Category Archives: Canada

Double standards against Muslims and Islam in Canada

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The polemic on the possible introduction of the so-called sharia law in Ontario … highlights the double standards against Muslims and Islam. It exposes the polarizing methodologies of our media. It tests the Dalton McGuinty government’s commitment to the core liberal-democratic principle of the equality of all citizens. The dominant theme of the news coverage is clear: Medieval Muslims want to import the misogynistic Islamic penal code to Canada. And Queen’s Park is crazy to even consider it. There are sub-themes: Muslims have been plotting for long to supplant our secular laws with Allah’s. They are using multiculturalism to undermine it. Why would we let them, given what they do to women in Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, etc.?”

Haroon Siddiqui in the Toronto Star, 11 September 2005

Siddiqui asks: “why are journalists drawn to the same handful of critics? … Is it that the critics are media savvy? If so, it only confirms our vulnerability to manipulation. Or, is it that the critics are saying what the journalists want to hear? It seems so. Is it an accident that the only Muslims the media idolize are those who attack Islam or the broader Muslim community?”

Of course, some of the most prominent “Muslim” opponents of the Ontario proposal, who have been boosted by the Canadian media, are not Muslims at all, but members of the Islamophobic sect, the Worker Communist Party of Iran.

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Jihad Watch applauds Peter Tatchell

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A UK supporter of Jihad Watch reports on a protest in London against the proposed introduction of Islamic arbitration bodies in Ontario: “there were only about 15-16 people, mostly men, including a reporter from Canadian television”.

Dhimmi Watch, 10 September 2005

Not to worry, though – they took turns to address each other on the iniquities of the Ontario proposal: “representatives from Sharia.com, the International Committee against Stoning, the British Humanist Association, the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and Peter Tatchell made speeches. There was also a guy from a gay and lesbian association there. They basically made the same objections to Sharia law that we’ve all seen here at Jihad Watch/Dhimmi Watch”.

Perhaps Outrage, GALHA and their co-thinkers might consider organising a UK visit for Robert Spencer? After all, they have so much in common.

Ultra-left sectarians against sharia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sharia protestMore than 300 demonstrators converged in front of the Ontario legislature Thursday in a protest against the allowance of Islamic Shariah law in the province. “Shame! Shame!” chanted members of the crowd, angry at the prospect of Ontario becoming the first Western jurisdiction to allow the use of Shariah law to settle family disputes.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said his Liberal government will decide “shortly” on whether to permit Islamic law to be used in the province’s family arbitration cases. He has insisted that the rights of women will not be compromised if Shariah tribunals get the go-ahead to settle marital disputes for Muslims in the province. “Whatever we do, it will be in keeping with the values of Canadians and Ontarians,” he told reporters Wednesday.

But critics consider the religious rules an affront to human rights. “What Mr. McGuinty is doing is simply flirting with political Islam,” said Homa Arjomand, co-ordinator of the International Campaign Against Shariah Court on Thursday. “And that dangerous game is putting the lives and safety of women and children in danger. Shame.”

Billed as a global campaign against Shariah law, demonstrations took place in 11 cities across Canada and Europe — including one in London, England in front of the Canadian High Commission.

“The leader of Ontario’s government – shame on you!” said Mahmoud Ahmadi, spokesperson for the Federation of Iranian Refugees. “Shame on you!”

CTV, 9 September 2005

It would be interesting to know what the political composition of the demonstration was. I note that of the three anti-sharia demonstrators interviewed by CTV, two – Homa Arjomand and Shiva Mahbobi – are central committee members of that bizarre ultra-left sect, the Worker Communist Party of Iran. The third interviewee, Mahmoud Ahmadi, is a leading figure in the International Federation of Iranian Refugees, whose director Mina Ahadi is – yes, you guessed it – a central committee member of the WPI.

Outrage! in ignorant attack on Islam shock

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Human rights campaigners and refugees from Islamist persecution will protest against the introduction of Sharia law in Canada, outside the Canadian High Commission, in London on Thursday 8 September 2005 from 12 noon – 2 PM. The protest is being supported by gay human rights group OutRage! and one of the keynote speakers will be OutRage! organiser, Peter Tatchell.”

Outrage! press release, 7 September 2005

Outrage! appends articles by Maryam Namazie, Azar Majedi and Homa Arjomand – all central committee members of the Worker Communist Party of Iran. Namazie attributes the Canadian proposal to “the racist concepts of multi-culturalism and cultural relativism. It promotes tolerance and respect for so-called minority opinions and beliefs”. And we can’t be having that, can we?

In fact, as anyone who has studied the subject will be aware, the proposal is not to introduce Sharia law but to amend Ontario’s Arbitration Act, which already allows Jews and Christians to choose religious arbitration if they like, in order to extend the same opportunity to Muslims. Oddly enough, I can’t remember Tatchell protesting outside the Canadian High Commission when Jews and Christians in Ontario were accorded that right. But then, I was forgetting, for Tatchell and Outrage! Islam is a uniquely evil religion.

Opposition to Sharia courts goes global

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An upcoming international demonstration designed to pressure Queen’s Park [home of the Ontario Legislature] into rejecting shariah courts continued to grow yesterday, even as the premier promised any decision on a faith-based court system will not jeopardize women’s rights.

