RUTHFULLY YOURS

Leading Canadian politicians have been proclaiming that, despite what former prime minister Stephen Harper contended, Islamic extremism is rare or nonexistent in Canada’s mosques, and that to believe otherwise is racist or Islamophobic. On the other hand, an investigation by two experts finds that in some Canadian mosques and school libraries, extremist Islamic literature is the only brand available.

That is the contention of “The Lovers of Death”? Islamist Extremism in Our Mosques, Schools and Libraries, a recent study by Thomas Quiggin, formerly an intelligence analyst with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Privy Council Office. Quiggin is also a court-qualified expert on the structure of jihadist terrorism. Co-author Saied Shoaaib, a journalist originally from Egypt, has written extensively on Islamic extremism in the Middle East and in Canada.

“It is not the presence of extremist literature in the mosque libraries that is worrisome,” the new report contends. “The problem is that there was nothing but extremist literature in the mosque libraries.”

Examples include In the Shade of the Qur’an and Milestones by Sayyid Qutb, an author al-Qaida leaders found inspirational, as Lawrence Wright noted in The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Quiggin and Shoaaib also found prevalent the complete works of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, perhaps the most extremist form of Islam, heavily promoted by Saudi Arabia.

This type of material, the authors argue, has eclipsed Canadian Muslims with humanist and modernist outlooks. At certain mosques in Montreal and Toronto, authors Quiggin and Shoaaib found statements that promoted jihad and homophobia. Likewise, Canada’s CIJ news found that some Islamic private schools in Canada use textbooks produced by the Saudi Ministry of Education. In two textbooks homosexuality is depicted as “one of the most heinous sins” and punishable by death.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims denounced the Quiggin and Shoaaib study as an anecdotal attempt at vilification, an exercise in shoddy research, and attempt to sew fear and distrust toward Canadian Muslims. The Council’s statement charged that Quiggin and Shoaaib’s report “only fans the flames of ignorance at a time when vandalism of mosques and hate incidents against Canadian Muslims are increasing.”

Quiggin told reporters that “The Lovers of Death”? was not about bashing Muslims but an attempt to “provoke the government and the media into addressing the actual issues of what’s going on.” He and Shoaaib had presented the material that is being taught, where it came from and posed the question: “Is this acceptable in Canada, yes or no?”

As they put it in the study, “Is it possible that Canadian politicians are misleading or deliberately lying to the population about the threat of Islamist extremism in Canada? Have the forces of political correctness and cultural relativism captured them so completely that they are unable to speak on these sensitive subjects?”

A vice.com article by Davide Mastracci came headlined: “That Study About Extremist Mosques in Canada Is Mostly Bullshit” and argued that it had not been peer-reviewed. On the other hand, there can be little dispute that young Canadians are indeed being radicalized.

As Frontpage noted, on August 10, Muslim convert Aaron Driver, 24, targeted a London shopping mall but the RCMP shot him dead before he could denote a powerful explosive. In October, 2014, Muslim convert Michael Zehaf-Bibeau killed a Canadian soldier on ceremonial sentry and wounded a guard in the House of Commons. In 2013, Muslim convert Canadian Muslim convert John Stewart Nuttall plotted to plant pressure-cooker bombs at the British Columbia legislature in Victoria, scene of a mass celebration for Canada Day, July 1.

Further, ease of entry to Canada for Muslims has not prompted terrorists to go easy on Canadians at home or abroad. At least 24 Canadians perished in the attacks of September 11, 2001. Last January, an attack by Al Qaeda jihadists in Burkina Faso claimed six Canadian lives and more than 20 others from 18 different countries. In April, Muslim Abu Sayyaf terrorists in the Philippines beheaded Canadian hostage John Ridsdel of Calgary, held since last September with another Canadian and a Norwegian national for $6.5 million in ransom. According to one news report, “Two men on a motorcycle left Ridsdel’s head, placed inside a plastic bag, along a street in Jolo town in Sulu province and then fled.”

Canada may be officially multicultural, tolerant, and politically correct, but Islamic extremism knows no bounds.

Lloyd Billingsley is the author of Bill of Writes: Dispatches from the Political Correctness Battlefield and Hollywood Party: Stalinist Adventures in the American Film Industry.