Boreal.ca

In 2005, the most populous province in Canada, Ontario, completely oblivious to the implications, came within a hair’s breathe of allowing Islamic tribunals to operate in the province.

Many Muslims were alarmed at the prospect of the medieval Sharia Law, which many had come to Canada to escape, was about to invade their sanctuary. With the Canadian Muslim Congress spearheading their efforts they set about educating politicians and non-Muslim Canadians about the implications of such of a move, especially when it came to women’s rights, forcing the McGuinty government to back away from its ill-considered initiative.

Canadians owe a debt of gratitude to the Canadian Muslim Congress (CMC), a debt of gratitude which may never be repaid.

Muslims for whom the CMC speaks “believe in the separation of religion and state in all matters of public policy. [That] such a separation is a necessary pre-requisite to building democratic societies, where religious, ethnic, and racial minorities are accepted as equal citizens enjoying full dignity and human rights enunciated in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” (from the CMC's mission statement)

Muslims for whom the CMC speaks want to be part of the Canadian mainstream, and liked our legal tradition where everyone was equal before the law.

The Canadian Jewish Congress and the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) seek exactly the opposite.

The CIC wants a Canada “where individuals can develop and succeed without compromising their Islamic identity.” This can only be accomplished by having a separate legal tradition based on religious traditions and revealed scriptures. It's the intermediary goal of Islamists, until such a time as they are strong enough to impose Allah's Will on their neighbours.

The Canadian Jewish Congress, a familiar face in many legal and paralegal challenges to secular law has made extremely difficult, if not impossible for the Courts to refuse Islam's demand for the same preferential treatment afforded the Jewish religious community and other religions, and many of their demands are far from benign.

The Canadian Jewish Congress, for example, obtained the status of intervener in the decision that opened the floodgates to religious interference in what had been, until then, a purely secular matter, the case of Ontario Human Rights Commission and Theresa O'Malley (Vincent) Appellants and Simpsons Sears Limited.

The Canadian Jewish Congress, by supporting exceptions to secular law on religious grounds, has facilitated the rise in Canada of Islamism, an anti Western and anti-American ideology. Islamists, like the small Canadian Hasidic communities, prefer to live in the past and outside the Canadian mainstream.

Canadian Jewish leaders, by using their considerable influence to get exceptions to the rule of man-made-laws for a small minority of their brethren, is making it possible for Canada's growing Islamists population to do the same. This is shortsighted in the extreme.

Bernard Payeur July 21, 2011