#Motion103 – Canadian government delegation met with Islamist lobby NCCM / CAIR-CAN, Islamic Relief and Haroun Bouazzi

Original Twitter message https://twitter.com/iamIqraKhalid/status/829386786908540932/photo/1 / WebArchive

Enlarged archived images LEFT / RIGHT

LEFT PICTURE (participants viewed from front from left to right)

SALMA ZAHID – Liberal MP Scarborough Centre
IHSAAN GARDEE – Executive Director NCCM / CAIR-CAN
HAROUN BOUAZZI – Co-president AMAL-Québec
FRANK BAYLIS – Liberal MP Pierrefonds-Dollard
ABDELBASSET BENAISSA – Executive Manager Islamic Relief Canada
MOHAMED YANGUI – President Centre culturel islamique de Québec

RIGHT PICTURE (participants viewed from front from left to right)

IDIL ISSA – Communications Director Montreal-based Silk Road Institute
AMIRA ELGHAWABY – Communications Director NCCM / CAIR-CAN
SABRINA SASSI – Doctoral student Laval University (Quebec City)
IQRA KHALID – Liberal MP Mississauga-Erin Mills

On February 8, Liberal MP Iqra Khalid “reconnected” with Islamist lobby NCCM / CAIR-CAN, Montreal-based AMAL-Québec co-president Haroun Bouazzi and Islamic Relief Executive Manager Abdelbasset Benaissa for a discussion about Motion 103. She was accompanied by fellow MPs Salma Zahid and Frank Baylis for the occasion. Motion 103 aims at “develop[ing] a whole-of-government approach” to target so-called Islamophobia.

Officially, Motion 103 is Iqra Khalid’s private member motion. However, very early on Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly was mandated to express the federal government’s “strong and clear support” to Iqra Khalid’s motion. As National Post columnist Barbara Kay pointed out, it is not clear “whether it was MP Iqra Khalid […] or the Prime Minister’s Office” who crafted the motion. MP Khalid refuses media interviews and won’t answer this question and others.

On February 8, Iqra Khalid posted three images on a Twitter message. Two of them show the participants at the meeting with NCCM / CAIR-CAN, AMAL-Québec and Islamic Relief representatives and a third one shows Canada’s Immigration Minister, Ahmed Hussen, with some of the participants at this meeting. However, no picture shows Minister Hussen taking part in the meeting itself. There is an empty chair in the right picture but Point de Bascule cannot confirm whether Minister Hussen joined his fellow Liberal MPs for the meeting with NCCM / CAIR-CAN, AMAL-Québec and Islamic Relief representatives.

On February 8, several Muslim leaders who met with Liberal MPs Khalid, Zahid and Baylis also gave a press conference at the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa. (Video / WebArchive)

Islamists like Faisal Kutty who supported the endorsement of sharia tribunals in family matters by the Ontario government in 2005 are now strongly supporting the Islamophobia Motion 103. On the other hand, anti-sharia Muslims who warned Canadians about the threat of sharia principles in family matters in 2005 are now warning us about the censorship toward which Motion 103 is leading.

Tarek Fatah wrote that anti-sharia Muslims will be among the first ones to be targeted by a law that could be adopted after a recommendation to this effect by the study that will be set in motion by the adoption of Motion 103. Fatah asked Iqra Khalid in writing whether “Muslims who denounce sharia law as barbaric [would] fall into that definition [of Islamophobia]” but he did not receive an answer.

Toronto Sun columnist Farzana Hassan objected to Motion 103 by pointing out that its spirit coincide with the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (56 Muslim countries + the Palestinian Authority).

Article 22a of the Cairo Declaration specifies that “Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah.” Muslim countries adopted this Declaration in 1990 precisely because they disagreed with clauses of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) guaranteeing a freedom of expression not conditional to the respect of Sharia (Article 19) and the right to abandon one’s religion which is also contrary to mainstream Islam (Article 18). Watch an intervention by Muslim Brotherhood‘s spiritual guide Youssef Qaradawi for the latter point. (Qaradawi: “If they [Muslims] had gotten rid of the punishment for apostasy, Islam would not exist today.”)

