Harper meets with Muslim leaders

[sanch]

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...l_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News

SEAN PATRICK SULLIVAN AND MATTHEW CHUNG
CANADIAN PRESS

Some Muslim leaders used a closed-door meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to call on the federal government to help curb extremism in their community.

And participants expressed renewed concern that the Muslim community at large is being associated with 17 people from the Toronto area alleged last week to have plotted terrorist attacks.

Adam Esse, president of the Coalition of Muslim Organizations, said he asked the prime minister at the Saturday session to "stand with his own citizens . . . Canadian Muslims," and assure them protection from any backlash.

Harper addressed those concerns, saying the government will draw a "clear line" between criminal elements and the vast majority of peaceful Canadian Muslims, said Uyghur Canadian Association president Mohamed Tohti.

Participants say the Prime Minister took detailed notes and assured the group of about 15 that he recognized the concerns of their community.

Tarek Fatah, spokesman for the Muslim Canadian Congress, said Muslims from the conservative right to the secular left were in attendance.

He described it as a "healthy mix" of academics, activists, authors, and imams. The meeting was off-limits to the media.

Fatah said the issue of American-based Islamic organizations spreading fundamentalism and extremism to Canada also arose.

He said two — the Islamic Society of North America and the Islamic Circle of North America — were singled out.

"This is America pushing its fundamentalist Islamist thinking into Canada, not vice versa," he said.

Tohti and Raheel Raza, author of Their Jihad is Not My Jihad, a condemnation of Islamic extremism, said Canada needs an accreditation program for imams to ensure Islam isn't being twisted into hateful ideology.

"The teachers and preachers need to have credentials," Raza said. "Because . . . these youth are being enticed in the name of religious ideology."

Raza also said mosques should be open to scrutiny and anyone heard preaching hate should be removed immediately.

Farzana Hassan-Shahid of the Muslim Canadian Congress agreed that the Muslim community needs to be held accountable.

"We need to be more proactive, rather than issue statements of condemnation," she said.

Hassan-Shahid said there were different viewpoints aired about what may have led a group of young Muslims to consider violent attacks on their own country.

A study on what may cause Muslim youth to adopt extremist ideology was also proposed, parliamentary secretary Jason Kenney told CTV's Question Period.

Kenney, who attended the meeting and was assigned to follow up with the group, said the meeting set the stage for further talks.

"It was the beginning and not an end of the dialogue," Kenney said.

Chairman of Iraq Foundation Haithem Al-Hassani and a representative of the Muslim Association of Chinese Canadians attended, as did a representative of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Muslim professors in the political sciences from the University of Western Ontario and University of Toronto also took part.

This is a very positive development I would say.

 

[dekhqonbacha]

If they, 17 arrested gusy, were Canadians, and never visited Iraq or Afghanistan, why the Muslim community is to be held accountable for their behavior?

Many people don't have connections with their own communities. But they are engaged at some point in canadian society like neighborhood, working, shopping. The whole society is to be held accountable for them.

 

[FiveParadox]

RE: Harper's Meeting

I commend The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P., the Member for Calgary Southwest and the Prime Minister of Canada, for having participated in such a meeting. I think that this is an important step in ensuring that the legitimate denouncement of Islamic extremism is not cast unjustly upon the moderate Muslim community in Canada.

 

[Colpy]

Re: RE: Harper's Meeting

I commend The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P., the Member for Calgary Southwest and the Prime Minister of Canada, for having participated in such a meeting. I think that this is an important step in ensuring that the legitimate denouncement of Islamic extremism is not cast unjustly upon the moderate Muslim community in Canada.

Thank you, Five, and I second that.