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Dare We Question Their Religion?

    

   

Right Hook
JJ McCullough, OP Columnist

 

There is a brilliant book out right now called The End of
Faith, by the noted atheist and scholar Sam Harris. In the
text’s opening paragraphs, Harris describes a suicide
bombing in gruesome detail, then rhetorically asks his
readers to note just how easy it is to guess the killer’s reli-
gion. I was reminded of this anecdote in the aftermath of
the recent terror ring bust in Toronto. Even if one was to
just hear the details of the group’s plot in a vacuum—a
plot which allegedly entailed targeting civilian gatherings,
blowing up monuments, and beheading the Prime
Minister—would it really be any more difficult to guess
the faith of the group’s members? It shouldn’t be so sim-
ple, but sadly, it is.

The Islamic community is never shy about imploring
non-Muslims to investigate the root causes of terrorist
anger. Such root causes, in turn, are always the same, and
always political. The plight of the Palestinians in Israel,
the suffering of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
comparative poverty of the collective Middle East, and so
on. One root cause we are never to address, however, is
religion.

Dare to point out that Al Qaeda and their various
spin-offs are explicitly Islamic terrorist organizations and
you're likely to blasted with charming labels such as racist
and Islamaphobe. Terror has no religion, the Canadian
Islamic Congress has decreed. The fact that self-styled
Islamic fundamentalists were the perpetrators in all recent
terrorist attacks against the West, in New York, Madrid,
London, Bali, and elsewhere, is apparently little more than
some bizarre fluke, hardly worth closer investigation. At
best, we must just be satisfied with assurances that terror-
ists are not truly Muslim.

While religious complacency may be understandable,
the fact that we have recently seen the simultaneous rise
of the secular, left-wing vein of apologism for Islam’s
excesses forms a much more troubling phenomena. After
all, when we look at the conditions of many Islamic soci-
eties in today’s world, we see countries plagued by abuses
of women, gays, religious and ethnic minorities, left-wing
democrats, and countless other individuals who would
ordinarily garner buckets of sympathy from Western liber-
als. Yet when you read many of the West’s leading lefty
editorialists, bloggers, and pundits, one routinely finds
such facts conveniently glossed over. To many, it seems
that the worst crimes that come out of the Middle East
are not those not committed by the fundamentalists who
rule (or seek to rule) such places, but rather the twin
boogeymen of America and Israel.

I used to believe that there was a warped “the enemy
of my enemy is my friend” logic motivating the left’s blind
eye towards the grim reality of the contemporary Islamic
world. This certainly seems to be the case with extreme
anti-American hacks like the MAWO gang or Noam
Chomsky. Among moderate liberals, however, it increas-
ingly appears that their lack of interest is simply the result

opinionsubmit@hotmail.com

of some extreme form of denial.

Long ago, much of the left in Canada hitched their
ideological cart to the pony of multiculturalism, the great
equalizing doctrine which decreed that all of the world’s
cultures, religions, and traditions were basically morally
equivalent. Though such a thesis is undeniably egalitarian
and anti-discriminatory, it is still motivated by a rather
sweeping assumption, namely that all cultures are in fact,
equal. When self-styled Islamic holy men butcher civilians
indiscriminately or fill the heads of their children with
perverse anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the liberal’s
hands are thus tied. They cannot dare find fault with the
perpetrators’ religion, for that would imply we in the West
may have something to teach these beleaguered Third-
World citizens about ethics and morality. That would be
an act of paternal “neo-colonialism,” after all. It’s safer to
just ignore the problem than to risk appearing intolerant
of cultural diversity. ;

Islam will always be one of the world’s great religions,
and its prominent role in the history and development of
mankind will always give its followers much to be proud
of. That being said, however, we must realize that by any
reasonable standards of diagnosis, there is clearly a funda-
mental problem with Islam today. It is a problem that
transcends politics, region, or race, and instead goes to the
very heart of the faith itself, and how its doctrines are
being presently understood.

Critiquing a religion—especially the religion of for-
eigners or minorities—remains one of the ultimate taboos
of our time. Yet until we can learn to move beyond the
petty censorship of political correctness and the hysterical
fear of offending, we may never get to the true root cause
of the mighty clash of civilizations in which our planet is
currently embroiled.

 

The Quieter Revolution:
Will pluralism destroy Canada?

Left Overs

lain Reeve, OP Fella

 

 

‘The Quiet Revolution began. ..well, quietly in Quebec in

the 1960s. It marked the solidification of secular Quebec
nationalism, the birth in earnest of the separatist move-
ment, and was the first significant threat to Canadian feder-
alism in the 100 years since confederation.

The Quebecois, fearing for the decline of their identity,
the erosion of their culture, and a shifting power balance,

banded together to stand up for what they believed in.
Since then, Canada has been plagued by a terrorist crisis in
1970, two narrowly failed referendums on separation, and
the oft-obtrusive presence of the Bloc Quebecois in parlia-
ment. Segments of Quebec nationalism have been a thorn
in the side of federalism, and a bruise on a state strong in
multicultural and pluralism. But is this just because other
growing nations in Canada have yet to discover their
national pride?

Canada has become an immigrant country, dependent
on a sustained and growing influx of people from other
lands to maintain our population growth and, tacitly, our
economic growth. Canada’s stunning diversity of cultures,
beliefs, and backgrounds has come to it as a nation. Unlike
the US and Europe—where integration plans seek to
homogenize their immigrant populations with the wider
ones—Canada has adopted a system that allows new citi-
zens to become Canadian and hold strong ties to their tra-
ditional cultures and beliefs. This may, in the end, prove
both a blessing and curse.

Demographically, evidence suggests that Canada will
continue to diversify at an almost alarming rate. In addi-
tion, our mosaic policy of integration protects freedom of

culture that simultaneously enriches Canadian society, yet
leaves it vulnerable to division and collapse. With tradition-
al identities firmly held in the minds of immigrants, will
they not eventually discover a nationalism of their own,
much like Quebec did? If the Chinese, Italian, or African
populations of Canada begin to make demands that
Canada better represent them, what will Canada do?

There are essentially two ways to react to this.

The first is to ignore the growing demands for political,
cultural, and economic influence by minorities. Smugly
ignoring what are entirely rational requests for recognition
is dangerous business. Quebec nationalism and Aboriginal
outrage came about largely as a result of decades of dis- -
missive policies by Ottawa.

The second path is one of aggregation. Namely, allow-
ing all significant minorities to have a say in the way
Canada exists as a country. While this seems rational
enough, it runs a converse problem of allowing minorities
too much influence over the lives of the majority, many of
who may not be in accord with the lifestyles of minorities.
Just as it is criminal of a democracy to ignore the will of
the minority, it is just as criminal to commit the inverse.

Without minorities, Canada faces economic collapse,

Continued: p. 7