Juno News - The True North Report： Let's talk about the Islamic Party of Ontario

00:00:00.640 Hey guys, Candice Malcolm here. We are live. Happy New Year. Hope everyone had a very nice

00:00:07.320 and calm and relaxing holiday. This is our first live broadcast of 2019, so hope this

00:00:14.920 is finding everyone well. Let me know where you're watching from and what you did over

00:00:20.800 the holidays. I think most people are now back from holidays, although I guess some

00:00:25.680 people are still on vacation and will be back at work next week, but lots going on

00:00:31.260 in the news today. I couldn't help but do a live over one particularly concerning

00:00:37.140 item that was in the news today, so I will get to that in a minute. I'll just wait

00:00:42.480 for a few more people to jump on here on the Facebook live. It always takes a while

00:00:48.420 to get people watching on Facebook. Over on Twitter, people jump on right away.

00:00:54.800 And that's great, but I like to wait a couple minutes just while people are

00:01:00.560 jumping on on Facebook, so hope people had a good vacation. I was down in Palm

00:01:06.800 Springs, California myself, and there's a lot of Canadians down there. I was I was

00:01:13.420 pretty surprised. I've been down there before, but over the Christmas break it

00:01:16.220 just seems like that's the place to be for Canadians. So my husband and I went

00:01:21.020 hiking and we saw like four people in a row with either wearing like Edmonton

00:01:24.780 Neuler hats or Canada shirts or speaking French, obviously Quebecois French, Quebec

00:01:32.280 French, and it was kind of nice to be around a bunch of Canadians. So I hope hope you

00:01:40.020 guys had a good break. Hopefully wasn't too cold or snowy where you were. All right,

00:01:46.500 let's let's get to it here. You might have seen this link popped up over the holiday. I

00:01:53.500 myself saw it. It was getting shared on Twitter and on Facebook. And what I'm

00:02:00.940 talking about, of course, is this new political party called the Islamic Party of

00:02:05.100 Ontario. And you might have seen this. It was getting shared quite a bit on the social media

00:02:13.600 over Christmas and New Year's. And I have to admit, when I first saw it, I thought it was

00:02:19.800 some kind of a joke or a prank or, you know, just online kind of troublemakers, because it

00:02:25.760 just seemed too bizarre to be real. And especially reading through the language that they use. So, I mean, it's almost

00:02:35.100 exactly what you would expect for folks who follow and are concerned by radical Islam

00:02:41.520 and some of the sort of fundamentalist approaches that are taken within and by

00:02:47.340 those who sort of, you know, are fundamentalists within their religion. But the wording is

00:02:54.300 just kind of funny, like basically what the platform calls for here is that since the

00:03:01.080 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes that Canada is founded upon principles, it

00:03:06.700 recognizes the supremacy of God. So since our constitution is based on that line, the

00:03:12.920 supremacy of God, and since the Islamic party believes that by supremacy of God, that

00:03:19.200 means Allah for them. So therefore, basically God, Allah is the natural governing body of Ontario. And

00:03:28.080 they want Ontario to be ruled by Sharia, they spell it all out. Islam means surrender and peace. They

00:03:35.940 give you a long sort of justification and history of how it is that their God is superior. And then

00:03:44.040 they go into all of the really dicey kind of stuff that fundamentalists believe in. And I mean, just the

00:03:54.000 language, this is why I didn't really think it was real at first, because I'll give you one passage

00:03:58.140 here. It says, the relationship established under a marriage contract is a sacred union between a man

00:04:03.900 and a woman. God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. That's a direct quote from their platform. So,

00:04:11.580 I mean, that just doesn't really seem like something that a serious political party would write. It seems

00:04:17.000 like the kind of silly argument, I guess, that was sort of made by the Christian right like 20 years

00:04:25.720 ago. And you don't really hear that anymore. And so here it is right out in the platform of this

00:04:32.240 political party. And that's just sort of one example. There are many. And so basically what these folks are

00:04:40.940 calling for, like I said, is Sharia law in Canada. And my colleague over at the Toronto Sun, Tarek Fattah,

00:04:48.660 had an article out today about this group. He's done some digging and some research into it. And

00:04:56.400 someone's saying on Twitter that they're also trying to advocate for Sharia across all of Canada,

00:05:02.320 not just Ontario. Yeah, that's right. Because it's based on their principle that they believe the

00:05:07.920 Charter of Rights and Freedom in Canada is actually talking about their religion. Of course, you know,

00:05:13.040 when Charter was written, that the Charter of Rights and Freedom was written by Pierre, when Pierre

00:05:17.880 Trudeau was in power, he was a devout Catholic. And so presumably, you know, they're talking about a

00:05:24.340 Christian God. And Canada was founded by Christians, and it was founded as a Christian nation. So a little

00:05:33.300 bit of confusion. But yeah, as my colleague Tarek Fattah points out, basically, the principles that

00:05:38.640 they want are to establish Islam as a natural religion of Ontario, to quash LBGT rights, because

00:05:46.060 quote, God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. They call for a complete ban on abortion. They call

00:05:52.660 on an end of the concept of gender identity. And they call on a complete ban of liquor, drugs, adultery,

00:06:00.680 and gambling. There was also sort of a creepy passage in here, let me see if I can find it.

