Some People Are Special

As one can see:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday joined a Commons majority in passing a Bloc motion declaring Québec a French nation, 281-2. Trudeau did not speak on the motion. Thirty-four MPs abstained: “There will be consequences.”

This Quebec:

The federal government is investing as much as $29 million in a company building a factory in Montreal to make the specialized fabric needed to produce respirators and surgical masks.

That's a shame:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau nominated Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Mahmud Jamal to the top court Thursday to replace retiring member Rosalie Abella.

(Sidebar: this sad, old cow.) 

Born in 1967 in Nairobi, Kenya, to a family originally from India, Jamal moved two years later to Britain.

In a questionnaire submitted as part of his application to the Supreme Court, Jamal said that because he attended Anglican schools, he received a hybrid religious and cultural upbringing.

“I was raised at school as a Christian, reciting the Lord’s Prayer and absorbing the values of the Church of England, and at home as a Muslim, memorizing Arabic prayers from the Qur’an and living as part of the Ismaili community,” Jamal wrote.

“Like many others, I experienced discrimination as a fact of daily life. As a child and youth, I was taunted and harassed because of my name, religion or the colour of my skin.”

 

Ahem:

No Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Jew or Baha’i demands special prayer rooms inside workplaces, universities, or washrooms to accommodate mid-day washing rituals Muslims undergo. No manager dare say “no” to our request and, if they do, Lord help them en route to the Human Rights complaints office.

Everything we ask we get, including call to prayers on mosque loudspeakers in neighbourhoods where the majority of the population is not even Muslim.

And pray, what do we say during these prayers? Pious and religious Muslims who pray five times a day invoke a verse that refers to Jews as people who have incurred the “wrath of Allah” and Christians as “people who have been led astray.”

The actual verse of the Quran says:

“Guide us to the straight path
The way of those upon whom you have bestowed your grace
Not the way of those who have earned your wrath
Nor of those who went astray”

From the Quran published in Saudi Arabia to its interpretation by the 8th century jurist Ibn Kathir, all claim that these words or derision are meant to describe Jews and Christians.

The question then is simple: If we Muslims are comfortable denouncing Jews and Christians 48 times a day in our five daily prayers, then isn’t it we who spread hate and then play victim?

If it’s true that Islamophobia exists in Canada, then our country is not alone. Wherever we Muslims live or have moved as a minority, the fact is it is our behaviour in relations with the majority and our contempt for the host community’s religion and civilization has aroused in them this supposed ‘irrational fear’ of our faith Islam or our presence as Muslims.