Farzana Hassan writes about the latest goings on at the Centre for Faith and the Media (CFM):
First, under cover of a multi-religious, if essentially Christian institute, CAIR-CAN is being permitted to project itself as “moderate.” Its representatives pontificate as “Muslim leaders” – to use CFM’s website terminology – at taxpayer-supported public roundtables that even include media representatives of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Canadian Television Network.
With roundtables targeting journalists and journalism schools, Heritage Canada, through the CFM, is inadvertently allowing the Canadian wing of a US unindicted co-conspirator to groom the present and future generation of journalists.
In the process, they are squeezing off the stage those few moderate Canadian Muslims who have been determined enough to stand up to the CAIR-CANs and ISNAs of North America.
(…)
There are also implications, here, for citizens’ ability to rely on well-meaning religious and quasi-religious institutions in interfaith matters. For the most part, the CFM board that has overseen these developments has consisted of a range of distinguished, highly-intelligent and honourable Canadians, from former Alberta legislator Jocelyn Burgener and respected Calgary Herald journalist Licia Corbella, to religion writer Joe Woodard and the Canadian Readers Digest’s Peter Stockland. But, in the end, the organization has been used as a welcome mat for radical Islamism.
Neither is Heritage Canada or the Centre for Faith and the Media alone. Canada’s Manning Centre, another respected institution, scurried along to join the post-9/11 penchant for interfaith outreach. Led by conservative political icon Preston Manning, but without apparent familiarity with difficult Islamist issues, the Manning Centre established an interfaith unit that stumbled.
At last report, the Manning Centre had given a special place in its consultations to associates of the Islamic Society of North America, and the resulting embarrassment cannot be far behind.
