Optics Vs Reality: Migrating Islamist Fundamentalism

"Saudi Arabia's export of the rigid, bigoted, patriarchal, fundamentalist strain of Islam known as Wahhabism has fuelled global extremism and contributed to terrorism."
"[It is deplorable that] radical schools and mosques around the world [exist] that have set too many young people on a path towards extremism."
New York Times 2016 expose

"In each place I visited, the Wahhabi influence was an insidious presence, changing the local sense of identity; displacing historic, culturally vibrant forms of Islamic practice; and pulling along individuals who were either paid to follow their rules or custodians of the Wahhabi world view."
"Funding all this was Saudi money, which paid for things like the textbooks, mosques, TV stations and the training of Imams."
Farah Pandith, U.S. special representative to Muslim communities, U.S. Department of State

WikiLeaks documents involving cables between diplomats at the Saudi embassy in Ottawa and government officials in Riyadh, contain conversations from 2012 and 2013 about a $211,000 donation to a school in Ottawa and $134,000 to a school in Mississauga.  Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail

"There were also small signals that all was not well with the Muslim communities in Canada, especially those of Pakistani origin. For example, the mother of one of my children’s classmates of Pakistani origin, asked me why my kids sang the Canadian national anthem when it is haram, forbidden. Upon asking where she got that information, she confessed that the imam of the local mosque had told the congregation that it was against the faith to sing the national anthem, or, indeed, to show loyalty to Canada."
Raheel Raza, Pakistani Canadian, Writer, Activist

Special representative Farah Pandith toured 80 countries between 2009 to 2014 in pursuing her official mandate. Her conclusion after all that she had seen and experienced was that the Saudi influence succeeded in destroying 'tolerant' Islamic traditions. Of course, Saudi Arabia is not alone in this deliberate, institutional religiously ideological pursuit of normalizing extreme-to-radical Islam in countries around the world, particularly those in the West. The Muslim Brotherhood has succeeded to an alarming degree in infiltrating all levels of national government in the West in pursuit of establishing their own, and very similar brand of Islamism.

Moreover, although fundamentalist jihadi groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are identified as terrorist groups and listed as such on various government terror lists, they too are known to have a substantial presence abroad for the purpose of propaganda, enlistment and wealth-gathering, both through 'charitable' donations and through the substantial proceeds of criminal activities such as illicit drug dealing and weapons smuggling.

The schools (madrassas), community centers, mosques and other gathering points for Muslims abroad that have been built with foreign funding by countries whose agendas are to create a foundational space in the West for the proliferation of fundamentalist Islamic values have a defined purpose, to instill in followers the sense of Islamic entitlement to help alter the fundamental values of the nations they have migrated to, and challenge the indigenous laws while stifling the social culture with their own.

In Canada, the national security policy has seen fit to establish the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence; at the present time, a hollow sham under the Liberal government. An opposition Member of Parliament and former federal Minister in the previous Conservative-led government has introduced Bill C-371, the Prevention of Radicalization through Foreign Funding Act, now moving through Parliament and slated for a second reading vote a month hence, representing long-overdue legislation in the making.

The Bill would allow Canada the establishment of a list of foreign states meeting specific criteria; those who promote obvious forms of religious intolerance, and/or those who engage in activities supporting radicalization. All Canadian religious, cultural and educational institutions, should that Bill result in legislation making it legal, would be prohibited from accepting funding from listed foreign governments. Receiving funding from individuals and entities linked to those states would also fall under its restrictive provisions.

For fairly obvious reasons an exception clause would list a number of other countries reflecting Canada's own liberal democratic values; countries that include the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Israel would have listing immunity, among others. The Bill itself is an acknowledgement of the faulty permission of Canadian educational, religious and cultural institutions being influenced by foreign states that promote extremist ideologies. Canada's open, pluralist society is being subverted by these financial infusions in support of Islamist exceptionalism.

The Iranian Revolutionary Republic Islamist regime was invited by the previous Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to exit Canada, closing its embassy while withdrawing the Canadian mission and its diplomats from Tehran. The current prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has stated aspirations of reversing that situation, re-establishing the Canadian mission in Tehran and inviting Iran's Ayatollahs to re-open their embassy in Ottawa.

The Khomeinist ideology which today rules Iran as a theocratic totalitarian government was fully involved in building networks sympathetic to its creed through the funding of religious institutions, schools and cultural centres within Canada. Two such Iranian cultural centres, one in Ottawa, the other in Toronto were seized in 2014 and their assets distributed to victims of terrorist attacks which Iran's proxy militia, the terrorist Hezbollah group had mounted on Iran's instructions, as a sponsor of Islamist terrorism.

While solving the problem of radicalization will remain a dilemma that alert governments must continue to confront, Bill C-371 can become a useful tool in blocking those maleficent influences within Canada. The Bill is there, it remains for the ruling Liberal government to affirm its intention to protect Canadians from ongoing terrorism in the name of Islam, by voting in favour of C-371 at its second reading.

It may be too late for France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and others to mount a defense against full Muslim conquest of their traditions, values and laws, but Canada, it is to be  hoped, still has time in its favour, but certainly not forever....

A case in point is Turkey's belligerent interest in the presence of German-Turks resident in Germany.  Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia have spent billions constructing countless mosques servicing Muslims throughout Germany, and the sermons that come out of those mosques are definitely not geared to persuading German-Turks that they should render unto Caesar; rather than persuading Muslims to defer to German values, culture and laws.

Religious leaders in those mosques preach Islamist values and Sharia law, contrary to the citizenship of German Turks, who then turn around and complain they don't feel  'accepted' as equals in Germany, they feel alienated from its general society. Irascible, bellicose Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan feels entitled from time to time to scaldingly berate German authorities for mistreating Turkish Germans, brooking no interference in his own propensity to interfere in German politics.

Here's hoping Canada can do better.