Author: Stephen Brown
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: January 29, 2003
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=5785
While Canadian leftists were front
and center in demonstrations last week against America's war preparations
in the Gulf, shouting their usual hatred against the United States from
long-entrenched habit, they have been conspicuously silent about Muslim
fundamentalists in their own backyard.
There was no reaction from the Canadian
Left, for example, to recent revelations that Canadian citizen Mohammed
Mansour Jabarah confessed to being an al-Qaeda terrorist. Jabarah is being
held in a detention center in Brooklyn since he voluntarily walked across
the Canada-US border into American custody last year at Niagara Falls.
He was an important al-Qaeda operative in a plot to blow up Western targets
in Singapore in 2001 with as many as seven suicide truck bombs.
Prior to Jabarah's confession, the
Canadian Left only concerned itself with the fact that the terrorist's
rights may have been violated when he crossed the border, as no lawyer
was present when he signed a form waiving those rights. As well, since
American officials haven't charged Jabarah, Canadian leftists have also
been calling for his release and return to Canada, portraying him as an
innocent victim unjustly held by a cruel foreign power. And, as usual with
the Left, charges of racism were also made. Jabarah's "illegal" treatment,
according to some leftists, was due to his being a Muslim and not a white
English- or French-Canadian.
But perhaps even more frightening
for Canadian society than home-grown Islamic terrorists was an incident
at a Toronto mosque over the Christmas holidays. The mosque, patronized
by Somali Muslims, sent a message to its members on Christmas Day telling
them not to congratulate any non-Muslims on their festivals because it
would be like "congratulating a murderer." And any Muslim who wished someone
a Merry Christmas "exposes himself to the wrath and anger of Allah."
How lovely.
The mosque director claimed that
it was a junior employee who sent out this notice, and that it was done
without permission. However, the director was glaringly remiss in not immediately
repudiating this hateful message, thus casting doubt on his claim. In fact,
reporters who went to the mosque and interviewed patrons discovered that
they agreed with the message's contents. Only after receiving negative
exposure in the media did the director finally disclaim this piece of hate
literature.
Again, as in the Jabarah case, there
were no cries of outrage from the Left, the self-appointed watchdog of
multicultural tolerance, about this piece of blatant hate-mongering. There
were no demands for an investigation and no demonstrations either. And
even though a moderate Muslim was quoted as saying this hate-filled outlook
towards other religions is becoming widespread in Toronto mosques where,
he noted, Wahabbism is taking hold, the Left still remained silent.
Another case of leftist tolerance
for what it would normally consider intolerable concerns the latest Toronto
school board elections, in which two Muslim candidates ran for trustee
positions on anti-homosexual platforms. Again, the Left mounted no shrill
campaign against them, a striking occurrence when one considers how close
the homosexual issue is to its heart. Normally in such cases, leftists
would have howled louder and longer than a back-alley tomcat that just
had its testicles stepped on, especially if the candidates were Christian
fundamentalists.
One explanation for the Left's silence
concerning Islamic fundamentalism is that it simply doesn't know how to
react to a minority group that despises its cherished multiculturalism,
has no concept of respect or tolerance for others, believes it is superior
to everyone and everything, and even includes such people like Jabarah,
who would kill his non-Muslim neighbors with no more feeling than squashing
an uninteresting specimen of insect.
The Left's naive, irresponsible
and dangerously utopian vision for society never considered the possibility
that, under multiculturalism, a
group with a powerful agenda diametrically
opposed to its own would ever establish itself here. In their arrogance
and conceit, leftists believed all new immigrants would fit neatly into
their societal blueprint and become non-judgmental multiculturalists like
themselves.
Another reason for the Left's silence
is fear. Muslim fundamentalist intolerance is the rock on which Canada's
ship of multiculturalism will eventually founder. Some leftists realize
this, but fear to confront it, since to do so would reveal they have been
wrong about multiculturalism for the past thirty years - and that it was
never realizable in the first place. Like with the Soviet Union, Canadian
multiculturalism is another failed leftist experiment. But the Canadian
Left would rather stay silent and witness a complete collapse of its dream
than admit that yet another one of its destructive, social-engineering
theories is a catastrophe.
(Stephen Brown is a journalist based
in Toronto. He has an M.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies.
Email him at alsolzh@hotmail.com.)
