A Land of Refuge for the Oppressed

Canada, like many other countries of the West, depends upon immigrants, as much as emigrants depend upon Canada. New beginnings. Hope for the future.

In a world where people constantly migrate, as much for economic advancement as to start a new life where they will be free to practise their faith, honour their cultural traditions, become comfortable in a society that accepts the workability of diverse peoples from diverse backgrounds living together in amity; a successful conglomeration of multi-faith, mixed ideologies, various ethnicities.

That sounds so blissfully ideal. Why, after all, should not people from different backgrounds live together in peace? And most certainly will do so, becoming a credit to the society and the country that has seen it to be fit and proper to accept them as one of their own. Canada prides itself on its multiculturalism, its guaranteed freedoms, its respect for individualism, and conversely, for collectivism. We're proudly pluralistic, respectful of the rule of law, a liberal democracy.

Canada too subscribes to those enduring and noble sentiments etched upon the minds of people everywhere: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me". Is it not fitting that this poem, affixed to a plaque on that famous national monument in the harbour of New York City was written by a Jew?

For Sara Lazarus was a Sephardic Jew, descendant of those expelled from Spain in 1492 by Queen Isabella, through one of many rampant scourges of Jews from Christian lands, during the infamous Inquisition. Her predecessors were in need of succour, of refuge from oppression, and over half a millennium later, not too much has changed. Inter-racial, inter-religious strife, political persecution, wars both secular and religious, have created as always, teeming masses of refugees.

Canada, like the United States, has become a refuge for the oppressed, the landless, the homeless, the persecuted, the indigent, those who had nowhere else to turn. It was not always thus; before the turn of this century much of the 20th Century saw Canada turning away potential immigrants if they did not reflect the right (mostly Anglo-Saxon) stock. Now, however, Canada's cities reflect as a veritable United Nations of peoples from around the world.

And all is sweetness and light. As if. It simply is not in human nature.

Canada has, among its many immigrants, a large contingent of Tamils from Sri Lanka. Most of these Tamils are like other Canadians, law-abiding citizens. But then there are, among them, a contingent of committed "freedom fighters", a group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, legally outlawed in Canada as a terror group. A few weeks earlier the RCMP counter terrorism unit raided the Montreal headquarters of the Tamil Tigers and shut it down, seizing assets there and in Toronto.

These offices were called the headquarters of the World Tamil Movement, a front group for the Tamil Tigers. Whose modus operandi, whichever country they happened to be located in, was to garner favour with local and federal politicians, to bring them on side for legitimacy, and to attempt to use their influence to advance their fight for independence from Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers are often identified as the modern world's terror group par excellence.

They've, up until the present, brazenly launched rallies in support of the Tamil Tigers, doing honour to their martyrs, and until the current Conservative government in Canada labelled them a terror group, had the ear of many Canadian politicians. They still ensnare the witless support of some politicians in Canada, blissfully unaware of their purpose and background. They induct the younger generation living abroad into their "freedom battle".

They prey on fearful Tamils living in peace and harmony in Canada, inciting fear in them through threats, and inducing them to agree to making regular payments in support of the LTTE through legal banking forms authorizing monthly withdrawals from their victims' bank accounts. The funds raised - and they are considerable - contribute significantly toward the civil war in Sri Lanka which has claimed too many innocent lives.

And then there are Sikhs in Canada, citizens of the country, who have brought their enmities wholesale into the country. My good neighbour, also a Sikh, and his many family members, are aghast at the activities of this extremist and violent group who glorify violence and insist on their own separatist ideals within India. Canada's worst terror-inspired carnage resulted from these Sikhs visiting a wholesale death through the mid-air explosion of a passenger plane full of Hindus.

Yet this minority of Sikh separatists in Canada threaten violence on their detractors and those Sikhs who would never dream of joining their activities. They feel sufficiently safe within Canada to openly parade in celebration of the International Sikh Youth Federation and the Babar Khalsa, two banned terror groups within Canada. Both are linked to violent separatist incidents, including the Air India bombing.

They've murdered other Sikhs who criticize their activities within Canada, have beaten a Sikh Member of Parliament who continually calls for the authorities to arrest their activities, and they have issued death threats against countless other members of the Sikh community, including a member of the provincial legislature in British Columbia. Members of the press who have been up front and centre in revealing their criminal activities have received threats of death.

And then there is the reality of fundamentalist Muslims within Canada whose activities, as Canadians, do no justice whatever to the oft-stated view of Islam as a religion of peace. The rhetoric that issues from the spokespeople of the Canadian Islamic establishment makes for some very uneasy perceptions. Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress and his supporters fight a rear-guard battle against the assembled forces of the zealous Islamists within Canada.

He and his companions have also been the recipients of death threats. Mr. Fatah rejects violence and intolerance as completely un-Islamic in character, knowing full well that there exist many Islamic schools within the country funded by fundamentalist countries like Saudi Arabia to ensure their brand of Wahhabist Islam becomes the norm. He states that Islam is "riddled with termites ... if we don't cleanse ourselves with truth, the stench of our lies will drive us mad."

He is incredulous and furious that Western Islamic leaders haven't seen fit to condemn Islamist terror. Supporters of defiant Islamism feel that Mr. Fatah and others of his ilk are "apostates". Under Sharia law, those deemed to be apostates are sentenced to death. Other moderate Muslims are uncomfortable with the outspoken condemnation of Islamism by Mr. Fatah, preferring to discuss such things quietly, internally, not in public; airing the religions' "dirty linen".

Mr. Fatah rejects the use of Islam as a political tool to achieve a political goal. The larger aspirations of Islamist states like that of Iran, with its vision for the future, a future that sees a rapid decline of western values and politics and influence, and matching rapidly-rising Islam until the vision of a global caliphate has been achieved, is anathema to moderates like Tarek Fatah.

So much for peace and harmony, good fellowship and understanding between ethnic groups, religious factions, political dissidents. Welcome to multicultural Canada.