Somebody needs to tell the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), a prominent nonprofit in the Great White North, that if you live by the witch-hunt, you die by the witch-hunt. Two years after the NCCM helped oust Collin May, a well-regarded lawyer and scholar, from his post as director of Alberta’s Human Rights Commission on trumped-up charges of “Islamophobia,” the organization was helpless to stop the ouster of Birju Dattani—a Muslim activist with a troubling history of promoting anti-Zionist propaganda on the internet—from his post on Canada’s Human Rights Commission.
The controversy over Dattani’s anti-Israel messaging began soon after the Trudeau government appointed Dattani director of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, a body charged with, among other things, investigating and sanctioning people who post mean and scary things on the internet. Soon after his appointment, which took place in late June, Dattani was accused of using X, then called Twitter, to promote an article comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and another equating the Palestinians to the Jews during the Holocaust.
Soon after the allegations came to light, Dattani apologized to Jewish organizations for the harm caused by the posts in question. It was to no avail. The revelations prompted a review of Dattani’s background, announced by Canadian Justice Minister Arif Virani on July 24. Virani initiated the investigation after it became apparent that the Privy Council, the body charged with vetting Dattani’s background, dropped the ball.
The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), a prominent Islamist organization, jumped to Dattani’s defense, declaring that he was the victim of a witch-hunt “based on misinformation and poorly sourced allegations.”
Dattani admitted to appearing on a panel with Moazzam Begg, a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay who was once “a confirmed member of Al-Qaeda” and “penned a book in which he freely admitted that he was a jihadist.”
Unfortunately for the NCCM, the allegations against Dattani were largely confirmed by outside investigators, whose findings were released in mid-August. While speaking with investigators, Dattani claimed he promoted the offensive articles not because he agreed with them, but because he wanted his Twitter followers to see them.
The investigative report stated: “Mr. Dattani advised that the reason for this was that his understanding of ‘Twitter ethics’ were that one didn’t ‘comment’ on the links that one was tweeting. A tweet, for him, was the equivalent of saying ‘look at this’ without comment.”
But the tweets were only part of the problem, with Dattani admitting to investigators that, in early 2015, he unwittingly appeared on a panel in London that included a speaker from Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT). It’s a troubling admission given that HT is a South Asian Islamist organization that seeks Israel’s destruction as part of a larger campaign to establish a global caliphate.
To make matters worse, Dattani admitted to appearing on a panel with Moazzam Begg, a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay who was once “a confirmed member of Al-Qaeda” and, according to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, “penned a book in which he freely admitted that he was a jihadist.” Dattani appeared on these panels while using the pseudonym of Mujahid, which in some contexts, describes someone committed to a holy war, or jihad, on behalf of Islam.
Regarding this pseudonym, investigators concluded that Dattani was “strikingly thoughtful in respect of what names he chose to use and when.” In academic and bipartisan environments, Dattani did not use the pseudonym, reserving it for largely Muslim audiences.
Dattani also provided a draft copy of his Ph.D. dissertation (which he summarized for a Muslim audience) describing terrorism as a “rational and well-calculated strategy that is pursued with surprisingly high success rates.”
In their findings, the investigators concluded that Dattani “intentionally omitted” information about his use of this pseudonym, which he was required to report in his application. Investigators also declared that Dattani failed to provide “details or additional information with respect to his past scholarship, speaking engagements or presentations.” In the face of these conclusions, Dattani resigned from his post, apparently before he even set foot in the office.
Dattani also provided a draft copy of his Ph.D. dissertation (which he summarized for a Muslim audience) describing terrorism as a “rational and well-calculated strategy that is pursued with surprisingly high success rates.”
The NCCM declared that Dattani’s ouster indicates that “it is fine to drag every appointee through the mud as long as they’re brown or Muslim.” The irony is palpable because the NCCM helped drag Collin May, a gay man, through the mud in 2022 when May was appointed director of the Human Rights Commission of the province of Alberta.
Back then, the witch-hunt was based on faux outrage over a scholarly book review Collin had written of Efraim Karsh’s well-received book Islamic Imperialism. Nobody complained about the book review when it was first published in 2009, but 13 years later, it was used to smear the author—who holds degrees from Harvard and France’s prestigious School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences—as an “Islamophobe.”
During the successful campaign to oust May from his job, the NCCM, which has ignored requests for comment, declared that the revelations about May’s 13-year-old article came “at a time when Muslims in Alberta, especially black Muslim women, have been under threat and facing unprecedented violence.”
“It was always egregious that a gay man with an Ivy League and French education was canceled for an academic book review of another academic—published by Yale University Press,” said Mark Milke, president and founder of the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, an influential Canadian think tank.
Speaking before Dattani’s ouster, Milke declared that NCCM’s defense of Dattani showed “the absurd age we are in: Governments and academia will hire, keep and defend antisemites, but will cancel a scholar for writing a book review that pointed out the obvious: Islam has an imperial history, just as selected other religions or ideologies or nations have. Book reviews pointing out historical truths are a danger to no one; antisemites are a danger to everyone.”
Ironically, if Dattani had promoted the articles he posted in 2015 today, he could very well be prosecuted under the Online Harms Act passed by the Canadian Parliament earlier this year. That law is enforced by the very commission Dattani would have been charged with leading.
Moreover, portraying the Israelis as Nazis and Palestinians as victims of the Holocaust clearly falls under the working definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association and adopted by the Canadian government in 2019. The definition clearly states that it is antisemitic to draw “comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
May, the victim of the 2022 witch-hunt, has little sympathy for Dattani.
If NCCM had its way, Dattani would be able to broadcast and legitimize the hateful ideology of anti-Zionism while prosecuting and punishing others for daring to speak the truth about Islamism.”
Sharing a stage with a member of Hizb Ut-Tahrir is not a mistake,” he said. “It is not something that just happens as though one is sharing a stage with other academics. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a notorious terrorist organization banned not only in the U.K. but in Germany, Indonesia and most Arab countries. Its stated goals are the creation of a strict Islamic caliphate and the implementation of sharia law globally, along with the elimination of Israel.”
“Hizb ut-Tahrir does not routinely appear on panels with those who are not supporters of its agenda, raising the question of why Mr. Dattani would be engaged in any format with this group while also appearing under his alias using his middle name,” May said.
By coming to Dattani’s defense, the NCCM, without saying so, was trying to establish a theo-political caste system in the Great White North in which some people get to speak freely while others don’t. If NCCM had its way, Dattani would be able to broadcast and legitimize the hateful ideology of anti-Zionism while prosecuting and punishing others for daring to speak the truth about Islamism. That’s a dangerous privilege to accord to anyone, especially a mujahid.
