Siddiqui, Winnipeg executive director of the Islamic Social Services Association of the United States and Canada, who is also a member of the Canadian Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-Canada), insisting that B'nai Brith's initiative resulted in a violation of the Manitoba Human Rights Act, prohibiting statements that "incite, advocate or counsel discrimination".

This complaint was lodged on the basis of hearsay, but furthermore on the basis of isolated, perhaps out-of-context, comments relating to the delivery of some of the information sessions at the conference. The exact wording of which has not been revealed to the defendants, nor have the defendants been given the identities of the original complainers. In other words, it is impossible for them to investigate the incident themselves, and in the process to defend themselves.

In Shahina Siddiqui's complaint she claims "Based on comments from some in attendance that the presentation was biased against Muslims, I conclude that the content of the seminar presented a negative prejudice about Muslims in terms of being probable terrorists. This prejudiced picture would encourage and support racial profiling by first responders and law-enforcement agencies dealing with possible terrorist incidents".

This is mind-bogglingly incoherent. If most terrorists have proven, on verifiable evidence, to represent their version of Islam, as Muslim jihadists, one would have to be blind, deaf and completely incompetent not to recognize that simple fact; that most terrorists that now bedevil the world at large, within Muslim countries and countries that are liberal democracies alike, are Muslim, whatever their origin.

How that simple recognition can be equated with prejudice rather than represent simple reality is beyond comprehension. It's disingenuous beyond belief to expect intelligent people to buy that message of religious aggrievement. In the name of social emancipation of all people from all backgrounds to shuffle one's feet in agreement, overlooking the obvious, in an absurd salute to political correctness.

More to the point is why organizations such as those this woman represents are not actively involved in educating their own constituents - and most particularly young Muslim men to recognize that Islam that most claim to be respectful of others and desirous of peace among peoples - to reject the overtures of hardened jihadists looking to recruit young men to their murderous agenda.