Little Mosque on the Prairie, Indeed

Denial Is Sickening
By Michael Coren
It's the episode of Little Mosque on the Prairie that I missed. The one where the father is so angry with his teenage daughter for not wearing the hijab that he strangles her to death. Perhaps it will be in the special features section of the DVD version, released just in time for the holiday that used to be known as Christmas, but not any longer because the word might hurt someone's feelings.

Not that we know why, or even if Muhammad Parvez killed his 16-year-old daughter Aqsa last week in Mississauga, Ont. But we do know that he has been charged with the crime and that friends told reporters there had been terrible arguments about Aqsa's refusal to wear Islamic head covering and that she wanted a different path from that of her family.

Most Canadian Muslim leaders immediately condemned what had happened but it didn't take very long for the usual suspects to explain on radio and television that the tragedy had nothing to do with the Muslim faith and that all religions contain extremism. Islam, we were told, is a religion of peace.

Which is probably just what the owner of a Christian bookstore in Gaza thought three months ago as he was murdered and his shop firebombed. Or Danny Pearl, shortly before the American journalist had his head cut off by Islamic terrorists -- who, naturally, filmed the whole thing and made sure their chants from the Koran were loud and clear.

Or the wretched gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia sentenced to 200 lashes for daring to be in a car at the time of the crime with a man to whom she was not married or related. Or the women stoned to death for adultery. Or the Iranian men hanged because they were homosexual. Or the women who lived and died under the Taliban. Or the Christians persecuted and killed in Pakistan, Egypt and Sudan.

Or the young women in France, Britain and all over Europe killed by fathers and brothers for leaving Islam, dressing like other girls or dating non Muslims.

Or the teacher who allowed a student to name a teddy bear Muhammad, or Salman Rushdie's translator whose throat was cut from ear to ear, or movie director Theo Van Gogh who was slaughtered like an animal in the middle of a Dutch street.

And on and on. On until the denial is sickening. It's cultural, it's because of colonialism, it's because of Palestine, because of Iraq, because of misunderstanding. Because of anything other than Islam.

Only a bigot would argue that every Muslim was violent or opposed to Western freedom. But only a coward or a liar would argue that there was not a profound and deeply worrying link between conservative Islam and myriad acts of terror, intolerance and hysterical anger.

It is not I who say this but the countless Muslims who take to the streets at the drop of a cartoon to scream for blood and war; or the Muslims who preach jihad in North America and Europe, where they enjoy open societies founded on Christian enlightenment.

They may represent a minority, but the harm they do is incalculable. This dysfunctional venom does not come from Christian, Jew, Hindu or Buddhist and fatuous relativism will only blind the foolish. It is time for free discussion in this free country, whether it offends or not.

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Coren_Michael/2007/12/15/4725863.php