The following was posted yesterday at Fullcomment.com, the blog of the National Post editorial board. The Canadian Islamic Congress gets all the press. But the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) is making a strong case that it is every bit as radical and unhinged.First came its recent sponsorship of an essay contest on "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," in which it urged high school students to channel the group's own fervid hatred of Israel for prizes. Now, the group is promoting Sept. 11 conspiracy theories by announcing a July 14 Toronto speaking event entitled "The 9/11 deception continues." The two featured speakers at the event will be Bob Bowman, who believes that the U. S. government participated in the 9/11 attacks, and Michael Keefer, a University of Guelph English teacher who apparently is sympathetic to much the same view. The event is being facilitated by "The 9/11 Citizens Inquiry," which defines itself as "a collection of individuals, researchers and groups who question the governmental, mainstream scientific and media accounts of the September 11, 2001 attacks."
No one who values free speech would want to see this sort of crackpot festival shut down (if only because it would feed into the organizers' paranoid delusions of a 9/11 "cover-up"). But one must ask: Will it really further the CAF's self-stated mission -- "[to] represent Canadian Arabs on issues relating to public policy [and] raise awareness of domestic issues that affect our community" -- to promote an event at which a bunch of paranoid crackpots spout off about 9/11, particularly since those same crackpot theories mirror the conspiracy theories put forward by radical Islamists in the immediate wake of 9/11? (Remember the one about the 4,000 Jews?)
This is part of a larger problem. We are constantly being lectured about the dangers of "Islamophobia" and the racism endured by Canadian Arabs since September, 2001. But look at the people who Canadian Muslims and Arabs permit to represent them -- if only by default. The Canadian Islamic Congress' Mohamed Elmasry is a man who went on Canadian TV and condoned the terroristic killing of Israeli Jews over the age of 18. He recanted when an uproar ensued, but his group continues to embody the stereotype of Islamists as knee-jerk enemies of Western values -- including his censorship jihad against Maclean's magazine, and his recent newspaper column defending Robert Mugabe as a victim of Western racism and neo-colonialism. The CAF, which purports to represent Arabs (Christian and Muslim both), is now showing itself to be just as phobic.
No one elected their people, and the organizations themselves are tiny. But they do at least purport to represent the nation's Muslims and Arabs. The field is ripe for a well-funded, professional, sober competitor to challenge both groups. Yet none has emerged, so they essentially operate unopposed. How can members of the Muslim and Arab communities permit this to happen?