00:06:07.020 I forgot to highlight it. But it was something along the lines of, you know, all people are the

00:06:14.200 children of God. However, Muslims are the sort of chosen people of God. And so they sort of outline

00:06:23.480 the idea that there would be different rights for people of different religions, which is pretty

00:06:29.600 counter to life in Canada. So anyway, my colleague Tarek Fattah wrote this piece today in the Toronto

00:06:38.360 Sun. And he unveiled an interesting tidbit. So according to the Sun, and according to this article,

00:06:48.680 the Islamic Party of Ontario was officially reserved with elections Ontario in October 2018,

00:06:54.380 and more steps with more steps required to become a formal party. So this is this is real. This isn't

00:07:03.320 some kind of a twisted joke. This isn't, you know, a group of sort of renegades or a group of people

00:07:12.020 who have created this as a joke. This is real. They're registered. And they actually are proposing

00:07:18.660 this. They want this to be a thing in Canada, which is kind of, you know, concerning. Is this

00:07:25.420 where our country is headed? The idea that there will be political parties who are openly advocating

00:07:30.480 for very illiberal ideas, for religious governance, for Islamic law in Canada, not just for Muslims,

00:07:38.920 but for all Canadians. That's sort of seems to be where we are headed as this this thing is real.

00:07:46.300 Interesting, too, when I first stumbled upon this, this page, this Islamic page, Islamic Party of

00:07:53.560 Ontario, the comments on the bottom, because there's a comment section, and they were, they were

00:08:01.220 actually all pretty, you know, positive. It wasn't people, you know, making fun of how offside and

00:08:09.720 how outside the norm this is. You have people saying, you know, good start, good job, interesting,

00:08:15.640 intriguing, outstanding, peace be upon you. You know, there's, there's still a lot of these

00:08:21.940 comments up there, but now it's mixed with Canadians who have also found this page and are

00:08:27.820 questioning, you know, why this actually exists. People saying that Islamic Sharia law is not

00:08:36.020 welcome in Canada, etc., etc. So there is now a mix in the comments section, but it's still

00:08:41.480 surprisingly positive, given how offside these are. And that, I guess that's part of the thing

00:08:49.040 that really just surprised me about this, this page is, you know, usually people who have these

00:08:53.640 sort of fundamentalist views, don't broadcast them out in the open in Canada, they sort of keep them

00:08:59.340 hidden within their own community, they deny them when accusations are made in the media,

00:09:03.660 or if a quote is taken out of context, like someone records a sermon in a mosque, and then it's

00:09:10.880 interpreted into English, they'll usually say, you know, it's taken out of context within the broader

00:09:15.820 context of what we're talking about. Whereas this is in plain English, spelled out for all to see

00:09:22.280 exactly how extreme some of the ideas are that come from extremists and fundamentalists in the Muslim

00:09:29.440 community. So back to Tarek Fatah's story, he not only confirms that the party is real, and that they

00:09:39.100 have officially registered under the Elections Ontario, but also that the leader of the party,

00:09:47.740 the head of the party, individual called Jared Anwar, had previously threatened Tarek Fatah. So back in

00:09:54.880 October, he wrote a column that was written about American Jewish activist Laura Loomer. He described

00:10:02.640 Tarek Fatah of the Toronto Sun as an Islamophobe, an Islamophobe. So that is, someone's saying there's

00:10:12.540 no fan of Islam, but you have zero proof of these ridiculous claims. A website means nothing. It's not

00:10:18.460 just a website here, folks. This is an official political party that has registered in Ontario. So

00:10:24.360 it's not just a random website. That was my point that I made earlier, if you were listening. When

00:10:30.120 I first saw the website, I thought it was just a random kook running a website. The story in the

00:10:34.600 newspaper today confirms that this is a real political party, and it's run by an individual

00:10:40.680 who's actually pretty high profile and influential in the Thorncliffe neighborhood, Thorncliffe Park

00:10:47.800 neighborhood in Toronto, which, as people might know, that's the same area where the Danforth shooter

00:10:56.120 was from. So anyways, this is not just a website. This is a political party. And so the individual who

00:11:04.920 runs the party had once called Tarek Fatah Islamophobe. That's an odd accusation because Tarek is

00:11:12.120 himself Muslim and not just that, but he is a Muslim activist. He's a crusader. When I say crusader,

00:11:18.120 I mean he is a strong, steadfast defender of Muslims in the West and defending Western values. So he's an

00:11:27.560 advocate for modernizing Islam and progressive sort of liberal Islam that fits within the Canadian context.

00:11:36.040 And he's very critical of radical Islam. So it's bizarre and stupid to call him an Islamophobe.

00:11:43.480 He doesn't just get called Islamophobe by this group. He gets called an open enemy of Islam and a hate

00:11:49.880 purveyor, which is a pretty harsh criticism of a pretty remarkable individual. Tarek Fatah is a hero. He's

00:12:00.360 no stranger to controversy. He's had death threats and fatwas against him in India and Pakistan in the

00:12:06.760 past. He was actually, there was two individuals in Toronto that were arrested outside of his home.