An Iranian man who was jailed in his native country for criticizing Islam took part in a meeting organized by TheRebel.media against Motion 103 in Toronto on February 15. He could not believe that he is now facing a threat of censorship similar to what he thought having left behind when he came to Canada. Sunni Muslims have been criticizing Shiite Muslims for fourteen centuries and vice-versa. Why should non-Muslims be prevented to do what Muslims have been doing since the beginning of their religion, he asked.

National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM / CAIR-CAN)

Ihsaan Gardee and Amira Elghawaby represented NCCM / CAIR-CAN at the meeting with Iqra Khalid and her fellow MPs on February 8^th. Gardee is NCCM Executive Director and Elghawaby is its Communications Director.

Before the relationship between the Islamist lobby NCCM and the Trudeau government regarding Motion 103 was presented by Point de Bascule in this article, columnist Barbara Kay wrote that she “would be very surprised if the NCCM, formerly CAIR.CAN, was not a principal actor in th[e Islamophobia] study [proposed by Motion 103].”

She added that “In [her] observation, it seems that one of this group’s principal objectives is to create a state of fear in Canadian Muslims that is unsupported by objective evidence.”

She presented some examples taken from the NCCM’s history to support her claim.

Over the years, the NCCM has tried to silence many opponents of the Islamist threat by accusing them of Islamophobia.

In December 2012, the NCCM (then called CAIR-CAN) accused Point de Bascule of Islamophobia after we criticized Justin Trudeau for his decision to speak at the RIS convention in Toronto that month. Point de Bascule had condemned Mr. Trudeau’s decision because the event was being sponsored by IRFAN-Canada whose charitable status had been revoked by the Canada Revenue Agency the year before because it transferred funds to the terrorist organization Hamas. The same day, the NCCM had gone on the offensive and retorted that Point de Bascule was being “Islamophobic.” If the denunciation of an outfit whose charitable status has been revoked for funding terrorism is not acceptable to the NCCM, nothing short of a complete servility toward Islamists will pass the NCCM test and not be labeled “hateful” or “Islamophobic.”

On December 15, 2012, five days after the initial Point de Bascule article about IRFAN and Justin Trudeau was published and the news picked up by mainstream media, IRFAN withdrew its sponsorship of the event. What the NCCM presented as an irrational fear, a phobia, an Islamophobia proved to be a very legitimate concern. In 2014, IRFAN-Canada itself was added to Canada’s list of outlawed terrorist groups.

In September 2014, the RCMP had to distance itself from a booklet they had been working on with the NCCM after they realized that what had been sold to them as an initiative opposing terrorism and Islamophobia was, in fact, very problematic.

Among the North American Muslim scholars promoted in that booklet, the NCCM suggested many scholars with a radical past. Among them, Imam Siraj Wahhaj who advocated converting to Islam youth who felt excluded, and eventually arming them with Uzi submachine guns so that they can wage jihad in U.S. streets (Point de Bascule – Muslim Mafia / pp. 136-137). In the same booklet, the NCCM also endorsed Jamal Badawi who declared in an interview that Muslims should become judges and civil servants in North America and take advantage of their influential positions in order to stop applying current legal provisions that are incompatible with sharia.

Another scholar whom NCCM / CAIR-CAN consults “to gain an accurate understanding” of Islam is Ingrid Mattson. (See p.13)

According to Young Muslims Canada, in 2000, when she was asked at an ISNA conference to suggest the best tafseer (Koranic commentary) available, Ingrid Mattson answered that “So far, probably the best work of Tafseer in English is by Maulana Abul A’la Maududi [aka Syed Maududi].”

Maududi is an Islamist who was described as a supporter of slavery in a decision by Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board in 2000. Look for ‘Mawdudi’ and not ‘Maududi’ in the 2000 IRB decision / Archive.Today.

