Why is the RCMP funding gay-hatred???

We've blogged about this event once before - the RCMP is sponsoring an outreach day for muslims in British Columbia - but look who's going to speak at the event...

They say the Mounties always get their man. But do they sometimes get the wrong imam?

This is one of many questions coming out of the second annual "Muslims of Tomorrow 2009" conference sponsored in part by Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police on June 13. A product of efforts by the RCMP National Security Program in British Columbia, and something called the "RCMP National Security Youth Advisory Council (BC)," the initiative reflects the shaky history of the Force's involvement in Islamic outreach.

Mounties rushed into outreach following 9/11, and the results were not always pretty. The former head of the Force's National Security outreach group was Inspector Wayne Hanniman, whose fondest hope – expressed in a public briefing – was to work as a traffic cop in British Columbia, a unique aspiration for one involved in the high-risk and subtle area of Islamic outreach and Islamist subversion. Consistent with this goal, he formed an RCMP ethno-cultural national security consultative group whose membership inadvertently included some of the more radical elements in Canadian society.

Moderate Muslims were shocked to find the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN), a chapter of the US unindicted co-conspirator outfit, CAIR, invited to participate. Under the Inspector's wing, a CAIR-CAN official was even escorted around the Canadian Security Intelligence Service offices. The farce worsened as the National Security group's public briefings eventually came to cite CAIR-CAN's misleading studies of Muslim victimhood, thus doing the divisive propagandistic work of Islamists for them (For a reaction to Canada's victimhood bandwagon, click here). Inspector Hanniman was last seen leading Canada's UN police contingent in Sudan, where he was featured in a flattering Department of Foreign Affairs magazine article written by a journalist known for her accommodating coverage of CAIR-CAN and similar groups.

A similarly impulsive approach was taken in the creating of mirror "youth councils" by the National Security outreach group. The RCMP's headlong rush to get into the outreach business resulted in the national security team's hiring a bright young university graduate with suitable "diversity" credentials, but no noticeable familiarity with national security. Soon after coming aboard, Ms. Dahlia Nawwar announced in the course of a public presentation that she wanted to complete a study of the causes of youth radicalism. Singing from the "root causes" songbook, she made clear that she adhered to the apologist view that Islamic extremism was all simply a matter of reaction to oppression and alienation. Nawwar's remarks showed no appreciation of the doctors, lawyers, engineers and other privileged classes that inspired, organized and underpinned extremism from the Muslim Brotherhood to al-Qaeda. But they did sidestep altogether the militant Qur'anic "sword verses" so routinely invoked by terrorists themselves as their sole motivation for violence.

Which gets us to "Muslims of Tomorrow."

Although the national security outreach efforts claim to be aimed at heading off radicalism of all kinds, the conference shows a heavy concentration on Muslim concerns and perspectives – and not the most moderate among those. It is far from clear, for example, that similar resources and publicity have gone into preoccupations of other "at risk" immigrant groups, or that a federal police agency has any business getting involved in determining what tomorrow's Muslims should look like, sound like, dress like or believe in. Even those who think government should be in the business of religion, will not soon expect similar quantities of RCMP dollars and prestige to flow into "Hindus of Tomorrow" or "Christians of Tomorrow" conferences.

In the meantime, compliant national security outreach functionaries once again seem inclined to preside over a Muslim conference premised on the discredited Islamist propaganda theme of Canadian Muslims as victims of their non-Muslim neighbors. So, as day follows night, the theme of this year's gathering is the media portrayal of Canadian Muslims. RCMP publicity includes references to popular and largely-unsubstantiated Islamist themes: anti-Muslim bias, fear of backlash, and so on.

Two respected Canadian journalists are to figure on the "Tomorrow" panel, and the Islamic content is rounded out by panellist Imam Dr. Reda Bedeir. In some ways, Imam Bedeir's selection reflects how tricky and ill-advised RCMP and Government involvement in religion can be.

Bedeir has a distinguished intellectual history, with an impressive list of credentials. He was even listed among the host of people attending the Governor General's Canadian Leadership Conference 2008. But in inviting Dr. Bedeir – or at least associating themselves with him through the "Muslims of Tomorrow" event – the RCMP's national security outreach unit could be interpreted, in the name of the RCMP and Government of Canada, to confer legitimacy on his brand of Islam, and to commend its practice to young Muslim conference-goers. This may or may not be a comforting thought.

Like many Islamic scholars, Dr. Bedeir shares advice. In an article dealing with homosexuality, he declares the orientation "clearly sinful," "a perverted deviation from the norm," a matter of "choice", and equates it to alcoholism, addiction and gambling. "[G]ay acts," writes Dr. Bedeir, are "unlawful" in the eyes of all Islamic schools of thought and jurisprudence". As for these schools:

"They only differ in terms of penalty. Some say that no physical punishment is warranted. Some see that severe punishment is warranted, while others require a minimum of 4 adult male witnesses before a person can be found guilty of a homosexual act."

Bedeir appears not to rule out "severe punishment," something that might assume major significance if one were to take seriously what is termed a "useful" web link appearing at the end of his article. The link is to advice on homosexuality by Dr. Taha Jaber Al-'Alwani, President of the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Herndon, VA, and then president of the Fiqh Council. Al-Awani also is past president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, suspected of financing terrorist groups.

The President of the Fiqh Council concludes:

"Verily, the punishment here is the burning of both homosexuals (the actor and acted upon) or stoning them with rocks till death because Allah Most High stoned the people of Lut after demolishing their village."

Is this the view of Dr. Bedeir? If so, would the RCMP National Security Community Outreach Program and the Government of Canada, support it? Would its proponents be appropriate role models for youth? Based on the Supreme Court of Canada's same-sex constitutional decisions, even the cosmically-expanding cultural-sensitivity standards of RCMP outreach wouldn't justify the burning and stoning of a Canadian minority.