Aversion to Muslim Neighbours? Wonder Why!

"With his reckless actions under the pretense of ‘supporting freedom of expression’, [Macron] is triggering a conflict, [a] rupture whose global repercussions can deeply and negatively impact people of all beliefs."

Turkish Parliament

 

"The Turkish president does not represent Muslims, nor the Muslim world. [Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan] has political disagreements with many countries in the region such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt." 

"It's shameful [Erdogan’s attacks on French President Emmanuel Macron and his call for a boycott of French goods]."

"In France, Muslims have as much freedom and enjoy the same rights as all their fellow citizens. There are 2,500 Muslim houses of prayer. The laws of the republic allow for everyone to live their faith freely."

"French citizens of the Muslim faith [should rally behind Macron.] Let’s be strong together."

Imam Hassen Chalghoumi, president, Conference of Imams of France 

A Palestinian burns a picture depicting French President Emmanuel Macron [Suhaib Salem/Reuters]

"[President Emmanuel Macron is contributing to the radicalization of people by insisting that caricatures of Prophet Muhammad falls under free speech.] You are forcing people into terrorism, pushing people towards it, not leaving them any choice, creating the conditions for the growth of extremism in young people’s heads."

"You can boldly call yourself the leader and inspiration of terrorism in your country."

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyron

 

"[Malaysia is] gravely concerned [over the] growing open hostilities towards Muslims following French teacher Samuel Paty’s brutal killing]."

"As a matter of principle, we strongly condemn any inflammatory rhetoric and provocative acts that seek to defame the religion of Islam."

Malaysian Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein

More than one in four non-Muslims in Austria do not want Muslims neighbors. This percentage is remarkably high in the UK as well, at 21 percent. In Germany, 19 percent of non-Muslim respondents say that they would not welcome Muslim neighbors. The figure stands at 17 percent in Switzerland and 14 percent in France. Overall, Muslims are among the most rejected social group.

#IStandWithFrance and #WeStandWithFrance is trending in Hindu-majority India, the country hosting the third-largest Muslim population worldwide. Indian Twitter is alive with support for France's position on extremist Islamism where in various Muslim-packed banlieues in France some mosques and their religious leaders along with other Muslim special-interest groups foment Islamist notions of defiance, claiming French laws to be subservient to Islamic Sharia law. It is where the violence of jihad is promoted, and which the French government has now declared itself at 'war' with Islamist 'separatism'. In India, that message resonates, leading thousands to express solidarity with France.

In the Muslim world, however, Turkish President Erdogan unleashed a storm of vengeance against French President Emmanuel Macron when he retorted that he needed to have his head examined and furiously informed Turks that French goods should be shunned. Presumably he also ordered his wife to stop carrying her costly French-designer handbag. In Kuwait, the board of directors of the Al-Naeem Cooperative Society launched a boycott of all French products, ordering their removal from supermarket shelves. 

"Based on the position of French President Emmanuel Macron and his support for the offensive cartoons against our beloved prophet, we decided to remove all French products from the market and branches until further notice", announced the Dahiyat al-Thuhr association as it followed suit. Reminiscent of the 2005 outrage in the Muslim world when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen editorial cartoons, most of them depicting the Prophet Mohammad in undignified poses.  

 

And out of that episode came universal rage in the Islamic world erupting into violent protests, a number of deaths associated with those protests and widespread boycotting of Danish goods. Now France is facing a similar situation, sufficiently so that its government has taken steps to warn French expats to take extra safety precautions wherever they are in Muslim-majority countries to avoid any controversy over the Mohammad cartoons and to stay away from protests where they too could become vengeance targets like French teacher Samuel Paty.

 

The situation of his death is a replay of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine publication of the Mohammad cartoons that resulted in an atrocity that killed a dozen people at the editorial offices of the magazine when Islamist gunmen went on a murder spree, that spread by other jihadists targeting a French kosher supermarket slaughtering three more, plus a female police officer a day previous. These vengeance killings by Islamists as punishment for being Jewish and for sacrilege posing as freedom of speech is what has motivated the French president to launch a steep investigation of the presence of Muslim enemies of the Republic.

In January 2015, millions of people flooded the streets of Paris and other French cities to denounce the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks. An angry nation brandished brightly colored pencils and banners, defending free expression and France's staunchly secular ideology.

Typical of Islam, the frothing-at-the-mouth accusations of Western-based attacks against Islamic values and the sacredness of its founder-prophet, blaming the West for the terrorist excesses of pious, faithful jihadists responding to the call of Islam, the religion of peace, to mount terror on the non-Muslim countries of 'war'. And so it is that Islamists run amok in their pernicious, vile attacks against infidel targets, while the clerics espousing the glory of jihad blame the West's self-protective response to Islamist atrocities against the West, is claimed to be nurturing terrorism.

 

To their credit, Saudi Arabia appears to have spurned calls elsewhere in the Muslim world for a boycott of French products, even while the Kingdom condemns the cartoons. But in Bangladesh, thousands of protesters marched through Dhaka, rabidly furious Bangladeshis stamping on posters of President Macron. Iran took the outraged step of diplomacy, summoning the French charge d'affaires in registering their protest against the cartoons; an absurdity of sanctimonious heights from the premiere fomenter of violence in the West, a signal champion of terrorism.

 

And so it is that the French foreign ministry has warned its nationals to take particular personal care to protect themselves in Indonesia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq and Mauritania, to avoid public gatherings and upgrade their level of alertness. Since the murder of French teacher Paty, people in France have themselves been protesting, displaying the cartoons in the street. In one city the cartoons were projected on to a building. At least one Paris mosque has been temporarily closed for its part in urging action against Samuel Paty for showing cartoons of Mohammad in one of his middle school classes in history.

