Warm and Friendly Neighbourly Relations

"This is absolutely a municipal argument about land use and zoning change. We're not opposing the fact that they're going to build their own community. But it needs to satisfy the way the neighbourhood looks today."
"Nowadays, every single gathering that they have, whether it's a prayer, whether it's a high holiday, we're experiencing about 2,000 to 3,000 car overflow outside of their facility."
Rom Koubi, interim chair, Committee to Preserve Thornhill Woods

A classic example of skirting the issue.

Minarets have been outlawed in Switzerland, but Sharia law has been given the grace of recognition in many European countries where immigration has flooded their traditional social culture, system of justice, and religious adherence with Muslims who, in their great numbers believe they have the absolute entitlement to demand that their own heritage, culture and religion must have primacy over 'man-made' laws and customs practised by the indigenous population.

This sweep of immigrants has upturned quite completely what receiving countries of immigrants had always assumed; that their laws, their prevailing culture, their values and their history would be respected by all those whom they graciously welcome to their shores. And, in actual fact, this is exactly what had always prevailed. Until the last several decades when forty years of generously open arms welcomed a flood of migrants for whom their religion is everything, and all else is nothing.

In a suburb of Toronto, the City of Vaughan has received application from the Islamic Shia Ithna Asheri Jamaat to redesignate and rezone a property they purchased twenty years ago, at 9000 Bathurst Street in Richmond Hill. Their plan is to build two 17-storey apartment buildings and over 60 three-storey townhouse units. These buildings are meant to surround the Jaffari Community Centre mosque. In effect, the Shia Islamic community and their Imam, Syed Mohammed Rizvi, are planning an Islamic town.

So much for integration and inclusion.

Randy Risling / The Jaffari Centre on Bathurst St. is proposing to build two 17-storey buildings and a number of town homes on the site in Vaughan.

Situated directly within a traditionally Jewish-majority-population area long established in the region. The prospect of such a plan coming to fruition is, understandably, not hugely popular with the current residents who are faced with a dilemma. To object on the basis that a large Jewish community takes exception to the presence of a large Muslim contingent in an area they have always been comfortable in, smacks of "Islamophobia", and that is a political no-no.

There is little reason, in fact, why a Muslim community and a Jewish community cannot live amicably together. Except for the dubious fact that this Imam and his congregation have a somewhat questionable past. Imam Syed Mohamed Rizvi and the East End Madrassah were the subject of a hate-crimes investigation in 2012. A York Region police report stated that a review of 30 school syllabus books were complete with texts that "challenged some of Canada's core values", and "suggested intolerance", though not of a criminal variety.

It is, perhaps, in the eye of the beholder and the tone of the listening ear to parse such passages as referring to Jews as "treacherous", let alone contrasting Islam with "the Jews and the Nazis". Such stated opinions, in school curricula taught to children at an early age through teaching tools published in the Islamic Republic of Iran and imported to Canada, do not auger well for friendly or even respectful relations between creeds.

"As leaders in their respective roles, the two (Imam Rizvi and East End Madrassah principal Masuma Jessa) must accept responsibility for failing to appropriately screen the learning material. Although not held criminally responsible, the complaint has raised a legitimate concern and has prompted change."
York Region Police report, 2012

So this is the background, and the current situation derives from concerns over the manner in which this Shia Muslim community presents itself as Canadian citizens. With an obligation to favour the laws of the land over that of the Koran, and to respect the culture and social attitudes of the vast bulk of Canadians, proud of their heritage and their pluralistic acceptance of equality and appreciation of one another; a social good that appears to have escaped the notice of Imam Rizvi and his cohorts.

Mr. Koubi, spokesman for the hundreds of people who turned out for a public meeting to discuss the proposal, said his group had met with the ISIJ multiple times. They spoke with developer Shafiq Punjani listed on the website of the ISIJ as chair of their planning advisory board. The meeting ended when Mr. Punjani advised Mr. Koubi and his group that "it's their land and they're going to do whatever they want on it".

But of course it's everyone's country, and no one can 'do whatever they want' within it, without objections from some source or other, and in the interests of social harmony and decency it well behooves this community and its leaders to begin to understand that very fundamental fact of life in Canada.