In the portion of his tafsir dedicated to verse 4:24, Maududi condoned the rape of non-Muslim female prisoners of war by Muslims. In recent months, this doctrinal justification led to the rape of Yazidi female prisoners of war on a large scale by the Islamic State in Iraq. According to the Guardian, “When [Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi] made his speech in July [2014] at Mosul’s Great Mosque declaring the creation of an Islamic state with himself as its caliph, [he] quoted at length from the Indian/Pakistani thinker Abul A’la Maududi [aka Syed Maududi], the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami party in 1941 and originator of the contemporary term Islamic state.”

Rukmini Callimachi (The New York Times – August 13, 2015): ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape / Archive.Today

The relevant excerpt of Maududi’s tafsir is available on Point de Bascule. His whole English tafsir is also online.

In his book Jihad in Islam, Ingrid Mattson’s mentor also described the mission of Islam as being the “destr[uction of] all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam.”

AMAL-Québec

Haroun Bouazzi represented AMAL-Québec at the meeting with Iqra Khalid and her fellow MPs on February 8^th. He is the co-president of the organization.

AMAL-Québec was established in June 2012 as an entity distinct from the NCCM / CAIR-CAN. In recent months, however, AMAL and the NCCM have coordinated their activities on several occasions. On May 5, 2016, NCCM rewarded AMAL-Québec with a Community Builder Award.

On November 19, 2016, Haroun Bouazzi took part in a rare activity organized by the NCCM in Quebec. Bouazzi spoke in French at a workshop on Islamophobia and the media while NCCM Communications Director spoke in English.

On February 8, 2017, Haroun Bouazzi and NCCM leaders Gardee and Elghawaby held a press conference together in Ottawa and met a federal government’s delegation to discuss Motion 103.

Although AMAL and the NCCM resort to the Islamophobia narrative in a similar fashion, there is a slight difference in the approach favored by both organizations.

Since its beginnings as CAIR-Montreal, then as CAIR-Ottawa and later as CAIR-CAN, the NCCM has frequently referred to the authority of Islamist religious scholars to justify its positions. In the case of AMAL-Québec, however, to our knowledge they have never quoted a religious authority to justify their positions.

In 2004, when asked before a Senate Committee whether NCCM was benefiting from a full-time Muslim scholar’s expertise on Islam, its Executive Director answered that Jamal Badawi, then a member of the NCCM / CAIR-CAN board, was providing it. At the time, NCCM Executive Director described Badawi as “perhaps one of the best North American Islamic scholars, if not the premier.”

As indicated above, in 2014 the NCCM listed 13 North America-based scholars whom it consults “to gain an accurate understanding” of Islam. (See p.13)

AMAL-Québec has often been getting support from non-religious, left-oriented organizations. For example, in 2016, AMAL invited Valérie Amiraux, a member of the board on George Soros’ Open Society Foundations as a speaker.

Breitbart (September 28, 2016): “In the wake of Islamic terrorist attacks in the U.S. and abroad, grantees of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations mobilized to counter anti-refugee and anti-Muslim immigration sentiment while using the attacks to push gun control and advocate against the surveillance of Muslims in major U.S. cities such as New York.”

While the NCCM has been involved with Muslim Brotherhood organizations operating in the U.S., AMAL-Québec has developed relationships with French speaking anti-Islamophobia lobbies operating in France and Belgium.

After the terrorist attacks in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu (Quebec) and Ottawa in the fall of 2014, the Couillard government invited Haroun Bouazzi and other Muslim leaders for consultations aimed at preventing radicalization within the Muslim community.

During a meeting in Paris in May 2016, Haroun Bouazzi told the participants that his involvement with the Quebec government could only be fruitful if other activists, whom he described as “much more rigid” (Video 0:13:10) are to be involved, at the same time, in a strategy that he described as “revolutionary” and “far-left”. Without giving a specific name to the approach he was suggesting, Haroun Bouazzi described a Good cop Bad cop routine and he presented himself as the Good cop in the circumstances.

Haroun Bouazzi did not specify the kind of “revolutionary” actions, he had in mind, that would shake the Couillard government enough to force it to bow down to the requests supported by the Islamist Bad cops AND the Islamist Good cops. Occupying ministers’ offices? Organizing ‘spontaneous’ riots inspired by those in Montréal-Nord / Archive.Today? Repeating the “carrés rouges” episode? Burning hundreds of cars to emulate the French model?

