On Sunday March 17, Hassan Sajwani, an active Twitterati in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) quoted a warning his country’s foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan had delivered to Europe at the “Tweeps Forum” in Saudi Arabia in 2017.
The UAE foreign minister had cautioned Europe about the rise of Islamic extremists within the continent: “There will come a day when we see far more radicals, extremists and terrorists coming from Europe because of (a) lack of decision-making, and [European politicians} trying to be politically correct.”
Sajwani’s tweet recollecting the UAE minister’s 2017 warning turned out to be quite prophetic. The very next day, on Monday, Turkish-born gunman Gokmen Tanis brought the Dutch city of Utrecht to a halt when he fired on a tram (streetcar) killing three people and injuring three others.Dutch prosecutors investigating the attack say, “So far a terrorist motive is being seriously taken into account. Among other things a letter found in the getaway car and the nature of the facts give rise to that,” a statement said (in Dutch), without detailing the contents of the letter.
The Utrecht killing of non-Muslims by a Turkish terror suspect cannot be seen outside the recent massacre of Muslims inside two New Zealand mosques by a white nationalist and earlier massacres carried out against Christians inside and outside churches in The Philippines and Nigeria as well as in Pakistan, Syria, Iraq and Egypt.
While the world gave 24/7 coverage to the Christchurch mosque massacre and white folks rightfully denounced one of their own sons, to embrace their Muslim citizens, there was almost no coverage of the Muslim massacre of Christians in Nigeria just a few days earlier on March 4.
Similarly, on Jan. 27, Muslim jihadis bombed a Catholic church in Jolo, Philippines, killing 20 Christians, yet this attack barely caused a ripple. No weeping politicians, no candlelit vigils and no public demonstration by Muslims in Canada denouncing the jihadi terrorists the way whites denounced a white nationalist.
In fact, Islamists in Europe and North America used the outpouring of goodwill towards Muslims to target Muslim critics of Islamism. Death threats called for eliminating me, my friend Maajid Nawaz in U.K., Imam Muhammad Tawhidi in Australia and scores of secular Muslims were targeted.
These attacks angered Ensaf Haider, the Canadian wife of Saudi prisoner of conscience Raif Badawi. She tweeted: “Don’t be fooled by Pro-Sharia Islamists in North America. They may want u to believe they r saddened by the #NewZealandMosqueAttacks, but fact is they cant disguise the triumphant spring in their step. Now, they’ll milk sympathy and play victim while pushing their Islamist agenda.”
As a 2017 report tracking “violent Islamist extremism” found, jihadi terrorism has resulted in the deaths of 84,000 people. There was a total of 7,841 attacks – an average of 21 per day – in 48 countries.
These figures should alarm Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Opposition leader Andrew Scheer and the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh, but all three parroted the Islamist agenda of legitimizing the most regressive segment of Muslims in Canada while abandoning Muslims who have stood up against Sharia and the doctrine of Armed Jihad.
Which begs the question: Why do Christians have the right to laugh at a Ricky Gervais take on God and Jesus, but we Muslims dare not criticize the 17-times-a-day deriding of Christians and Jews that takes place in our mosques across the world?
Just as Martin Luther was no Christianphobe when he stood up to the Roman Catholic Church, Muslims who stand up to Mullahs are no “Islamophobes.”
Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and columnist at the Toronto Sun, is a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
