Heeeere's Canada!

In the opinion of the House of Commons, the government should:
(a) recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear; (b) condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination and take note of House of Commons’ petition e-411 and the issues raised by it; and (c) request that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage undertake a study on how the government could
(i) develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia, in Canada, while ensuring a community-centered focus with a holistic response through evidence-based policy-making,
(ii) collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities, and that the Committee should present its findings and recommendations to the House no later than 240 calendar days from the adoption of this motion, provided that in its report, the Committee should make recommendations that the government may use to better reflect the enshrined rights and freedoms in the Constitution Acts, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Iqra Khan, MP, Private Members’ Business M-103

The government that gave the world the wonderful news that "Canada is Back!" -- ostensibly from wherever it was when it was hiding its light unto the world under a Conservative barrel when the government of the day under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's predecessor viewed the United Nations as an unfortunately failed enterprise, championed Israel, was leery of Islamist groups portraying themselves as misunderstood, and viewed Russia and China's penchant for practising abuse of human rights -- has turned Canada's back on those moral issues that Stephen Harper's government distinguished itself by.

This is a government that endlessly praises itself for being pluralist to the extreme, elevating immigrant rookies to cabinet posts, priding itself on its unbending degree of 'feminism', led by a prime minister and a minister of finance whose family fortunes helped vault them to power, while they promise to tax the 'rich' to benefit the middle class -- not, mind, the impoverished. A government for whom no amount of immigration and embrace of refugees is too much, with or without appropriate security clearances.

This government approves of political correctness, in fact invented it and happily scatters its excesses as far abroad as it can toss them to the winds of inexorable change, kissing each wisp as it floats off, with a sunny smile. The latest iteration of political correctness, that of cultural appropriation, has become an institutionally-approved lesson in 'tolerance' for Indigenous and LGBTQ empowerment. In perfect accord with academia where the intolerance of 'progessives' has altered the acquisition of knowledge to a fountain spewing political correctness ad nauseum.

There are exceptions in stark evidence, however. As when, for example, the long-delayed national Holocaust memorial was finally erected and formally opened in Ottawa, closing the gap represented by Canada being the only Western Allied country without such a memorial to World War Two's Nazi plan of extermination of world Jewry. The plaque installed to explain the purpose of the memorial somehow failed to mention Jews at all at it happens, lingering on the unfortunate deaths of 'men, women and children' who happened to be Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, political adversaries and Gays -- oh and assuredly Jews as well.

On the other hand, much attention to detail and 'getting it right' has been exhausted on the introduction of Motion 103, condemning "Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination". The very word Islamophobia is an Islamic invention meant to paste 'racist' on the forehead of anyone incautious enough to take from the prevailing news of ongoing terrorism invoked in the name of Islamic jihad, to quell suspicion of Islam as a religion promoting violence to achieve dominance.

Liberal MP Iqra Khalid, who brought forward the motion to combat Islamophobia  (PATRICK DOYLE / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo)

How strange that the Member of Parliament who proposed the principles and moral sanctimony behind M-103, Iqra Khalid, is a Muslim Pakistani-Canadian. Enabled by her position as an activist, female, Muslim, Parliamentarian, to effect in Canada what the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has been attempting to persuade the United Nations to accommodate for years. To formally introduce the concept of any criticism of Islam as being tantamount to an illegal act of blasphemy.

The Toronto District School Board's Islamic Heritage Month Guidebook defines Islamophobia as "fear, prejudice, hatred or dislike directed against Islam or Muslims, or towards Islamic politics or culture", a designation of denigration most pleasing to some, but not all of Canada's Muslims, for there are groups of Muslims in Canadian society, aghast at this turn of events. By no means are Muslims foremost among religions experiencing episodes of clear racism, since police reports point to anti-Semitism by a wide margin.

This motion should have included anti-Islam prejudice as among many other bigoted public displays of racism, but the focus was meant to be Islam, a religion whose practitioners are in the news on a daily basis, relentlessly pointing to the slaughter of tens of thousands of their own adherents by their religious brethren in Syria and Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen. The call to the faithful from mosques around the world to battle the unbelievers is near-unanimous.

"Why are only Muslims mentioned by name? It's not the government's responsibility to babysit just one community", offers Raheel Raza, president of Muslims Facing Tomorrow. Instead -- she offered the Heritage committee tasked to examine the issue -- of the bogus attention to 'Islamophobia' meant to take attention away from honour killings and polygamy, she recommends Canada encourage the "free thinking" once-normal model of Islam.

Tarek Fatah, a Muslim accustomed to receiving death threats resulting from his rejection of Islamist fundamentalism, testified before the committee that secular, free-thinking Muslims who arrived in Canada for the privilege the freedoms offered of speaking their mind to Islamic authority figures denied them in their home countries, would be harmed by discouraging criticism of Islam. "You cannot define [Islamophobia], because the word is a fraud", he observed.

For his troubles, he was subjected to "intimidation and bullying" by members of the committee themselves. Retired Major Russ Cooper, a decorated combat veteran of the first Gulf War launched a M-103 pushback campaign through an anti-M-103 petition drive, which garnered 200,000 signatures. Peter Bhatti, chair of International Christian Voices, spoke of Pakistan's blasphemy laws that victimizes perceived critics of Islam.

It is becoming a criminal offence to link Islam with violence and conflict, sectarian medievalism, of being in any way supportive of terrorism. As for its being a backward, barbaric, sexist and primitive religion of conquest ... perish the thought.