Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2015

[Tarek Fatah]

Well, Turkey was a member of NATO when NATO needed troops to send to Korea. It had a surviving army after the Second World War because it didn't take part in it. Turkey was essential to guarding the southern flanks of the Soviet Union.

Today Turkey is the leading force behind Islamism, both funding it, giving it refuge, and treating its ISIS soldiers over there. Plus, it is the prime backer of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and, in partnership with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is the prime opponent of what we know as western civilization, to the extent that Turkey now claims that Columbus never discovered America, that it was some Turk who discovered it.

Irrespective of that, Turkey's hands are bloodied in a genocide with the Armenians. Turkey has killed Kurds with an abandon that the western world should be ashamed of because they looked the other way. Kurdistan has been occupied by Turkey for decades. The only people who fought ISIS were the Kurds.

Last week, we had a conference in London, where Turkey was present and the Kurds were not allowed. Even Canada today considers the PKK as a terrorist organization. So the people backing terrorism are allies, and the people fighting terrorism, on the books of our clerks and bureaucrats and officials, are our enemy.

The only way you can do this is if Turkey is out of the inner circle of NATO that is the target of the very enemy that is fighting it. We cannot do this by imposing sanctions on Russia but not on Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The sanctions you need to impose are first on Saudi Arabia, then Turkey, and then with the Russians you will at least be able to talk instead of having a war.

Unless and until you stand up to Saudi Arabia and the medieval monstrosity of the punishment of women and gays and blacks, an apartheid regime where blacks earn one-tenth of the salary of white Americans.... It's only present in Saudi Arabia with our support.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Would you not think that if you developed a strategy of countermanding the terrorist groups—and suppose that NATO took part in it and took up this strategy to develop it because they are the European and North American countries—would it not be best to have a country like Turkey represented on it? Would they not have credibility to be involved in helping to develop a strategy? Would they not participate?

[Tarek Fatah]

I would say no.

I know Turkey. I am a student of Turkish history, and I can tell you that there are two Turkeys, but Professor Mansur would be better qualified to shed light on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Professor, for a very quick response because we have to move to the next round.

[Dr. Salim Mansur]

We can debate this issue about Turkey. Turkey is a divided country, and though the present regime of Erdogan is tending towards the direction that Mr. Fatah has described—and I agree with him—I think we should not lose sight of the fact that Turkey has a very large segment of secular Kemalist forces and that is an internal struggle that is going on.

We should be going back to the larger question and identifying and targeting our support for people who share our values.

If the chairman would give me a couple of minutes, or a minute more—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're going to have to come back to that, and maybe Ms. Brown will pick it up.

We are starting the third round.

Ms. Brown, the floor is yours.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You are a tight timekeeper.

Mr. Fatah and Mr. Mansur, both of you have talked about the radicalization that takes place in mosques in our own country.

Could you educate me a bit? In a local mosque, I know of a family who, because of their own financial circumstances, would never have been able to afford a trip to the hajj, the pilgrimage. Who would supply the money, and how would those people be chosen to go? There was a family of eight people who attended. How would they be chosen?

[Tarek Fatah]

Islam doesn't require them to do hajj.

It's very simple. If you can't afford it you don't do hajj.

The money comes from Saudi Arabia. Part of it pays for the tickets and part of it is left over for administration. It's those administrative costs and the money laundering that takes place every Friday in the bags and the sacks that are carried on. They end up saying, “Oh, brothers, we collected $67,000 today”. That's how money is being laundered in a mosque.

Sending those hajjis over there impresses you. Did anyone tell you that Islam does not require anyone to do hajj if he or she has a single penny of debt?

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you.

Do you have any comments, Mr. Mansur?

[Dr. Salim Mansur]

Yes.

