CAIR-CAN slams media racist reporting of “extremists’ arrest”

[sonz]

Responding to biased media reports covering the arrest of 17 Muslim men and boys by Canadian authorities for allegedly plotting to bomb buildings in the Toronto area, the executive director of the Canadian chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, with regional offices nationwide and in Canada, wrote yesterday in the Montreal Gazette saying: “Radicals exist everywhere and that they exist in the Canadian Muslim community should be no surprise to anyone,” CAIR-CAN executive director wrote.

“Whether these individuals are willing to translate their radical ideas into radical actions is another matter altogether. At this point, 17 individuals stand accused before the courts for engaging in such actions. It is essential that they be prosecuted fairly and transparently in the courts and not by the media or the public. This is the essence of the rule of law.

“Security agencies cannot achieve their goals of ensuring public safety without community co-operation. In that sense the Muslim community is effectively the first line of defence against this sort of extremism.

“And Muslim communities throughout Canada have taken this role very seriously in recent years. The events of 9/11 have had a significant impact on Muslims around the world and especially in North America. In many ways, the events of 9/11 have forced positive action. Most mosques are open to the public more than ever before. Community leaders have actively sought to improve ties between Muslim communities and the broader society.

"One of the men arrested is alleged to have repeatedly railed against Canadian forces in Afghanistan and we now know that the departing “board of directors of the mosque in which he prayed warned the incoming board against his radical ideas.

“However, if the Muslim community is going to be effective in the struggle against containing this type of extremism, there has to be a very strong relationship of trust between the community and security agencies.”

•Fisk: Racism invaded Canada

In The Independent, Robert Fisk also criticised the racist media approach towards Muslims in covering the arrests.

Fisk, an internationally recognized journalist for the Independent and author of Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (London: André Deutsch, 1990), wrote:

“This has been a good week to be in Canada - or an awful week, depending on your point of view - to understand just how irretrievably biased and potentially racist the Canadian press has become.”

“For, after the arrest of 17 Canadian Muslims on "terrorism" charges, the Toronto Globe and Mail and, to a slightly lesser extent, the National Post, have indulged in an orgy of finger pointing that must reduce the chances of any fair trial and, at the same time, sow fear in the hearts of the country's more than 700,000 Muslims.”