A consortium of Canadian Arab-Muslim organizations released a media statement recently indicating it would work to defeat the Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the next election.
This consortium consists of the Canadian Islamic Congress, the Canadian Arab Federation and the Canadian Muslim Forum. It makes claims of representing all Canadian Muslims.
The press release states: “Stephen Harper has avoided meeting with any major Canadian Muslim and Arab organizations and most of his ministers have followed suit as they are powerless to act outside policies originating within the Prime Minister’s Office.”
The consortium denounces the Conservative government for being regressive when dealing with Muslims. It condemns Harper’s support for Israel, for leaning greatly in the direction of the Bush administration in Washington and for adopting its “corrupt policies” toward the Middle East, and in Afghanistan, preferring military engagement over diplomacy.
Canada is a democracy and an open society, unlike most Arab or Muslim-majority countries from where most Canadian Muslims have originated. Their political participation in Canada is unobstructed and as free as it is for any other Canadian, irrespective of ethnicity, religion or lack of it, gender or sexual orientation.
Islam is a faith tradition not limited to any one people bound by geography, ethnicity or other exclusive criterion. “Muslim,” analogous to “Christian,” is not an ethnic term, and the worldwide presence of Muslims reflects the diversity in which they live, as is the case with Christians.
Among Muslims, there exist differences in how Islam is understood and practised.
It is therefore unrealistic and contrary to any reasonable expectation to consider Muslims in Canada as sharing a monolithic view about their country’s politics. For this consortium to claim it represents “more than one million Canadians” is simply false.
Happily, political partisanship in Canada is not a criminal offence. Politics in an open and free society thrives on partisanship, within reasonable limits defined by its laws, conventions and tradition.
But to any observer of multicultural politics in Canada, claims of the sort this consortium makes about representing all Canadian Muslims are suspect and could conceivably, some day, imperil our democracy.
The Arab-Muslim world is experiencing a convulsion unprecedented in its history. Muslims with differing sectarian loyalties are engaged in the politics of murder and mayhem in Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere.
Canada is not immune from divisions and conflicts of the Arab-Muslim world washing ashore here. It has happened with other communities in the past.
In these circumstances, prudence and good governance require Ottawa not embracing any self-promoting group as the singular voice of the Canadians it claims to represent.
It further means Ottawa should pursue Canadian interests at all times, which, at best, are indistinguishable from the values of freedom and democracy which all Canadians hold dear for themselves.
Indeed, if the Conservative government does not recognize any consortium as claiming to speak for all Muslims, or for anyone else, then this is reassuring of the good sense prevalent in Ottawa.
Canadians of all backgrounds should hope any prime minister does not permit the making of Canadian policy at home and abroad to be held ransom to electoral calculations, or is intimidated by political threats such as this consortium makes in claiming it can influence “a crucial swing vote in more than 100 ridings.”
Any political party acquiescing to such demands or political intimidation by Arab-Muslim organizations, or any other similar groups, does not deserve to hold office in Ottawa.
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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