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I was given the chance to talk to 600 Muslim Canadians a few days ago. The dinner was in an Ottawa banqueting room and the guests also included the imam of the Ottawa mosque, the Ottawa chief of police and sundry uniformed Canadian army officers.
The imam sat between me and the Canadian capital's top cop - a genuinely decent guy who wanted Muslim Canadians to regard him as a friend - and we were even able to joke about the reality of those "random checks" which Muslims of Middle Eastern origin and a certain R Fisk seem to receive at North American airports. All well and good, then, until I got up to speak.
I warned the audience they might not like all they heard from me. And sure enough, when I told the audience that they were perfectly at liberty to condemn Israel and America - indeed, that they should condemn both when they abuse human rights, occupy other people's countries and shoot innocent civilians - but that I wanted to know why I so rarely heard them condemn the vicious police states in the Middle East and other areas of south-west Asia from which they originally came, I was greeted with silence. A smattering of Muslim diplomats sat like statues, thus identifying the cruelty of their regimes. The only immediate applause came when I remarked that the moment Western soldiers started shooting at Muslims in Muslim lands, it was time for the soldiers to withdraw.
Two interesting phenomena emerged from this remark. The first was that, when I finished, both the police chief and the Canadian army officers joined the applause. Canada's hopeless military involvement in Afghanistan is a subject of considerable controversy within the Canadian military. When the politicians have had their say, I've discovered, soldiers usually let us know their views.
Much more revealing, however, was the long car journey I took next day across the frozen tundra of Canada during which two Muslim Canadian men - yes, yes, they had beards - explained to me just why their community was so silent about the iniquities perpetrated by their local dictatorships back home. I had suggested that they were rather too beholden to those regimes - for funding and political support. They agreed - up to a point.
"Mr Robert, you have to understand something," the driver suddenly said. "They have their 'mukhabarat' agents here in Canada. Whenever there is even a dispute between families, anyone who's angry can report back that his antagonist is anti-regime. We have to remember that we have families still in our Arab countries. They can be arrested. Or we can be arrested when we go back to visit them."
Of course. Only a Westerner - only someone who automatically assumes that anyone with a Canadian passport is safe - could have failed to spot the flaw in the country's brave multiethnic society: not that Canada's vast communities from every part of the world live in the land of the free - which they do - but that their freedom is frighteningly circumscribed by the ruthlessness and lack of freedom in the countries from which they came.
And so I began to learn what it is like to be an Arab Canadian. It takes only a local argument to have an email winging its way back to Tripoli or Cairo or Damascus or the Gulf, informing the local despots that their dual citizen - Mohamed or Hassan or Abdulrahman or whatever - is a potential subversive and, ergo, a terrorist. And, so great is the co-operation between our beloved Western intelligence agencies and the torturers of these repulsive dictatorships that this "intelligence" is shared.
So only days after the original message has gone off to the Arab world, the "mukhabarat" privately tell the Canadian intelligence service - a truly silly institution called CSIS - that Mohamed or Hassan or Abdulrahman is a "terrorist". At which point, Mohamed or Hassan or Abdulrahman come under observation from CSIS as potentially dangerous terrorists in Canada.
At which point I realised exactly why my remarks in the Ottawa banqueting hall were greeted with a frozen silence. It isn't long ago, for example, that Maher Arar, who lives in Canada, was picked up by the FBI's goons while in transit at JFK airport and "renditioned" to an underground prison and torture in Syria, courtesy of information provided by CSIS and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The Canadian government subsequently awarded Arar $10m for this outrageous experience. But who wants to speak out against one's country of origin if it's going to end in the company of a well-trained torturer?
Just as Tariq Ali revealed the darkness behind the Bhutto legend in the London Review of Books last year, so my favourite lawyer, Gareth Peirce - she of In the Name of the Father fame - has now shone her crimson torch upon the British version of these iniquitous goings on.
In the same publication, she has given the most detailed account so far of the fraudulent British promises given to Arabs who chose to return to their savage homelands - rather than languish under a form of house arrest in the UK - that they would be neither tortured nor imprisoned after they went home.
When Benaissa Taleb and Rida Dendani were packed off back to Algeria, for instance, a British diplomat had promised that they would be detained for only a few hours. But they were both interrogated and beaten for 12 days in Algiers before being sentenced to years in prison. When Dendani appealed desperately to the British Special Immigration Appeals Commission, the SIAC didn't even bother to reply. And there was no reason why they should.
