BRIAN LILLEY | SUN NEWS NETWORK
We are confronting a global terrorism problem and for the most part that threat emanates from Islam.
Whether we are talking about attacks in Ottawa, Fort Hood, New York, London, Madrid, Libya, the Philippines, India or across Iraq and Syria, the common thread is Islam and Islamism.
Yet 13 years after 9/11, with countless victims piled up on the altar of Islamism, some people cannot stand to hear that there is any connection at all.
Right now in Parliament a Senate committee is studying security threats to Canada.
Over the past two weeks both Tarek Fatah and Salim Mansur have appeared before this committee. Both men are Muslims, both men have spoken out against radical Islam and claimed there are problems in some of Canada's mosques.
That's a message some people don't want to hear.
Liberal Sen. Grant Mitchell, a non-Muslim, challenged both men.
"Mr. Fatah, my experience with the Muslim community is so fundamentally different than yours," Mitchell said.
The good senator then went on to say that Fatah had claimed every imam in Canada was inciting Muslims to violence.
Well, of course, Fatah hadn't said that so he let the senator have it.
"I suggested that every Friday prayer is preceded by a prayer asking for the defeat of the infidel at the hands of the Muslims and I stand by it sir, and that prayer has been going on for 1,400 years," Fatah said.
This week Mansur appeared and delivered his own message. Mansur and Fatah have different ideas, different thoughts, but they do agree that there is a problem inside Canada's mosques.
"The exposure of Muslims on Fridays during communal prayers to sermonizing from pulpits by imams of political situations in Muslim lands and Muslims as victims of the US foreign policy, of Jews and Zionism, and of Hindus in India. This is a combustible atmosphere," Mansur said.
Like Fatah's testimony the previous week, Mansur's criticism of mosques in this country set off Mitchell.
"You make a very provocative statement," Mitchell said, "and it's not consistent with my experience although I am not Muslim and I haven't been to mosque in the way you have. But I know many wonderful and amazing, remarkable Muslim people."
Once again, told of a problem, the senator's response was to say he's knows lots of good people.
Mansur calmly explained that the fusion of mosque and the political movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood was a real danger. He read a lengthy quote from Hassan al Banna who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. The Brotherhood is the movement that has spawned Hamas, al-Qaida, ISIS and so many more current day terror groups. So al Banna is a man who, if you are studying security threats like ones before this committee, you should know, unless you are Mitchell.
"This person you are quoting doesn't even live in Canada," Mitchell said.
That ladies and gentlemen is mind blowing. No, of course al Banna doesn't live in Canada; he's dead, he was assassinated in 1949, but his ideas live on.
I'm picking on Mitchell but he is not alone.
Far too many people want to live in a Pollyanna world where there are no problems that can't be solved with more multiculturalism and a rousing rendition of Kumbaya.
But the world is darker than that, the world is more dangerous than that.
We need people like Mitchell to open their eyes, open their ears and open their minds to the messages of people like Salim Mansur and Tarek Fatah before it's too late.
Sun News : Open eyes to Islamist threat
