Let me give you my impression of the Canadian Muslim mosaic. Our best estimate, as to who is saying what, comes from the survey done just after the Toronto 18 terror trial, in which 12% of Muslim Canadians thought the Toronto 18 were justified in the terrorist action they had planned.
Within the Muslim community we have very few academics or men of the cloth like our wonderful representative of the Iraqi government. It's such a pleasure to hear him. I wish there were more people like him. There are very few who are fighting for a separation between religion and state.
There are hardly any Muslim leaders who can stand up and say that the doctrine of armed jihad is disastrous for Muslims—forget about non-Muslims. Our problem comes from the inability of the western intelligentsia to deal with us as normal human beings.
I'll give you an example. Just two weeks ago, The New York Times produced a full-page ad by 23 Muslims from around the world, including former members of Parliament, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a retired lieutenant commander, and Naser Khader, who was a Danish MP, all of them declaring that the concept of the Islamic State is redundant and a challenge to modernity, and that if we don't fight it, we're doomed. There was not a single media outlet that wanted to talk to any of the Americans who signed it.
As a result, at the White House summit on violent extremism that's taking place on February 18, not a single one of those 23 signatories has been invited by the White House. The reason comes back to two things. There is the complete absence within the Muslim world of secular, liberal, non-religious Muslims as partners with orthodox conservative Muslims, as a moral compass rather than as a political force. On the other hand, those that you say wish to support...completely dismiss anyone who looks like my daughter, who works on CBC TV as a reporter, or my wife or my sisters, or my eight nieces, because none of them look like Muslims. If you cannot determine this racist bifurcation of the Muslim community as the pious and the impious, if that's a word, of the true Muslim and those like the professor and me, or the imam from Iraq, as the heretics.... If you don't do it, we have a catastrophe racing towards us.
I'll conclude with one thing. Please do not dismiss as frivolous the idea of educated Muslims who believe that this is a transit lounge, that the world has to come to an end before life itself can begin. Most people I talk to dismiss me for that, but this is true in every home, from the child going to a madrassa who is taught that. You'll have to be on the side of those who say “separation of religion and state” and “women's equality” and who say that if women are sent to the back they will not go to that mosque. The day you do that, we'll win.