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No special status
The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, July 19, 2007Re: We need more Muslims in the Canadian Forces, July 16
Idris Ben-Tahir's rambling opinion article on Afghanistan takes us down a garden path strewn with familiar anti-Americanisms ("carpet bombings") and conspiracy theory (everything for oil). Then, contrary to the Canadian Constitution and military practice and tradition, we're invited to give privileged treatment to Muslims in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Under cover of facilitating activity in "the Muslim world," Mr. Ben-Tahir wants us to overturn our integrated, pluralistic, egalitarian national and military standards by managing -- for the first time in history -- armed forces recruitment and placement on the basis of religion. And one religion in particular, Islam.
This, in turn, says Mr. Ben-Tahir, requires changes in immigration practice to fast-track Muslims into Canada -- and into military service.
And the product of all of this? An apartheid military system that will rejoice in having a separate, self-contained Muslim "Crescent Regiment."
One of Mr. Ben-Tahir's selling points for this unprecedented Muslims-only restructuring, is revealing: "[T]he Afghans would be more inclined to let Canadian Muslims work without hindrance." The message is the Canada's entire military effort must accommodate and reflect the racial and religious bigotry of foreign zealots repulsed by contact with, say, Canada's Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish or atheist soldiers.
It is vital that Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier not fall for any of this.
Such initiatives would be entirely in line with what moderate Muslims describe as stealth-Islamism -- efforts to reorder Canada and Canadians in the image of radical religious fundamentalism.
The defence minister must make it clear that there is no place in the Canadian Forces for ghettoizing recruits and granting special status on the basis of religion.
Naresh Raghubeer,
Ottawa
Executive director, Canadian
Coalition for Democracies
