Thin Pretext for Trojan Horses -- Whoops, More Islamophobia

"Discrimination works in both directions, and so does inclusion; we are in favour of mixed housing for cultural communities and religious groups."
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard

"I didn't hear people say, 'OK, we have to go and defend ourselves against these nasty Quebecois by going and living alone', that is not at all my motivation."
"A lot of Muslims have problems with the idea of interest, which in Arabic is called riba. That means if you pay more than you were loaned, you are doing something that is very, very, very, very bad from the Muslim point of view."
"Let us call it a technicality [bank 'profit' is permissible], for me as an accountant but for the believers it is not a technicality."
"You don't drive drunk on the street. If you want to drink alcohol, you drink it in your house."
"There must be some modesty in the way you [women] dress. We don't want women living there going half-naked down the streets. We don't like that. If they want to do that, let them go and live in downtown Montreal."
Nabil Warda, Muslim housing project entrepreneur

A silhouette of Muslim women.   ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty Images

"We are here in Canada. We came of our own will. Our intention was not to come to isolate ourselves from society or from the community."
"It doesn't mean we have to hide ourselves and get away from the challenges we are going through. We have to face them."
Imam Foudil Selmoune, Brossard mosque

Montreal South Shore AlQuba Mosque

When Radio-Canada reported of a plan for the Brossard suburb of Montreal to break ground on a Muslim housing project, the proposal failed to find favour with municipal authorities, much less with provincial politicians. From Morocco where he is attending a UN climate conference, the premier's thought was the discrimination that non-Muslims would face out of this outlandish idea for a Muslim ghetto to be built within a French-Canadian setting, one whose Sharia-inspired rules would exclude non-Muslims.

Merely at the proposal stage to date, the building of 80 homes within Brossard, something in the nature of a religiously-inspired 'gated community' exclusive to Islamic values was put to members of the Brossard mosque by Mr. Warda. At the very notion of this becoming a reality, members of the provincial legislature adopted a unanimous motion to direct the minister of municipal affairs to instruct municipalities in the province that "no real-estate development can be based on religious or ethnic segregation".

Mr. Warda counters the controversy that has erupted by stating that Muslims have informed him they are (very, very, very, very) fed up with renting for decades with little to show for the rental money, that they refuse to take out loans nonetheless that would enable them to buy their homes, since loans have interest charges, and such financial conventions are not permitted under Sharia law. Needless to say, Canadian citizens live under Canadian law and Canadian economic conditions, not those under Sharia law. And these people have made the choice to pay rent.

It affords them a place to live, so they are getting value for their rental money.

It does seem passing strange that to Mr. Warda and those who support him, that while women scantily clad as is the norm during hot summer months anywhere in Canada must not be permitted to venture where Muslims live, alcohol can be consumed behind closed doors, when alcohol consumption is strictly forbidden under Sharia law. And that while taking out a conventional mortgage through banks is not permissible, under Sharia a house becomes the acquired property of a bank, allowing the resident to buy it back over time with the addition of a premium considered bank profit, not interest.

A play on words whose logic is patently absent. Profit is acceptable, but if it is called 'interest', it becomes forbidden. Forbidden alcohol is permissible as long as no one sees it being consumed outside a home. Women are held to a strict dress code of austere modesty preferably by completely covering the body, shielding hair from view is even better and presumably wearing a tent complete with face covering better yet as a reflection of Islamist respectability.

Mr. Warda generously claims that non-Muslims would not be excluded as long as they cleave to the Muslim community's set of values reflective of their culture, itself an offshoot of the religion and its politics. Women, he clarified, are free to choose whether they wish to wear the head scarf, but walking about in public wearing a halter top and shorts would be forbidden behaviour. "If they want to do that, let them go and live in downtown Montreal."

Which kind of answers the question: Is the Islamic social-religious code compatible with Western values and customs and laws?

The imam of the Brossard mosque appears not to have been in full support himself of Mr. Warda's brilliant idea to further isolate Muslims from daily social contact with non-Muslims in Quebec. His opinion on the subject was that it would seem considerably more constructive had Mr. Warda designed to use his financing proposal to give aid to Muslims in the purchase of existing homes instead of creating an especial Muslim-centric neighbourhood.