We believe that CAF does not deserve our money and is not a credible group for the government to engage, for the following reasons :
CAF offers training sessions to new immigrants that are aimed at easing their integration into their adopted homeland. According to a Muslim woman who attended a course, as quoted by Margaret Wente, newcomers are told that Canada is “deeply flawed by racism and injustice”. This is defamation, not to say hate speech targeting the host society. Such an approach is not conducive to fostering social cohesion in our country ; it is rather the opposite.
In 2007, CAF celebrated its 40th anniversary. To mark the event, CAF hosted a gala dinner where it paid tribute to Zafar Bangash, then editor of a radical supremacist Islamist newsletter. Bangash once described his adopted homeland as "mafia" ; he refers to the vast majority of Canadians - that being non-Muslims - as "kuffar or kufr", which means non-believers and infidels whom Muslims must fight or become like the loathed kuffar ; and he advocates the establishing of Iranian-style theocracies around the world. Is this the vision of a society free from pervasive "racism and injustice" that CAF is striving to build ?
In terms of political agenda, CAF is nearly entirely focussed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as shown by its Web site developed with a grant of $60,000 from the federal Department of Heritage. In a recent column in the National Post, Jonathan Kay wrote : « Last year, the National Post editorial board hosted Mouammar and a CAF colleague for an editorial board meeting. To our collective shock, they laid blame for virtually every problem the world faces on Israel — including the alienation of Arab-Canadian children in Canada’s public school system. (One explained that he had sent his daughter for education overseas — because the inclusion of Israel in Canadian textbooks was too traumatic for her to endure.) »
We invite you to write to MPs to share your concerns regarding the diligence they exercise in selecting groups with whom they interact and which they fund. The list of emails of MPs is here : Address for Members of Parliament. And please distribute the present article to the largest possible number of citizens.
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LETTER OF POINT DE BASCULE TO FEDERAL MPs
Islamists’ Day at Parliament on Wednesday
This Wednesday, March 4, representatives of the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) will spend a day in Ottawa, trying to lobby Canada’s parliamentarians. For many years, operating in the guise of an Arab rights’ group, and more recently, one with immigrant-settlement funding, CAF has actively promoted a radical Islamist agenda. Funded by unwary governments, CAF has often been criticized by the very people it falsely claims to represent.
Consider CAF’s record. In 2007, the group paid tribute to Zafar Bangash, founding editor of a publication advocating the establishing of Iranian-style theocracies around the world and celebrating 9/11. In 2006, Ali Mallah, CAF Ontario vice-president, lamented the overthrow of the Taliban regime. In January 2009, CAF issued a bulletin featuring links to videos glorifying terrorist organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as acts of “martyrdom” against civilians. Recently, raging about international affairs, CAF President Khaled Mouammar startled official Ottawa by damning several federal Liberal and Conservative politicians as “professional whores”. The list goes on...
CAF is a hypocritical organization. It strives day and night to radicalize Arab and Muslim Canadians and alienate them from other citizens and mainstream values. Yet CAF lives off the public purse, scooping up two million dollars in federal grants in just the last two years. The Ontario and Quebec governments also fund this disturbing group, and Canadians of conscience are dedicated to changing this.
Our politicians must diligently investigate the true nature of groups with whom they engage. CAF, an organization openly supporting the banned Hamas terrorist organization, actively agitates among Canada’s Muslim population, encouraging an alienated and dangerous victim mentality – and CAF does all this on the taxpayers’ dime. No wonder the moderate Muslim Canadian Congress asked that any future CAF funding be made dependent on that organization’s not behaving as a Hamas or Hezbollah mouthpiece, and on its embracing Canadian values, not Iranian ones.
In 2007, in the context of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on reasonable accommodation, Quebecers from Arab countries filed briefs dissociating themselves from intolerant Islamist front organizations that claim to represent Canada’s Arab and Muslim communities. For example, the Association de la communauté copte orthodoxe du Grand Montréal wrote about the Islamist movement in Quebec (translation) : “They are a cancer spreading in the community. They do not present themselves as Islamist groups, which in reality they are, but as Canadian observers of human rights ! One can only be shocked by the degree of sophistication these groups have achieved.”