00:12:13.240 And he, you know, he was the subject of many death threats. So he's used to this, but I think it's

00:12:21.960 pretty alarming and concerning that this is all happening in Canada and that the head of a political

00:12:27.560 party would openly issue a threat, a veiled threat, an open threat to a journalist and a Muslim activist,

00:12:35.000 a dissenting voice within the Muslim community in Canada. That's really counter to, I think, Canadian

00:12:43.400 rights and freedoms in our democracy, the norms that we operate in. Political parties shouldn't be out

00:12:48.600 making threats, especially against journalists. And if you claim to be the Islamic party of Ontario,

00:12:53.960 you shouldn't run around calling critics Islamophobes and targeting dissenting Muslims and name calling

00:13:01.640 them. So it's all pretty interesting and alarming. Whoops. Sorry about that. And I think that this is

00:13:12.440 going to come as quite a concern to most people because this is sort of where we are, where we're at in

00:13:19.000 2019 is that Canada is a free and open society where people can say and do what they want. We don't

00:13:26.280 have restrictions on speech. We don't have restrictions on political parties that say that you can't be a

00:13:32.920 political party if you believe in certain things. And so this is sort of the inevitable consequence and

00:13:39.160 outcome of our sort of free and open society juxtaposed with the sort of cultural relativism and mass

00:13:47.480 migration and reluctance to call out and criticize other cultures. So, you know, you have liberals who

00:13:54.920 want to celebrate diversity and want to celebrate things like, you know, having plenty of Muslims in

00:14:02.520 Canada. But at the same time, you know, a lot of the positions and the ideas and the values that this

00:14:10.200 Islamic party of Canada is presenting are incredibly counter, you know, to a free society, but also to

00:14:17.320 just sort of liberal progressive values. I mean, they want to outright ban homosexuality. They want to

00:14:24.200 outright ban alcohol use, outright ban abortion, ban drug use, marijuana, you know, all of the things that

00:14:34.280 the left advocates for. And it's going to be interesting to see how these two competing forces

00:14:44.200 come together. And, you know, who's going to speak out about this? What will Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

00:14:51.240 have to say about a political party like this? I'm sure that many of the people who potentially might

00:14:57.240 support this party are allies of Trudeau, maybe voted for Trudeau. And yet at the same time, you

00:15:05.400 know, the progressive sort of values that Trudeau champions are not at all represented in this vision.

00:15:11.720 And, you know, if it were a conservative group, if this were the, you know, the Mormon, the Mormon

00:15:18.680 Party of Ontario, and it had the exact same platform and the exact same views, you can you can imagine how

00:15:25.000 quickly and easily it would have been condemned, would be condemned and the subject of sort of

00:15:30.040 mockery and investigative reports and all that kind of thing. And yet, you know, because it's the

00:15:36.200 Islamic Party of Ontario presenting very liberal ideas and views, there hasn't been any news stories

00:15:42.040 written about it yet in Canada. There has been that one story that I mentioned by Tarek Fatah,

00:15:47.400 which was an opinion column. I saw something quickly written up about it

00:15:52.120 in the Post Millennial. Here it is, Elections Ontario grants Islamic Party of Ontario first step towards

00:16:00.360 registration. So this is the first news report I've seen from independent website source, the Post

00:16:07.720 Millennial. And then there's some stories out of Israel about it, Canadian journalists threatened by

00:16:14.760 Islamic Party. So nothing yet from the mainstream media. We will have to wait and watch

00:16:21.960 what their reaction is. But yeah, you know, this is this is sort of something that you could see

00:16:30.120 coming. It was inevitable in Canada that eventually there would be these political parties that break

00:16:37.160 off and have the sort of fringe ideas. It's interesting that they promote them out in the open.

00:16:43.240 Because again, usually Islamists and fundamentalists try to hide their views and they're not so coy about it.

00:16:49.560 They don't put it in writing. They don't put it in plain English. And yet here we have a political

00:16:54.040 party doing just that. So are they emboldened? Are they ignorant? Are they naive? Or, you know,

00:17:00.600 this is just what they believe and they think that they might there might be a political appetite

00:17:05.560 for it. What do you think? Let me know in the comments. And yeah, we'll leave it at that. I'll do an update

00:17:12.440 if there are more stories or if we learn more about this political party and as the story progresses.

00:17:18.440 But I had to just jump on and talk about it because I think it's pretty alarming, pretty interesting

00:17:25.480 and pretty disheartening, especially the fact that the leader of the party is allegedly threatening

00:17:31.800 and name-calling a journalist and a dissenting Muslim voice, my colleague Tarek Fatah, the Toronto Sun.

00:17:39.480 So I'll leave it there. Thanks so much for tuning in. Again, happy 2019. Hope everyone's doing well.

00:17:46.440 And I will be back live again on Friday. So take care. Please like and share this video.

Juno News - January 03, 2019

The True North Report： Let's talk about the Islamic Party of Ontario

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