The apprehension of alleged “homegrown” Muslim terrorists in the Toronto area and the foreboding that there are others lurking among us has inevitably raised questions about the sort of Canada we have created since 1967.
The centennial year was, at least in retrospect, pivotal. Two decades after the end of World War II, it was also a marker for a generational transition—those who were born in the previous century and came of age during the post-Depression years giving way to a younger generation.
Consider the history of the generation who retired around 1967. They went overseas as young men to bring Europe out of its insanity in the war of 1914-18, returned home to build their country out of an economic breakdown none foresaw, and responded for a second time to salvage Europe from the debris of its moral collapse.
This was a quiet generation whose courage and sacrifice made the world take notice of Canada. They were mostly, if not entirely, of European origin, Christian and of classical liberal persuasion in that they cherished individual worth and dignity as the moral centre of the world they fought to preserve.
In contrast, the post-centennial generation made a virtue out of touchy-feely thinking, insisting they knew the emergent non-European world—fictionalized as innocent and uncorrupted by the vulgarities of the capitalist West—better than their predecessors.
Students revolted in the Paris spring of 1968 and ended the Democratic presidency of Lyndon Johnson in the United States. They made the notion of “progressivism”—a pseudo-science claiming change is progress since it is inevitable—into their secular faith while being scornful of the faith of their parents and grandparents.
Marshall McLuhan (1911-80), the post-centenary generation’s guru, spoke about the world becoming a “global village.” He anticipated in this trend, however, a dark undercurrent of pre-modern collective or tribal values resurfacing while doubts over liberal individualism undermined the confidence of Western democracies.
Instead, the new left-liberalism of the generation who gushed over the coming Age of Aquarius embraced the “global village” as a rebuke to those viewing the industrialized West as an advancement over the non-industrial world.
With such sentiment began the making of Canadian multiculturalism—a make-believe world where, all cultures being equal, no culture had anything to teach or learn from any other.
The global villagers arrived with their baggage. They made demands, but in multicultural Canada it was considered gauche or stodgy to tell them what was acceptable and what had to be discarded.
In a global village, loyalty is to one’s tribe and its values. But a collectivist ideology such as Islamism—similar to Bolshevism—seeks to impose its values on the global village by force.
The generation who reached retirement age around 1967 knew a house divided is bound to fall. They instinctively understood a modern country cannot be a gathering place for tribes.
The experiment in multiculturalism has made Canada a divided house vulnerable to the quarrels of the global village within its borders. The inescapable question for Canadians now is whether they still have within them the capacity to repair their divided house and prevent its fall.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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