Do Unto Others

"I have doubts about that [that Canada represents a much safer place than New Zealand for Muslim security]."
"These attackers are not too many, but they are sleeping wolves and you never know when they will attack."
"The threat is there and it's real."
Abdel Feifel, trustee, Ottawa Muslim Association

"As details [of the New Zealand shootings] became clear this morning, the first reaction is of feeling very unsafe as a Muslim. Especially considering that Canadian Muslims today are going to Friday prayers and that means going to a space here they might not feel safe."
"It's difficult to find words to explain what my community is going through. It's difficult to find an explanation for why this happened. It's more important, however, to be here, to stand against this."
"We need to start calling it out for what it is. I think of [Conservative Leader] Andrew Scheer when I say this and it's really important for me to call it out. When you go to a rally with a white supremacist, it says something to me. It says that Muslim women like me don't mean much to you."
Shahad Khalladi, vigil organizer, Ottawa

"My first reaction was that I was horrified by the number of people who lost their lives. And my second reaction is today is Friday for a lot of the Western countries, and that meant a lot of Muslims across the country are going to go to their Friday prayers with this being first on their mind."   CBC

"We're deeply disturbed that today's terrorist act in New Zealand was actually inspired by the Quebec City shooting."
"Our children are emotionally distraught and afraid to return to school after the March break. It's extremely difficult to explain to them what has happened and why."
Ottawa Muslim Association trustee Charles Ghadban

"Today it's in New Zealand, but two years ago it was in Quebec City. Who knows, God forbid, what would be the next place?"
"[While some mosques use entry fobs and passwords for access] ... It is ridiculous, in a way, because these are sanctuaries."
Monia Mazigh, Board member, Ottawa Muslim Association

 Monia Mazigh, right, wife of Maher Arar, Syrian-Canadian imprisoned in Syria, awarded $10-million 'compensation' by government of Canada -- a member of the board of the Ottawa Mosque. Julie Oliver / Postmedia

"I was at the mosque earlier today and I was talking to our Muslim brothers and sisters whose children are too scared to come to the mosque. Some of them are too scared to go to school next week."
"So to everyone here that's Muslim, we stand with you. And to people of all faiths, you should be free to practise your faith ... and you should not be scared to go to wherever you practise your faith. We need to call out Islamophobia, we need to call out hatred of all kinds."
Catherine McKenna, Member of Parliament for Ottawa-Centre, Cabinet Minister for Environment and Climate Change

People speak with Ottawa Centre MP Catherine McKenna outside the city's main mosque on Friday, March 15, 2019. McKenna was among those who gathered at the mosque to offer support and condolences following fatal shootings at two mosques in New Zealand earlier in the day. (Stu Mills/CBC)

Anything can be politicized for advantage. And the current Liberal-led government of Justin Trudeau is immensely thankful that there is no cessation of dire, gruesome events on the world stage that can be used to divert public attention and politically polarize Canadians at a critical time for the prime minister and his cabinet, facing down charges of political interference in Canadian justice, among other instances of a government that feels entitled under the Liberal banner to exercise its eternal penchant for corruption.

No one would deny that the horrible death of 49 innocent people and the wounding of scores more at the hands of a hateful racist does not qualify as an atrocity that all decent people decry. In the Western zeal to prove how compassionate we are, news media fill their pages with mournful stories of the losses of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives peacefully only to have those lives violently interrupted, a community left in grief and disbelief. The inordinate focus on an event that occurs daily in the Muslim world in fact, but because it happened in a Western setting, outrage is spontaneous.

Grief and disbelief is without doubt how communities in Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria and elsewhere in the world of Muslim-majority countries feel when Islamists target Muslims and Christians and ethnic groups and other religions whom they find offensive to Islam in a jihadist blow to fulfill obligations of their faith. So the very people of Muslim faith in Ottawa who claim disbelief that a 'sanctuary' can be defiled by slaughter appear not to give a thought to fellow Muslims targeted by Islamist terrorists while themselves at prayer.

New Zealand is a long way away from Canada. Psychotic incidents of hate-filled non-Muslim psychopaths are rare. Similar events carried out by Islamist fundamentalists the world over are somewhat less rare, their victims far more numerous. While jihadists target those of their own faith in their ongoing sectarian dissonance of violent hatred, they also target Western non-Muslim communities and therefore represent a threat to the entire globe. Jihadist assaults throughout Africa, Asia and the West are numerous.

Yet to point this out, to criticize Islam for being a base of religion-inspired violence in the name of an ancient pledge to conquer the world on behalf of the Prophet Mohammad's Allah, is to engender accusations of 'Islamophobia'. Relatively few courageous Muslims exist around the world who will commit themselves to efforts to initialize a global move by Islam to reform itself, to search for a much needed enlightenment, to turn its followers away from the violence that its sacred writings espouse.

But those that do, become instant traitors to Islam, they are besieged with hatred, they become victims of assassination, they have fatwas issued against them, and they must employ security measures such as bodyguards to ensure their deaths not be hastened as punishment for the clarity of their thoughts on human rights and justice. Their very presence on earth is viewed as anathema to the clerics and intellectuals, and leaders of Islam.

When Islam no longer reminds its followers of their divine obligation to martyrdom on behalf of Islam, when Muslims understand that non-Muslims are just as worthy of living as they are, when Muslim-majority countries permit other religions freedom to practise the tenets of their faith without persecution, isolation and threats of violent attack, and finally when the Muslim majority rejects the current status of jihad as the major thrust of their faith and demands it be withdrawn, they will diffuse the suspicion, resentment and fear their religion has aroused in others.