Do Unto Others....

"It was really a night of horror. We went to all the hospitals. We thought maybe he was under the wrong name, because he didn't bring his ID for the quick trip to the mosque."
"In the end, it was only at 4 o'clock the next afternoon that we got the confirmation that he had died. And it was as if our lives turned upside down."
"My father was totally passionate about his scientific work. But behind the man of science was a man with a really great sense of humour."
"Hate blinds us, so we don't see clearly anymore and we think that the other person is the enemy. When really, he or she is just a person like  you. They're a human being with faults and qualities, goals and achievements, with their own story."
"So the lesson is that, for example, we wrongly think that all Muslims are Islamists, but here we have a clear example of people who lost their lives but they weren't Islamic extremists. They were just ordinary citizens."
"I dare to hope that it was just an isolated act. I dare to hope that having seen this horror, which was so widely publicized, it will affect people's perceptions."
Megda Belkacemi, 28, Quebec  City lawyer

The police officers emerge suddenly from the mosque carrying a body toward the paramedics. There is a bullet wound in his head. No pulse. (Mathieu Belanger/Reuters)

One's heart goes out to this woman who lost her father last year in a random, single-attacker act of brutal, incoherent violence when a 18-year-old university student , Alexandre Bissonnette, launched his personal hatred against Muslim Quebecers at prayer at the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Centre mosque, killing six people and injuring another 19 worshippers, the attack that killed Ms. Belkacemi's father, university professor Khaled Belkacemi of Universite Laval, the same university that the attacker attended.

The 10,000-member Muslim community of the city was understandably traumatized.The entire community of the city, non-Muslims and Muslims alike, reacted in disbelieving shock. And sympathy was extended to the Muslim community from all quarters, from municipal and provincial and federal authorities, to other faith congregations, to ordinary people on the street, their neighbours in mourning. Empathy at such times has healing powers. Everyone said they would dedicate themselves to combating hate.

But then polls indicating adverse views of Muslims in Quebec "bumped back up when we re-engaged discussions about the niqab" (full face veil), according to president of the Association for Canadian Studies, Jack Jedwab. "No matter how you slice it, these debates that we have around values are a catalyst for building on people's negative sentiments", he elaborated. In October, Quebec's Bill 62, barring people who conceal their faces from giving or receiving government services, and debates over the rights of religious minorities commenced anew.

"This obsession with focusing on the religious clothing has really harmed our community because it really tends to exacerbate the differences, versus highlighting all the similarities and all the joint sentiments of community-building and wanting to participate equally in our societies", stated Amira Elghawaby who volunteers with DawaNet, a Muslim group based in Mississauga, Ontario which has provided Quebec City Muslims affected by the mosque attack, with support. She is also the the former director of communications at the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

A Hamas flag carried by an anti-Israel demonstrator on Parliament Hill, July 22, 2014 (Photo: Martin Sampson)

The National Council of Canadian Muslims was formerly known as CAIRCan, an affiliate of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) in the United States, an influential lobbying group with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood whom they support, and with Hamas for whom fundraising was carried out. As a U.S. court had it: "The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine ("IAP"), and with Hamas." Under Canadian and American law, Hamas is a designated terrorist organization.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims, along with its American parent, promote the fiction of "Islamophobia" to counter any questions relating to their mission in the West, their values and their adherence to Sharia law. Any individual or group questioning Islam and its jihadist tradition, particularly in view of the decades of terrorist attacks that have accompanied the migration of Muslims to the West and the dysfunctional breakdown in Muslim-majority countries with the incursion of fundamentalist Islam, is shamed, blamed and named as "Islamophobic". 

"I thought that after January 29, 2017 [date of the attack on the Quebec City mosque], the racist atmosphere would decrease. But on the contrary, it has exploded."
"Movements that used to be hidden, like La Meute, now march openly in the streets and appear in the media."
"The massacre has had a paradoxical effect. I expected things to calm down, especially after the extraordinary support we [the Muslim community] received from the public in the days that followed, which still continues. But instead, we're seeing these racist groups come out into the open."
Rachid Raffa, 68, former president of the Quebec City mosque

They see two more lifeless bodies. The prayer room is thick with white smoke and the acrid smell of gunpowder. (Francis Vachon/Canadian Press)

On the other hand, when groups of Muslims attend rallies or protest marches, Hamas flags can be seen along with placards urging boycott-divestment of Israel. At such protests posters slandering Israel and Jews as oppressors and killers of Palestinian children are commonly seen. Muslims and those identifying as supporters of the Palestinians at Canadian universities mount verbal and physical attacks against their Jewish student counterparts. They are not labelled Judeophobes, though their anti-Semitism is recognized and deplored -- by Jews.

The Muslims thus engaged are sending their own messages of racism and hatred, the very actions they rail against that they insist they are victims of. They point out rising incidents of "Islamophobia", and yet Statistics Canada has registered a decrease of anti-Muslim incidents, while those targeting Jews has seen a marked increase. Anti-Semitic incidents in Canada, as elsewhere in the West where Muslims have migrated increasingly toward, are on a definite rising curve, reflecting the impact that Islam has on its relations with non-Muslims and Jews.

"It was a terrible shock and we kept wondering 'Why us? Why us?'. We're just citizens who live quietly. We don't do harmful acts to society. On the contrary, we're builders, we're hard-wrking people. Why did it happen to us?' When you connect a Muslim with international situations, you start to see that person as a monster. We need to make ourselves better known, to show what we bring to society, in terms of work, in terms of culture, in terms of recreation, and as dynamic participants."

"We're working very hard to answer that quest, 'Why us? Why did our bodies come under a hail of bullets? When we meet people, we feel they sympathize with us over January 29. People come and shake our hands in the street or at the shopping centre. It's not all of society that is racist and Islamophobic, no, no, it's just a very small portion. But that small portion makes a lot more noise than the silent majority that is kind, that is good, that consists of normal citizens."
Boufeldja Benabdallah, co-founder of the Quebec City mosque

Well, facts speak otherwise, in fact. Muslim youths are disproportionately taking up space in Canadian prisons for common crimes of violence, drug and weapons smuggling, gang activities and murder. And in the prisons their brand of Islam leaning toward murder and mayhem finds a ready recruiting audience. Mr. Benabdallah expresses mystification over reactions to Muslims in society and that in and of itself is mystifying, given their disruptive actions in petty and not-so-petty criminal activity, in agitating for terrorist groups, in discriminating against other members of society and bringing their hostile attitudes toward Jews from their countries of origin to the countries they migrate to.

There appears to be little introspection amongst Canadian Muslims in the aggregate, but for a small core of Muslims who do what they can to rescue Islam from the dungeon of despair in the actions of the fundamentalists who are easy recruits to jihad and terrorism. Speaking of those who question Islam, who take umbrage at the very notion that Canada needs a national anti "Islamophobia" day, and to criminalize "Islamophobia" speaks to the agenda of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's unstinting efforts to persuade the United Nations to make it a crime to practise "Islamophobia".

When Muslims speak of racism and anti-Muslim sentiments and label those who relate Islam with the endless tide of jihadist attacks and terrorist atrocities taking place around the world, "Islamophobia" they make use of a tool of those like the Muslim Brotherhood -- another outlawed organization recognized for their terrorist roots and incitements -- to 'guilt' touchy-feely Westerners who cringe at being identified as anti-Muslim or racist, and in the process force upon them the self-defence of attempting to mollify and concede and intervene and support.