They [women’s rights] will not be compromised,” Premier Dalton McGuinty told reporters at a news conference in Toronto yesterday.

So far, Amsterdam, Stockholm, London, Paris and Los Angeles are among the confirmed participants in tomorrow’s protests. They will join similar demonstrations in Toronto, Ottawa, Waterloo, Montreal and Victoria.

Ontario Attorney-General Michael Bryant delayed a highly anticipated decision on the future of faith-based arbitration this summer, choosing to wait before making changes to a law that allows any set of principles – including religious ones – to be used to privately settle family disputes.

Critics say Ontario has become the target of an international political movement by extremists to entrench Islamic law in Western democracies.

“This has nothing to do with the faith of Islam. It’s political Islam,” said Homa Arjomand, founder of the International Campaign against Shariah Court in Canada [and central committee member of the Worker Communist Party of Iran]. “Ontario is an easy target because we have multiculturalism.”

National Post, 7 September 2005

‘I am very pleased to be here next to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Campaign Against Sharia CourtSpeech by Homa Arjomand, central committee member of the Worker Communist Party of Iran, at the Toronto conference against sharia law.

Comrade Arjomand declares: “I need to emphasize that I am talking about political Islam as a movement…. Their conduct is primarily in the form of opposition to the freedom of women, women’s civil liberties, and freedom of expression. It is misogynistic and goes against modernism…. Islamic terrorism is a military section of Political Islam…. Political Islam with its terrorist action clearly says that if you don’t recognize Islamic states, terrorism is what people in the West will face.”

Butterflies and Wheels, 23 August 2005

Yeah, the usual Islamism=terrorism nonsense that you get from the WPI (and from Nick Cohen, Searchlight magazine and the BNP, for that matter). The idea that Islamism contains reformist tendencies, who oppose terrorism and pursue democratic change, is of course completely absent from this hysterical Islamophobic discourse.

Irshad Manji: denial is scourge of Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Irshad Manji writes an open letter to Australian prime minister John Howard, much along the lines of John Ware’s Panorama witch-hunt, attacking mainstream Muslims and urging Howard to adopt an aggressive approach towards those attending today’s summit on religious violence. Yes, that’s the same John Howard who has been criticised for excluding more radical Muslim voices from the meeting, leading to accusations that he was only interested in talking to those who would tell him what he wanted to hear.

The Australian, 23 August 2005

Read this letter and ask yourself – is it any wonder that Manji is enthusiastically applauded by the likes of Daniel Pipes, Melanie Phillips and Anthony Browne, and almost universally loathed by her fellow Muslims?

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By their friends ye shall know them

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The website of the Worker Communist Party of Iran seems to be down at the moment. However, a report by WPI central committee member Homa Arjomand of a meeting in Toronto on 12 August can be consulted at Butterflies and Wheels. Sharing the platform with Homa Arjomand were Irshad Manji and right-wing Dutch MP, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Comrade Arjomand reports that the meeting featured a showing of the film “Submission”. But for some reason she omits to mention the name of the film’s director – the late Dutch racist Theo van Gogh. Obviously just an oversight.

Ontario Shariah law – a good decision

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Christian and Jewish family tribunals have successfully functioned in Ontario since 1991. But then treating women as lesser humans is not one of the religious tenets that christianity or judaism seems to embrace…. I believe that attempting to introduce Shariah into Canada is the beginning of a long campaign to islamicize this country – one way or another.”

Klaus Rohrich welcomes the decision to reject Islamic arbitration bodies in Ontario, but expresses regret that other, more civilised religions have suffered too.

Canada Free Press, 13 September 2005

This is the sort of right-wing bigotry the Worker Communist Party of Iran encouraged with their Islamophobic “anti-sharia” campaign.

Irshad Manji attacks multiculturalism, calls for less tolerance

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Irshad Manji Trouble With Islam“As Westerners bow down before multiculturalism, we anesthetize ourselves into believing that anything goes. We see our readiness to accommodate as a strength…. Radical Muslims, on the other hand, see our inclusive instincts as a form of corruption that makes us soft and rudderless. They believe the weak deserve to be vanquished. Paradoxically, then, the more we accommodate to placate, the more their contempt for our ‘weakness’ grows. An ultimate paradox may be that in order to defend our diversity, we’ll need to be less tolerant.”

Irshad Manji in the New York Times, 9 August 2005

Characteristic of Manji’s method is her reference to the play “Corpus Christi” by Terrence McNally, in which Jesus was depicted as a gay man. She tells us how in 1999 “Christians protested the show and picketed its European debut in Edinburgh, a reasonable exercise in free expression. But Omar Bakri Muhammad, a Muslim preacher and a judge on the self-appointed Sharia Court of the United Kingdom, went further: he signed a fatwa calling for Mr. McNally to be killed….”

Except that, if Bakri had indeed called for McNally to be killed, he would certainly have been prosecuted. In fact, what Bakri did was issue a fatwa “authorising” McNally’s execution by the Islamic state, while making it clear that individuals had no right to carry out the sentence. In other words, short of the establishment of Bakri’s version of the caliphate, which is not exactly an imminent threat, McNally was in no danger at all.

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