Justifying

"Our curriculum is not intended to promote hatred towards any individual or group of people, rather the children are taught to respect and value other faiths, beliefs and to uphold Canada's basic values of decency and tolerance."  East End Madrassa  "Our team of scholars has already undertaken to review all texts and material being used in the curriculum to ensure that our teachings are conveying the right message."

Well, that's all right, then.  Everything has been explained, and this was all a miserable mistake, a misunderstanding.  Easily corrected.  Let's all now just smile, shake hands and forget about it.  These things do happen.  And here they were under the impression for the 40 years they have been in operation, teaching thousands of Muslim students that they were 'conveying the right message'.

Might we extrapolate from there and come to the conclusion that over that forty-year period thousands of Muslim students were receiving a message considered to be the 'right' one, that in fact conveyed the information that Jews were "crafty" and "treacherous" and to be compared to "Nazis", therefore untrustworthy and obvious targets for jihad?

For the curriculum also contained inspiration toward jihad.  Teaching boys that physical training was necessary to ensure they would be "ready for jihad whenever the time comes for it", explaining that "jihad means struggle.  It means to fight in the way of Allah.  Islam believes that we should be able to defend ourselves if an enemy attacks us."

Clearly, Jews who are treacherous and crafty and known to attack Muslims - witness Israel and the Palestinians - represent an "enemy" ripe for jihadist action; an clear enough extrapolation. 

Now, however, that the tract used to teach impressionable young Muslims has been publicly revealed for the hate-filled material that it is, it will receive a second, critical look from the scholars that approve the Muslim school's curriculum.

"The real issue is that public school facilities appear to have been used as a platform to promote a curriculum that is fundamentally inconsistent with Canadian values", pointed out the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.  "We will continue engaging the school board to ensure that they review the curriculum and any associated programming, and take appropriate action", advised David Spiro, the group's Toronto co-chair.

It does not inspire confidence, however, to learn that the Toronto Islamic Centre affiliated with the school, the Islamic Shia Ithna Asheri Jamaat's resident scholar posted an online sermon complaining that the west was "hyping the whole world up" against Iran over its nuclear program.  "This is all because of this fellow sitting in the Middle East, Israel", he concluded.

What then, is the objective observer to conclude from that?