Last October, Point de Bascule hosted a national conference in Montreal that heard three brave Canadian Muslims denounce the growing Islamist campaign to influence and manipulate Canada’s politicians and political institutions. In the name of enlightened pluralist democracy, Point de Bascule calls upon citizens and politicians to do their due diligence, expose the Canadian Arab Federation for what it is, and recognize that the engaging or funding of any such radical group is a betrayal of the national interest and the public trust.
Labels: CAF, Canada, Jessica Leblanc
Damascus Authorities Repress Basic Freedoms 
French President Nicolas Sarkozy should use his visit to Syria on September 3 and 4, 2008, to raise human rights concerns with President Bashar al-Asad, Human Rights Watch said today. In particular, Sarkozy should urge Asad to release activists detained solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association. He should also ask Asad to make public all information on the violent suppression of a riot at Sednaya prison in July 2008.
Commenting on his planned visit, Sarkozy said that he rejected the idea of isolating Syria, preferring “open dialogue leading to tangible progress.”
“Sarkozy should push for open dialogue on many issues, including the state of emergency, arrests of activists, the events at Sednaya prison and the repression of Kurdish identity,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “If President Sarkozy seeks tangible progress he should request the immediate release of peaceful activists.”
Sarkozy’s visit comes at a time of increased repression in Syria. Twelve activists, including Riad Seif, 61, a former member of parliament, are currently on trial for attending a meeting on December 1, 2007, of the National Council of the Damascus Declaration, a gathering of numerous opposition groups. They face politically motivated charges, such as “weakening national sentiment and awakening sectarian strife” and “spreading false news which would affect the morale of the country.” Their next trial session is scheduled for September 24.
Two other prominent activists, Michel Kilo and Mahmud `Issa, are serving prison terms for having called in May 2006 for improved relations between Lebanon and Syria – one of Sarkozy’s key policy objectives.
“Michel Kilo and Mahmud `Issa are in jail for demanding the exact same thing that President Sarkozy has asked of President Asad,” Whitson said.
Emergency rule, imposed in 1963, remains in effect, and Syria’s security services continue arbitrarily to detain people and frequently refuse to disclose their whereabouts for weeks – in effect forcibly disappearing them. Two weeks ago, on August 15, Syrian security services arrested Mash`al al-Temmo, the official spokesperson for the Kurdish Future Current in Syria, an unauthorized political party, while he was driving, and held him incommunicado for 11 days.
The authorities still restrict freedom of expression, and independent press remains nonexistent in Syria. The government has extended to online outlets restrictions it has traditionally applied to print and televised media, detaining and trying a number of journalists and activists for posting information online. Karim `Arbaji, 29, the moderator of www.akhwia.net, a popular online forum for Syrian youth covering social and political issues, is currently facing trial before the State Security Court for “spreading false information that may weaken national sentiment.” The Syrian government’s censorship extends to popular websites, such as www.facebook.com and www.youtube.com.
The authorities’ control of information in Syria is reflected in the complete blackout on any information concerning the prison riot that occurred at Sednaya prison in July. On the morning of July 5, Syrian military police opened fire on inmates at the military-run prison in an attempt to quell a riot that began following an aggressive prison search.
Two months after the incident, there is still no information about how the prison standoff ended, or the exact number and names of those killed and wounded. Human Rights Watch obtained the names of nine inmates who were believed killed. Syrian human rights organizations reported that as many as 25 may have been killed. The families of inmates thus far have been unable to obtain any information about their relatives.
In a briefing memorandum on the human rights situation in Syria sent Sarkozy on September 1, Human Rights Watch urged the French president to inquire about the deadly shooting and to urge Asad to order an independent investigation into the police’s use of lethal force at the prison and to make public immediately all information about the riot, including the names of those injured or killed.
Labels: Human Rights Watch, Jessica Leblanc, Syria