As Peirce has now revealed from court papers, private memoranda between the Home Office and Anthony Blair (I am truly sorry that I must mention this wretched man's name again), a caution from civil servants about the probable torture to which deported Egyptians might be subjected if sent to Cairo, was greeted by our former prime minister with the words: "Get them back." In reference to the Home Office's concern that Egyptian assurances could not be trusted, Blair wrote: "This is a bit much. Why do we need all these things?"
Am I the only one to react to the preachy, hypocritical sermon by this detestable man at Westminster Cathedral on Thursday with something more than disgust? Because it is his callous, immoral reaction to that deportation case - and the response of countless political leaders like him - towards Muslims in Europe and North America that led to that cold, hollow, frightening silence in the Ottawa banqueting hall. If I had been among the audience, I now realise, I would have remained silent too.
Robert Fisk's new book The Age of the Warrior: Selected Writings, a selection of his Saturday columns in The Independent is out now.
© 2008 independent.co.uk
32 Comments so far
Show Allsuhail-shafi -- "The challenge is to protect the world from terrorism while preserving the fabric of international law and justice and avoiding travesties like the war in Iraq and the detention at Guantanamo."
I completely agree with you and i couldnt have phrased it better. Terrorism whether committed by the State or a band of extremists is terror nonetheless.
Its easier for the State to use the threat of terrorism and unravel civil society at large and commit acts of terror that would make terrorists proud and by the same token small groups of terrorists (like in Afghanistan and Pakistan currently) can create hell.
Whats so heartbreaking for me is, if my children were going to be charged $1 trillion for MidEast change anyway, why couldn't it have been on the side of those silent faces in Ottawa.
We KNOW Mubarak of Egypt is a dictator, yet we fund him anyway! What has history taught us about dictators? Basically, that 'benign dictators' are one in a million. Most ordinary human beings, given ultimate control of an entire countries population, descend into a pit of arrogant madness into which the victimized faces of their own punyness becomes an accusation, so they extinguish them. The MidEast is RIFE with such countries, and WHAT would a trillion dollars buy in making it better!! Paying for economic development (locating factories in and around Cairo, for example), paying for civil infrastructure (bridges, dams, roads, road signs, non-political stuff that benefits everyone). If we must, splash the American flag on everything we build and give away, to give a plug for the good ol' USA.
But, no, we give Mubarak billions every year that he HAS to spend on our military hardware (our LAWS enforce this 'welfare' for our defense industries), which he then obligingly aims at his own people. Half of it, I'm sure, ends up rotting in the Sahara (just as most of our own military hardware ends up rotting in the Mohave - you can 'thank' Bush, at least, that we're actually USING some of it nowadays).
BTW: don't tell me we are in a 'War on Terror'. Of course we are. Its a war of intelligence, a defensive war, mostly, and a drop in the defense fund bucket. What Bush has said is: 'gosh, we were just attacked by a handful of terrorists bearing box cutters, we better build several more aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines to deal with this threat'. And America bought it!!!
Thank you luckylefty. I want you to understand where I am coming from. I am an antiwar activists and I too am opposed to the many excesses of the Bush administration. But please do not forget that although the threat of terrorism is frequently blown out of proportion by the powerbrokers and policymakers of the world, the threat in itself, as the Air India tragedy and the 9/11 catastrophe proves, is a reality. And the recently busted terror plot in the UK which revealed how terrorists were planning to simultaneously detonate around half a dozen planes over the Atlantic, only serves to drive this home even more.
The challenge is to protect the world from terrorism while preserving the fabric of international law and justice and avoiding travesties like the war in Iraq and the detention at Guantanamo.
O ROE: I have made many long, informed comments on CD over the course of the past year or so. I have less available free time these days, thus shorter postings. Check the archives...
suhail_shafi April 5th, 2008 4:39 pm "The threat that Canada, the US, indeed the whole world faces from terrorism..."
Is overblown, created by monsters through false flag operations who exploit it for their greed and use it to oppress their domestic populations. PERIOD. THAT'S IT!!!
"TERROR" Is the excuse du jour for EVERY 30 cent nickel plated thug for sticking the broomstick up the ass of anybody they don't like. You know, like the WHITE cops in NY do any person of color they can get into the basement. Terror is done by people in Uniforms.
WAR ON TERROR, DRUG WAR, WAR ON TERROR, DRUG WAR, WAR, WAR, WAR, WAR, WAR, BE AFRAID!!!! BE AFRAID!!!! BE AFRAID!!!!
"So just shut up when the Boss rapes you. You should be grateful. We're protecting you from the bad terrorists. THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE." Sound familiar?