Point de Bascule (July 7, 2016) : Good cop Bad cop: In Paris, advisor to Quebec government, Haroun Bouazzi, stresses that ‘revolutionary’ (sic) actions must be waged to help him reach his political goals

AMAL-Québec gave its support to Bill 59, a legislative proposal aimed at banning the criticism of Islam that was introduced by the Quebec government in June 2015. This proposal will likely be considered by federal jurists if Motion 103 is adopted and its Islamophobia ‘study’ likely concludes that legislative measures are required to ban Islamophobia and the criticism of Islam.

Bill 59’s hate speech provisions leading to censorship were dropped by the government in May 2016 after a filibuster by the Official opposition.

Islamic Relief Canada

Abdelbasset Benaissa represented Islamic Relief Canada (IRC) at the meeting with Iqra Khalid and her fellow MPs on February 8^th. Benaissa is based in Montreal and works as IRC Executive Manager. (IRC Facebook – Le Soleil)

According to his LinkedIn profile, Abdelbasset Benaissa has been a lecturer at the CCIQ mosque in Quebec City from 2011 to 2014.

Islamic Relief is the most important Muslim charity in the world. It has branches in several countries including Canada. It is still registered as a charitable organization in Canada.

In recent years, on its British and Canadian websites, Islamic Relief listed eight categories of beneficiaries for the zakat (charity) that it collects. Islamic Relief openly mentions funding Muslims involved in jihad (“Those struggling in the path of Allah”). Besides jihadists, the charity mostly funds groups of needy people as well as the zakat collectors themselves.

The eight categories of zakat beneficiaries listed by Islamic Relief Canada and Islamic Relief UK match those mentioned in the sharia manual Umdat al-Salik (section h8.7). This manual is endorsed by many leaders and organizations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood network such as the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), Tariq Ramadan and Mohammad Fadel.

Currently, Hany (Hanny) El-Banna is Chair of Islamic Relief Canada’s Board and El-Tantawy Attia, one of its director.

In an interview given to Emel magazine in 2004, El-Banna praised the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan Al-Banna, and described one of the Brotherhood’s main ideologues, Sayyid Qutb, as a “visionary.” El-Banna indicated that he is not related to the founder of the Brotherhood.

Hany El-Banna is also a trustee of the UK-based Muslim Charities Foundation (MCF). In January 2015, MCF was “stripped of state funding in a crackdown on Islamist extremism.”

The British government took action after links were uncovered between MCF and a group alleged to fund Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood political movement.

The British government’s decision was also motivated by the fact that MCF is sponsoring extremist speakers at events in Britain “who fuel hatred, division and violence.”

In Canada, Islamic Relief has also been fueling radicalism by sponsoring speakers such as Siraj Wahhaj. In a sermon delivered in New York, Wahhaj pleaded for the conversion to Islam of youths who felt excluded, and for eventually arming them with Uzi submachine guns so that they could wage jihad in U.S. streets. In 2016, Islamic Relief invited Siraj Wahhaj to speak at fundraising activities in Ontario. In 2015, Islamic Relief canceled Siraj Wahhaj’s conference at the Brossard Mosque after TVA (the main private TV broadcaster in Quebec) presented the background of this radical imam to its viewers.

In 2010, Indian Islamist Zakir Naik was invited to address the Islamic Relief-sponsored Journey of Faith conference in Toronto. A few days before the event, the National Post reproduced passages from his texts and speeches in which he states that “every Muslim should be a terrorist,” that Jews are “our staunchest enemy” and that “if [Osama bin Laden] is fighting the enemies of Islam, I am for him.”

At the time, the Toronto Star also reminded its readers that Zakir Naik has videos promoting the killing of homosexuals and apostates of Islam and others explaining the rules that a man must follow when he beats his wife.

In 2010, the federal government banned Zakir Naik from attending the Islamic Relief-sponsored conference in Toronto.