Stephen Harper
Should Arrest Himself
And while he's at it, he can
lock up all the other Western
leaders who have savaged the
Muslim world too
By Robert Fisk
March 22, 2015 "ICH"
- "The
Independent"
- Is Stephen Harper off his
rocker? Forget his trip to
Jerusalem last year when the
Canadian prime minister said
that criticism of Israel was a
“mask” for anti-Semitism. Ignore
his utter failure to bring home
to Canada al-Jazeera journalist
Mohamed Fahmy, whose retrial was
staged by the Egyptian
government to give him the
chance to leave for his country
of adoption. Cast aside Harper’s
Blair-like contention that the
Islamist murders of Canadian
soldiers had nothing –
absolutely zilch – to do with
his decision to send Canada’s
F-18 jets against Isis.
Now Harper,
the man with the choir-boy good
looks whose pro-Israeli policies
might win him a seat in the
Knesset, is about to push a
truly eccentric piece of
legislation through parliament
in Ottawa. It’s called – and I
urge readers to repeat the words
lest they think it’s already
April Fool’s Day – the “Zero
Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural
Practices Act”. Yup, when I
first read the phrase “Barbaric
Cultural Practices Act”, I felt
sure it was a joke, a line from
the “Big Bang Theory” or a
Channel 4 mockudrama about Nigel
Farage’s first premiership.
Nope. It’s all
real. But let me quickly explain
that the “Barbaric Cultural
Practices” in question are
polygamy, “gender-based” family
violence, “honour-killing” and
forcing children under 16 to
leave Canada for marriages
abroad. I’ve no problem with
legislation against this, of
course. Nor have most Canadians.
I’m also
against illegally invading
foreign countries, colonising
other people’s land,
“waterboarding” and bombing
wedding parties, or firing drone
missiles into Waziristan
villages. But these aren’t quite
the “barbaric cultural
practices” Mr Harper has in
mind.
What’s odd
about the “barbarism” he’s
thinking about – although the
very use of the word “culture”
is intriguing now that Isis has
determined that “culture” is a
sin after the Tunis museum
massacre – is that these
“practices” are already
forbidden by Canadian law.
Polygamy is
illegal in Canada – although
Mormon polygamists in British
Columbia appear strangely
untouched by the new legislation
– and Canadians were a bit non-plussed
to learn from their government
last week that there are
“hundreds” of polygamists in
their country. As for “honour-killing”,
murder is murder is murder, in
Canada as in Britain and in the
US and in almost every other
country in the world.
No, the catch
is that this unique legislation,
which Canadian MPs will be
discussing again today, is that
it doesn’t come from Canada’s
perfectly capable minister of
justice Peter MacKay, but from
the Canadian minister of – you
guessed it – Citizenship and
Immigration. Now isn’t that odd?
The chap in
charge of Canada’s immigration
policies is Christopher
Alexander, who is himself a
pretty “cultured” politician, a
McGill and Balliol man, a former
Canadian ambassador to
Afghanistan, where there’s
plenty of polygamy and
“honour-killing” and child
marriage, and, well, let’s not
go into Afghan government
corruption, Afghan police
torture, drones and the rest.
Because in
truth, the new Canadian
legislation is about foreigners
or – more to the point –
Muslims. Hence the BC Mormons
have nothing to worry about.
Because the Zero Tolerance for
Barbaric Cultural Practices Act
(Bill S-7) – let us keep
repeating this weird name – is
playing what Toronto Star
columnist Thomas Walkom calls
the “foreign barbarian card”.
It foregrounds
not crime per se but crime
specifically associated with
Muslims - hence the Canadian
government’s legislative gloss
that the act is against barbaric
“traditions”. And Muslims, as we
know, have for centuries been
famous in Western song and
legend for harems, multiple
wives and disrespect for women.
There are
indeed plenty of things wrong
with Muslim societies. I’ve
written extensively in The
Independent about the scourge of
“honour killings” – the
slaughter of young women for
refusing arranged marriages or
adultery or who were merely
rumoured to have behaved
“immorally” (like calling a man
on a mobile phone) in Kurdistan,
Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan,
“Palestine”, Jordan and Egypt.
We’ll forget
for a moment that NGOs also told
me that per head of population,
“honour-killing” may be
practised even more widely among
Egyptian and Jordanian Christian
communities. For the Christians,
be sure, are not among
Christopher Alexander’s targets.
It’s odd too,
that “barbaric” is part of the
Isis vocabulary for foreigners
who bomb predominantly Muslim
countries – America’s bombing of
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria,
Lebanon, Somalia, Yemen and
Libya come to mind over the past
42 years – and collude with the
occupation and theft of land
from Arab Muslims by the very
same country whose critics are
in danger of being called
“anti-Semitic” by Stephen
Harper.
And you can be
sure that this same prime
minister, in his outrage at the
barbaric practices of Isis – and
Canadian Muslims – will
understandably now be avoiding
all talk of a little scandal
that must be bothering him quite
a bit in private: the Turkish
accusation that a Syrian
intelligence operative who
allegedly helped three British
girls cross into Isis-held Syria
was also working for Canadian
intelligence employees.
Accprding to Turkey, these
agents operated from the
Canadian embassy in Amman –
where the Canadian ambassador
was handpicked by the
aforementioned Stephen Harper
after being the prime minister’s
top bodyguard in Ottawa.
Now I’m not
going to take the side of the
Turkish police – they deported
me from their country in 1991
after I found Turkish troops
stealing blankets and food from
Iraqi refugees. But their
computer records reportedly show
that the supposed spy for
Canada, a certain Mr Rashed,
entered Turkey 33 times on a
Syrian passport and had also
travelled to Canada.
The man does
not work for CSIS, Canada’s spy
outfit, according to Ottawa
government “sources”. But
officially, CSIS, the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police – the
guys who always “get their man”
– and Harper’s office have all
refused to comment. The Ottawa
Citizen has been highlighting
another new bit of Harper
legislation, Bill C-44 this
time, which would allow Canadian
judges to authorise CSIS
activities abroad “to
investigate a threat to the
security” of Canada, “without
regard to any other law,
including that of any foreign
state...”
Plenty to
think about there. But no, it’s
those pesky Canadian Muslims –
or Muslim residents of Canada –
who are the guilty ones, those
who engage in “barbaric cultural
practices”. It certainly says an
awful lot about Harper’s
Canadian political cultural
practices.
© 2014 The
Independent