 

Security alerts saw the closure of the areas around the Arc de Triomphe on Tuesday and the Eiffel Tower in central Paris. A bomb alert forced the evacuation of the Arc de Triomphe area and surrounding subway stations. The discovery of a bag filled with ammunition necessitated the brief evacuation of the Paris Champ de Mars park around the Eiffel Tower, in another display of Muslim disenchantment with the French government's taking such paltry matters as the murder of a Frenchman for 'insulting' the Prophet seriously.

 

A woman holds a picture of Samuel Paty, at the Place de la Liberte in Lille on October 18.

 

 

A Canadian Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitic Voting Bloc

"The Voting Guide purports to assign a 'Fail' grade to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for recognizing that BDS is a form of anti-Semitism that harms Jewish students on Canadian campuses, and gives the same failing grade to Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer."
B'nai Brith statement

"It is totally unacceptable that government funds have been used to promote an anti-Semitic movement in Canada."
"It is deeply troubling that taxpayer dollars were used to subsidize a document 'guiding' Canadians on whom to support in an election."
Michael Mostyn, CEO, B'nai Brith Canada

"[The Canadian Islamophobia Industry Research Project studies] media outlets, political figures, academics, think tanks, far right groups and ideologues, and the donors who fund their campaigns [as part of a broader anti-Muslim] industry."
Canadian Islamophobia Industry Research Project website

Canadian Muslim Voting Guide

"SSHRC [Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council] grants are awarded through a competitive and impartial process of independent merit review -- managed at arm's length from government -- designed to ensure the highest standards of excellence."
SSHRC statement

"Islamophobia is on the rise in Canada and political speech can fuel or quell it,"
"We’ve examined party leaders’ stances based on their public statements and voting records to help Canadian Muslims, and anyone interested in the issues we’ve identified, decide how to vote in the Monday, Oct. 21 federal election."
Jasmin Zine, professor of sociology and Muslim studies, Wilfred Laurier University

"[As disturbing as it is to see academics using Jew-hatred as a] useful metric [on how to assess a political party, what is worse is that the Liberal government paid for this] hateful propaganda."
"This is a clear violation of parliamentary ethics, election law, not to mention simple decency."
Conservative Senator Linda Frum

The Guide, to be sure, while censuring Justin Trudeau for 'rejecting' the Palestinian cause by classifying the BDS campaign in support of 'Palestinian human rights' as anti-Semitic -- punishing Israel for its 'oppression' of Palestinians -- so it is forgiving at the same time, contending that Trudeau was the "target of Islamophobic hate campaigns", and thus succumbed to pressure from the Jewish lobby -- as well as forgiving his black face antics because of his public stance against Islamophobia.

The 34-page voting guide was a dedicated labour of love by Jasmin Zine, a professor of sociology and Muslim studies, along with helpful and committed graduate students Fatima Chakroun and Shifa Abbas out of Wilfred Laurier University. The National Council of Canadian Muslims and Professor Zine received a $24,923 Partnership Engage grant in September of 2018 to map the 'Canadian Islamophobia Industry'.

At this junction, given the surprise revelation of the production of a Muslim-oriented voting guide, the SSHRC is taking steps to initiate an investigation into "an unapproved use of funds" whose granting was originally allocated for an entirely different purpose. It would appear that the grant, following on an earlier one of $80,000 to Professor Zine in 2009 for the study of Muslim youth post 9/11, was meant for an entirely different, academic purpose.

Funds were diverted for the project of assembling the Canadian Muslim Voting Guide gauging responses to six national and six international matters of concern to Canadian Muslim voters by the leaders of the federal parties engaged in the 2019 October 21 election campaign. The guide was meant to target, inform and urge Muslim voters to cast their ballot in support of federal parties whose positions align most closely to the interests of Muslims in Canada.

Clearly, it assumes that Canadian Muslims have one overriding interest in Canadian politics; how government policy will advance Muslim, not Canadian interests for the foreseeable future. And it is abundantly obvious that interpreting Muslim interests to be intertwined closely with the outcome of the Palestinian 'struggle' in its conflict against the existence of the State of Israel assumes an importance greater than the struggle of Canadians to forge their own identity as a nation of consensus and self-respect among all its regions.

The historical antipathy of Arabs and Muslims against Jewish interests exemplified by its hatred of Israel as a Jewish state is manifested in the incorrigible streak of violence incited by Palestinian authorities against Israeli Jews and Jewish statehood, where 'martyrs' are celebrated who have been inculcated with hatred and have committed violent lethal attacks against Jews as a symbol of their 'struggle' against brutal 'occupation', mandated by Israel seeking to protect the lives of its citizens from Palestinian 'vengeance' against their 'oppressors' with whom they refuse to sign peace agreements.

The Canadian Islamophobia Industry feels justified in slandering Israel, in upholding their right to manipulate Canadian public opinion through Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions targeting Israeli markets, academics, industry and science, but would never admit this is practising anti-Semitism, spreading hatred and alienation, and dividing Canadian public opinion on an intractable Middle East conflict stemming from religious-ethnic persecution, yet they soar in sanctimonious righteousness over 'Islamophobia' resulting from vicious Islamist threats against the international community.

The voting guide directly focuses on the BDS movement, arguing for the international boycott of Israeli interests at every conceivable point and level, for divestment from all state and business activities in Israel, in an effort to impact on its international relations and burden the country with  the failure of international outreach in trade, academic exchange and scientific and technical partnerships.

For its part, the government academic-scientific funding body, SSHRC stated it had no prior knowledge of the production of the voting guide, and "was not consulted in the development of this document", nor would it have been, given the nature of the guide and the purpose of its production, with the knowledge by its authors that this project would be disqualified for financial support from any body associated with government, however much at arm's length it operates.