Vincent J. Curtis
20 Jan 15
Since the Charlie
Hebdo massacre, my hometown newspaper has been running articles intended to
soothe western hostility to Islam and reassure its western readership about the
peaceful intentions of the Muslims in their midst. In the Hamilton area, the Muslim population
is less than 5 % of the total, and may therefore be regarded as weak in
numbers.
The latest in the campaign to assuage fear of Islam and of
the Muslims in our midst was an interview with Hussein Hamdani. According to the reports, Mr. Hamdani, as a
young boy, was one of the “Asians” expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in the
mid-1970s. He grew up in Hamilton. He was a student at McMaster University and
was treasurer of the McMaster Muslim Students Association, at which job he
reported anti-Muslim graffiti on the walls in a campus washroom. Presently, he is a partner in a local law
firm, is the vice-chair of the North American Spiritual Revival, and a
spokesman for the Muslim Council of Greater Hamilton. Not only was he interviewed by the newspaper,
he also appeared as a guest on a local radio station. At one time he was a regular guest columnist
for the Hamilton Spectator, and was
on the Board of Directors of a local immigrant settlement center when that
enterprise collapsed in fraud charges.
It would be fair to say that Mr. Hamdani has been on the front lines of
defense and support of Muslims for quite some time.
In the radio interview, as reported by the show`s host Scott
Thompson, Mr. Hamdani said “I`m sick and tired of people hijacking my religion
for their own personal vendettas.”
The newspaper interview was more extensive and some pretty
tough questions were asked by the reporter, Jon Wells. Wells held before Hamdani the fact that a lot
of terrorism against the West has been done by Muslims in the name of Islam. Hamdani did his best to answer while not
apologizing for being a devout Muslim.
He certain knew how to answer effectively for a western audience. Some of the tougher questions Mr. Hamdani
seemed to evade answering directly, or answered in a slippery manner. The published interview gave comfort to
westerners who were looking for comfort, but for those who knew what to look
for and entirely different feeling emerged.
Due to lack of space and time, reporter Wells was not able
to engage in back-and-forth discussion with Mr. Hamdani. As a result, some questions I would like to
have seen put and answered were not asked.
These three came to mind:
1.
Should Canadian law be more or less Sharia compliant?
2.
If the population of Canada were 50 % Muslim, would the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms be made more Sharia compliant?
3.
Since you, Mr. Hamdani, are not an Islamic scholar or
an Imam, what weight would other Muslims place on your opinion of what Islam is
or says?
The questions concerning Sharia are the real test of Islamic
Supremacism. Those who believe in the
imposition of Sharia law are, whether they are violent or not, Islamic
Supremacists; and Islamic Supremacism is the actual threat to Western
Civilization. I expect that Mr. Hamdani
would evade answering questions 1 and 2.
The correct answer to question 3 is nothing, or next to
nothing. The consequence of that answer
is that westerners can take no solace
from what Mr. Hamdani says about Islam and the intentions of its adherents. If other Muslims won`t listen to him, then
his opinion is valueless to westerners. Al
Azhar University in Cairo, the Islamic scholars and Imams who advocate jihad
are the ones to whom westerners need to pay attention, since those are the institutions
and people who say what Islam is and says that inspires ISIS, al Qaeda, and
lone-wolf terrorists around the globe.
The problem for Mr. Hamdani is that, as a result of the
scholarship of Al Azhar University, there is no principled distinction between
a devout Muslim and an Islamic Supremacist.
A measure of one’s devoutness as a Muslim is the degree to which one
supports the supremacy of Islam, the enforcement of Sharia law, and the
submission of all to Allah. And Mr.
Hamdani is, apparently, a devout Muslim.
Nobody blames the swamp when they are being set upon by
mosquitos. Initially, they blame the
mosquitos. After a while, however,
getting rid of biting mosquitos means having to deal with the swamp. The swamp is the habitat in which those
noxious mosquitos breed and grow, and destruction of habitat is the surest way
of making a species disappear.
The surest way for Western Civilization to avoid being
bitten by mosquitos in future is to drain the swamp in their midst.
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