No Mr. Suhail_Shafi, not the terrorists. The heads of STATE are the terrorists who fuck the children of the world BECAUSE THEY CAN and BECAUSE THEY LIKE IT.
I'm sorry. You're going to have to take your false flag GWOT scam somewhere else.
No sale.
Pieces of 8.
kalia, I would like to ask you - on what basis do you think I am a Mukhabarat agent ? On the basis of my views, which in my opinion correspond to reality. Please respond to my question.
I do stand to my original assertion that in a peaceful, democratic and open society like Canada it is rather far fetched to perceive Muslim people as ``fearful''.
yap.chongyee wrote:
For all those who hate China, I say back to your face !
**********
This is too precious. First of all, nobody mentioned China. My guess is that any mention of "oppressive regimes" is enough to trigger Yap's guilty conscience:
"Well you see, there was this oppressive regime..."
"How dare you talk about China that way!"
Secondly, I've read a few of Yap's posts now, and his/her recurring thesis is that since the United States is a criminal state (no arguments here), no citizen of that country has the right to criticize the government of any other country (particularly not China, which is clearly perfect in every way). This is the argument of a three-year-old.
Frankly, "Yap's" posts are so over-the-top that I'm not convinced he/she is a real person, but I get a kick out of them regardless.
Where I live 1/4 mile on right is Fundamentalist Muslim Cami (Turce' spelling), around same corneris Kosher Jewish School and Synagogue. Never problems.
Yet I am Married to a Muslim for a quarter of a century, active politically, trapping my emails phone is tapped. F them. Since CD now censors and is moderating Gener$l Str#ke when spelled correctly, I can't understand why you all still trust this site. No more, and I give to them monthly. F$$K YOU CD!
Siouxrose, what is up with you? Always with the commentary, never with a serious post? Per chance a Moderater????????????
BAKUMIN: You present a compelling argument. I often think it's MEDIA hypnotizing persons the same way that faux filler passing for food has fattened Americans; but it does take 2 to tango and that lack of willful pursuit of knowledge is certainly in evidence. Do you remember the quote White quote from "The Once and Future King" that spoke of the wonder of learning, it being the central thing that life's disappointments could not encroach against?
IOWABLACKBIRD... I haven't flown out of the US for several years, but I wonder if my name is on one of those Orwellian lists... such scary times we live in. Even "Law & Order" posits environmentalists as likely eco-terrorists in some of its engaging plot lines.
suhail_shafi - 'mukhabarat' agent? May be.
Fisk seems to miss the mark rather badly. Why should Canadian Muslims, from Canada, start firing at the Saudis, Sudanese, and Pakistan governments, as just a mere couple of examples of the possibilities per Fisk? Granted, all are bad governments and often time client governments of the US, but still?
For American, British, and Canadian Muslims to start pot shotting against other than than own governments, seems to me to be aiding and abetting their own governments in imperialism more than anything, and that's what Fisk would have these people do. He's out in Far Right field with this position. That's the reason they did not applaud him.
Fisk at least got it right, belatedly, that Canadian Muslims would endanger themselves by attacking US and Canadian client regimes in Arab and Muslim countries. Duh... For Fisk to be held up as some sort of Left genius re ME politics, he sure falls short at times.
the intelligence gathering apparatus is global, i'm certain mr fisk realized this before his conversation w/ the driver. sometimes it's difficult to put simple truths we understand into context.
thanks r fisk for helping me to put global authoritarian government influence into context, the nuts and bolts of how small observations made in one country generates repressive responses in other countries.
the article immediately conjured up images of american peace activists being detained in airports following 911....
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2001m11.1/msg00060.htm
{Armed government agents grabbed Nancy Oden, Green Party USA coordinating committee member, Thursday at Bangor International Airport in Bangor Maine,as she attempted to board an American Airlines flight to Chicago.
"An official told me that my name had been flagged in the computer," a shaken Oden said. "I was targeted because the Green Party USA opposes the bombing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan."
Oden, a long-time organic farmer and peace activist in northern Maine, was ordered away from the plane. Military personnel with automatic weapons surrounded Oden and instructed all airlines to deny her passage on ANY flight. "I was told that the airport was closed to me until further notice and that my ticket would not be refunded," Oden said.}
i know it's old news, but why is the government maintaining a database of political dissidents in the US ? and how does a peace activist, environmental activist equate w/ a fundamentalist islamic terrorist in the mind of cheney/bush ? (of course the bin laden family was being flown out of the US as these events unfolded).
fisk's article makes me suspicious of how closely americans (notoriously xenophobic) are monitored overseas. what information does our government share about american citizens w/ repressive regimes around the world ?
