Jay Currie

A coalition of eight Canadian Muslim associations said on Thursday they need help to fight radical elements and called for a top-level summit to work out ways of sorting out the problem….

The associations asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper as well as top officials in the Ontario provincial government and the city of Toronto to arrange a summit by the end of the month to discuss how to prevent vulnerable youngsters from being influenced by radicals.

“It’s not that we’re denying that there is a problem. Of course there is a problem … but we cannot deal with it ourselves,” said Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association.

“We are part of Canadian society, and so we demand that Canadian society come forward and help us to root this out,” she told a news conference.

A government official said Public Security Minister Stockwell Day was in contact with the coalition.

The charges against the 17 men raised questions about Canada’s success as a multicultural country where people take pride in their linguistic, cultural and religious differences.

Muslim activists—long unhappy about what they see as harassment by security forces—complain that the actions of a few extremists mean their faith is being unfairly maligned.

“Terrorism is not a Muslim issue. Terrorism is a global issue and we—as Muslim Canadians—are all in this together. The Muslim community will stand firm in denouncing this gross ideology,” said Karl Nickner, executive director of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The coalition, which said it is increasingly worried that Muslim youth is becoming marginalized, proposes a series of workshops where youngsters can meet security forces.
reuters

It is nice to see some Canadian Muslims reacting to the arrests of the Toronto 17 in what might be a positive way. It would have been rather more approprriate if they had left language like “so we demand that Canadian society” at home; but no matter.

Here’s the thing though: it is not as if this radical Islam thing is particularily new. There have been reports of a radical Islamic strain in the Muslim community dating back before 9/11. The mall mosque where some of the Toronto 17 were recruited was certainly known in the Toronto Muslim community.

So, before suggesting that Muslim youth have a chin wag with CSIS in a summit setting, it might be rather more to the point for the members of the Muslim community to conduct their own examination of what, if any, responsibility that community might have for the actions of some of its members.

These individuals did not operate in a vacuum. The Muslim community, as Ishrad Manji, has pointed out at length, is trapped in a world which does not encourage independent thinking or any questioning of the current interpretations of the Koran.

In fact, if there is to be a “summit” of Muslim youth an excellent first step would be to invite Ms. Manji and, say, Salman Rushdie to address that summit. And a second step would be to make sure that summit included plenty of non-Muslim youth.

The right way to fight extremist ideas (as opposed to acts) is with other, better, ideas. What the great and the good in the Muslim community are demanding is special treatment, special access to the security services. What they should be doing instead is looking at how best to include their community and the other communities in Canada in an all out effort to erradicate the ideology of terror.