Justin “Fidelito” Trudeau has once again shown himself to be among the cutting-edge Leftist leaders of the world and set an example for Canada’s neighboring colossus to the south by appointing the Canadian government’s first-ever “special representative for fighting Islamophobia.” What a relief, eh, that a government is finally tackling this phenomenon with the full power of the state! The only problem is that the record of such programs, at least in the United States, generally shows that when the government vows to stamp out something, it creates more of it instead. Remember the War on Poverty? The War on Drugs? Canada’s new war on “Islamophobia” is unlikely to be different.
Trudeau, according to a Friday report in the Washington Post, declared, “Diversity truly is one of Canada’s greatest strengths, but for many Muslims, Islamophobia is all too familiar. We need to change that.” In order to do so, he named a hijab-wearing Muslim woman, Amira Elghawaby, whom the Post describes as a “journalist, human rights advocate and member of the Canada Race Relations Foundation,” to head up this new government initiative. For her part, Elghawaby explained, “Muslims are sometimes caught between being perceived as a threat or as representing a problem to solve.” She added that “she hoped this moment would spur a national conversation about the value of Canada’s diversity.” Ah, yes, of course — diversity, which we are constantly told is our strength, and we have to keep on being told that, because the evidence of our senses so often suggests the contrary.
According to the Post, this new government official will “tackle racism, discrimination and religious intolerance faced by the Muslim community.” But why? What does racism have to do with “Islamophobia”? There are Muslims, and Islamic jihadis, of all races. Once again we see what appears to be a deliberate obfuscation of categories and a refusal to make basic distinctions. Is this because racism is universally stigmatized already, and so the quickest and easiest way to get Canadians to accept the spurious concept of “Islamophobia” is to suggest that it’s a form of racism? Of course.
The Canadian government’s “Islamophobia” rep has been appointed in response to a pressing need. “More Muslims were killed in hate-motivated attacks in Canada,” says the Post, “than in any other Group of Seven country between 2016 and 2021, according to a report by the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), which was cited by a Senate fact-finding mission on Islamophobia last year.” The new government representative will have $4.2 million in Canadian taxpayer dollars to keep this sort of thing from happening again.
If it’s really true that more Muslims were killed in hate-motivated attacks, it’s dreadful, but how do we know that all of these Muslims were really killed because of “Islamophobia”? We only seem to have the word of the CAIR-linked NCCM on this, and they’re hardly an unbiased voice. Does the Canadian government simply want to give you the impression that this was the case, in order to justify its efforts against this phenomenon?
And how is a new “special representative for combating Islamophobia” going to prevent further murders? No doubt Canadians will now be inundated with taxpayer-funded material about how wonderful Islam is. In the nature of things, however, there will still be human disputes, and some of them will involve Muslims. Now that “Islamophobia” has been established as targeted by the government, these disputes will all be ascribed to “Islamophobia” and offered as evidence of how urgently needed this “special representative” really is. Thus the Canadian government’s “Islamophobia” department will enjoy ever-increasing budgets. That’s how government agencies work: they have to justify their existence, so they keep having to find more and more of the thing they’re supposed to be stamping out.
Related: Lefty Rag Says ‘Islamophobia’ Is Worse Than Ever, So Why Is It So Hard to Find Any?
Most importantly, since the Canadian government is now officially committed to efforts to convince us of the wonderfulness of Islam, it is not likely to look kindly upon critics of the religion, including foes of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. Will Amira Elghawaby make any efforts to protect Canadian citizens’ right to oppose jihad terror and Sharia oppression, and distinguish such criticism from the alleged hatred that supposedly leads to these murders of Muslims, or will she endeavor to make the case that any and all criticism of Islam, and even of jihad terror, endangers Muslims and must accordingly be silenced and prosecuted?
My money is on the latter. But this is a preposterous claim that, if followed out logically (which of course it never will be, as this “Islamophobia” business is fundamentally illogical), would preclude any criticism of anything as possibly leading to violence. In practice, it will preclude all criticism of anything the Left favors. In the Left’s mythology, Leftist criticism of traditional values, Christianity, etc. never, ever leads to violence.
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