COMarc April 5th, 2008 1:25 pm,
the thugs cooperate around the world to suppress our voices... excellent observation.
...peace...
Wonder how many 'mukhabarat' our Loonitary Decider has welcomed into the country formerly known as the United States of America to help keep tabs on any Muslims who dare to speak the truth?
Of course, the LD has his own mukhabarat corp:
"A new development over the past five years is the use of "minders" by federal agency public affairs offices."
Or, as Ari "Freedom Watcher" Fleicher says: "Americans need to watch what they say, watch what they do." Or we'll do it for them...
comarc;
the troll above was revealing himself to be a member of one of the foreign intelligence bureau's. In his case a goon from China's gov't that will not allow any chance to pass him by when it involves damning the Tibetans when they've been attacked and occupied (illegally)...
Yep, evil is as evil is.
All Canadians are subject to a similar backlash, no matter what your ethnicity. It's the new "Canadian Miranda"
"Anything you say can and will be held against you the next time you try to cross our southern border."
Oh goodie, now the spam and the trolls are completely random.
The thugs and the torturers will always cooperate. Even when there is supposedly a great divide of a clash of civilizations between them. Even then, the thugs and the torturers of the arab world and the thugs and the torturers of the western world collaborate to make sure that people are silenced.
This reveals much about the nature of our thugs and torturers, which can be remembered when they rattle on about freedom and try to use American exceptionalism as an excuse to start more wars.
Evil is evil is evil.
For all those who hate China, I say back to your face ! For all those of your on CD who insulted our China I recommend that your read the account of one JAMES MILES OF THE BRITISH MAGAZINE "ECONOMIST". He was in Tibet on the very day that the riots started. I heard him speak on this subject on Aljazeera TV.
Bakunin's comment on Tony Blair reminds me of the late and much missed English comic, Linda Smith, who said: "I never expected anything from Tony Blair, but he still managed to disappoint me."
Just goes to show how truly ignorant (and tolerant) of our so called allied regimes (Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, UAE etc.) we are and the long reach of these governments' security apparatus. Not a democracy among them-including Egypt which is a democracy in name only. This of course assumes we in the west just don't hand over people in the first place. As for the Arar affair, and others, as a Canadian I was and am still revolted by the actions of all concerned including our so called security providers - namely CSIS and the RCMP.
Thank you, Mr Fisk, for correctly characterizing Tony Blair as the detestable hypocrite that he is. Together, Bush and Blair and the high officials in the US and Britain who supported them in their immoral folly, brought disgrace onto the Anglo-American world and hastened the American slide into second or third class status in the world. As an American who had long observed the seeds of a peculiarly American fascism in my country, unfortunately I cannot say that I was surprised by the American response to the 9/11 attacks though I certainly was disappointed and continue to be. What the US suffers from it seems to me is a populace too many of whom are as incurious as our monster president is, incurious and ready to accept information from anywhere as long as it doesn't require any effort to look below the surface and see if the information holds up when held to the light. Too many Americans now aren't even equipped to have a healthy skepticism about the powers that rule here, so they become apathetic and apolitical and give themselves over to mass sports and other entertainments, the modern day bread and circuses. So the atrocities will continue and imperial overreach as well.
Very interesting article-although it is easy in Canada for agents of other governments to intimidate members of a particular community. In Surrey British Columbia Sikh on Sikh violence is very common, and in Vancouver and Richmond BC asian immigrants form their own segregated communities.
We'll all be silent, soon...(and for similar-reasons).
If they cannot speak out for humanity then we must - at whatever our personal cost. Humanity is all one and life is too short to put up with bullies.
The thing that struck me about this article was how divided the world is, how clear is the distinction between 'goodies' and so-called 'baddies'.
We are about as far away from world peace as we are from the Milky Way! By 'we' I mean the fractious, primitive, cruel creatures called humans.
We need a makeover, a drastic one. The current model is obsolete and pathetic.
P.S. Check out Saving America on my blog if you want.
There is a certain pattern to Robert Fisk's articles. Most of them are centered on the truth but have a predictable tendency to exxagerate the truth, sometimes subtly, sometimes wildly.
Unfortunately this article verges on the latter. It would be all to convenient to condemn peaceful countries like Canada for sending terrorism suspects, especially in view of recent travesties such as the Maher Arar affair. The threat that Canada, the US, indeed the whole world faces from terrorism, is however frequently forgotten.
Need I remind the readers of Common Dreams that the worst act of aviation related terrorism prior to the 9/11 catastrophe was perpetrated in 1985 against an Air India jetliner that was blown up over the Irish sea, killing over 300 innocent men, women and children for no reason at all. And although the outrage was supposedly carried out against Indians in retaliation for the actions of the Indian government, the majority of victims were innocent civilians. In this light, Canada's eagerness to defend itself from terrorists is not only understandable but also altogether justified.
Back to the question of Muslims in Canada, and by default in the US. Contrary to Mr Fisk's assertions, most enjoy the freedom to criticize and question the policies of the US overseas, and despite popular misconception are not the terrorized, marginalized community that they are sometimes depicted as. They are highly educated, affluent, and increasing citizens of the countries they live in. If they wish to participate in the peace/antiwar/antiestablishment movements, they are free to do so, although from my perspective the anti war movement in the US is a mostly white Middle Class endeavour.
But the idea that Muslims who open their mouths and talk too much run the risk of subject to Maher Arar-style deportation horror stories simply does not correspond to reality. Neither does the idea that their respective homelands, many of which have had to deal with domestic terror issues for decades are terribly keen on having second generation immigrants from half a world away brought back simply on account of their political views. Governments, whether Arab or North American, democratic or autocratic are simply too busy dealing with their own domestic affairs, terrorism included, to waste their time with people whose only offence is to sport the wrong, undesirable sort of political views.
As always, Robert Fisk is motivated by little more than the desire to speak the bitter truth. This article, unfortunately does not give an accurate, realistic of the situation of Muslims in North America today, however.
Dictators worldwide gain comfort and legitimacy while admiring their peer in the Oval Orifice.
Et tu, Canada?
We also have become a fascist state.
Maybe neither of us were never not ...
Whatfools sez:
If they cannot speak out for humanity then we must - at whatever our personal cost. Humanity is all one and life is too short to put up with bullies.
***************
It is instructive to me that one of the first things that repressive regimes either here or overseas (I am speaking from the point of view of a citizen of the US)seek to do is to use comunity to destroy community.
Whatfools has made a sage observation and the moreso as we have just observed the 40th. anniversary of the death of Dr.MLK Jr. When we all realize that "humanity is one and life is too short to put up with bullies" we will have the collective clarity of vision and strength of will to deal with such bullies and shut them down.
Dr. King had fianlly connected all the dots with his rejection of miitarism, extreme materialism, and racism with his opposition to the Vietnam war He was on the verge of initiating a peaceful revolutionary change with the poor people's march (which was to be attended by delegations of poor Appalachian whites and many Natine Americans in addition to African-Americans)--towards the end of stopping "business as usual".
Will we learn or will we just slouch in a continuing drift towards some totalitarian Gommorah (to use a Robert Borkism!).
The only reason Mr. Fisk got a response in private is becasue Muslims are like the rest of us, they most often want it both ways.
These people who have moved here from other countries, may have done so partly to escape their oppressive regimes. Mainly they have come here for a better life. If some of these people got a chance, they would try their best to make their lives as akin to that of their homeland as possible. And that include the very customs that endanger them when they go back.
And the chinese only know one way for they have never lived under real freedom. Both ways under a totalitarian regime.
The commonality here is that both believe of freedom under the sword.
That there must be an overarching specter of violence for there to be peace. Sounds like the Neo Cons too.
How can one person get on this website and speak for all 1.2 billion chinese? Does he speak for the nation of China? Can he?
Or does he speak for the Governemnt of China? We all know what they stand for.
O Roe
Thank you for your post.
I am curios about the stresses you go through being so involved in the Muslim community. I have so far only had one of my posts censored at CD, and that was about HRC.
I do believe in their right to amdinister this site as they see fit. I too was a little disgruntled after my post did not appear.
I plead that you stay on this forum and make your voice heard. We need your comments here, and the direction it might go. Someone in your situation has had to be in a lot of singular situations and has something we can learn from.
"but that I wanted to know why I so rarely heard them condemn the vicious police states in the Middle East and other areas of south-west Asia "
The truth is all you gotta do is turn the idiot box on and you hear condemnation of the regimes he talks about ... in fact thats all you ever hear ... persistently, all day long from rush limbaugh to fisk !!
Which is why when you make a trek to hear a supposed left wing 'guru' talk you dont wanna hear the same shit again about how oppresive the muslim middle-east regimes are. You wanna know why we have our hands so far up their asses.
You want a few intellectuals/journalists etc to condemn our own governments for what weve been doing rather than get lectured about the very governments they ran away from !! Fisk increasingly comes across as a patronizing, english matron !