The money being raised from within and coming from outside is going into various activities within the community that showcase their social welfare in the broader sense. Behind that activity is the ideology preached from the pulpit or within the corporate body of the institution, whether it's the mosque institution or the mosque-related school institution. That is the ideology we're talking about. You have this witness over here who is an imam. He's dressed in an imam's garment telling you that the problem that we are faced with that our country, the west, does not understand is the jurisprudence of Islam, whether it is Shiite or Sunni. The jurisprudence of Islam is a human creation; it's not the Koran. The Koran has to be interpreted. The jurisprudence of Islam takes us back to the 12^th, 11^th, and 10^th century. It was a totally different world. To understand the Taliban, to understand ISIL, even to understand the Iranian you have to go back to the 12^th and the 13^th century.

We are spawning the 12^th and the 13^th century mentality right here inside a community. We are a postmodern society. We are in the 21^st century. There is a schizophrenic cultural reality in the Arab-Muslim world.

May I have another minute, Mr. Chair?

The question the gentleman raised...and this is what I need to tell you, is every equation has two sides. We are focused on ISIL, Islam, radicalization, and so on. We have forgotten the side of the equation that is the west. We have lost the confidence and the values of the west. What is our value? What is it that we fought for and defended? The gentleman over there raised the question about containment and about what's happening in the Muslim world. What's happening in the Muslim world we do not understand because we have forgotten our own history.

This year is the 800^th anniversary of the Magna Carta. Two years from now we will be celebrating a 150^th anniversary but it will mark the 500^th anniversary of Martin Luther pinning the 95 theses in the church at Wittenberg. Our democracy, our secular values, our liberalism, did not emerge overnight. It was a long and often bloody struggle with revolutions, the guillotine, and decapitation. We are seeing in virtual time, in real time, our history played out. That's where we talk about containment. We cannot go into Pakistan. We cannot go into Saudi Arabia or Iran to tell them how to...they have to discover it.

I was born in India. There was 200 years of British rule in India before the division. My friend also thinks of himself as an Indian though I was born in India. We are the world's largest democracy. It happened as a result of a long historical process. Britain stood with India for 200 years. Do we have the courage to stand with the men and women in the Muslim world who are fighting for values that we understand?

Very quickly, to one final statement on whom we should support. We need to target it. For instance, we give hundreds of millions of dollars to countries like Bangladesh. This is foreign affairs and international development. Could you, dear honourable member, would you put a condition on the money that you put to Bangladesh that not one dollar will go to Bangladesh unless they respect the right of free speech and the rights of women?

We have this woman, Taslima Nasrin. She's running from country to country. She cannot find a place to live because the Islamists are hounding her, all because she wrote a book. Salman Rushdie was lucky that he was in England, that he was protected. We can do that. We can send a message. That's the historical message we have to send.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Could I just finish with one comment?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Very quickly.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

On Saturday morning I happened to be watching the news and I just caught one statement that said democracy and Islamism are running in parallel and will never cross. I guess the statement is that the two of them are almost opposed to each other.

[Dr. Salim Mansur]

Here we are. Here I am.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'm going to have to cut both of you off actually.

We're going to try to catch you at future rounds.

Mr. Dewar, sir, the floor is yours, five minutes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

There are a lot of absolutes being thrown around and I just want to maybe bring us back to the fact that, as a committee, we're trying to make recommendations to government as to what we should be doing. I want to go back to a question my colleague asked a previous guest witness on our obligations from the United Nations Security Council resolutions 2170 and 2178, which aren't often talked about. It's basically on financing and on our role to deal with radicalization here.

I'm hearing from witnesses that we should be looking at where money is coming from here in Canada and being sent abroad and making sure that we're doing our job. That's fine. I'm also a little confused though because I appreciate what, Mr. Fatah, you're saying about going to certain people and not others.

Just for the record, you probably know this, but we have members of our caucus who are Muslim women and who, whatever you want to call it, I forget how you're putting it, look like you or your daughters and whatnot. I think we should be careful not to over-stereotype because there are people who are.... It's a diversity and the community is diverse. I do understand your concern about who we confer with but I also want to put on the record that we have people who happen to be members of Parliament, doctors, lawyers, etc., and Muslims, just like myself as a politician who happens to be a Catholic.

It should not be the ultimate focus but it should be something that we connect with to help us understand how to deal with various communities where people are involved. So I'm not sure.... I take exception and I'll put aside your ideas on immigration. I do have concerns about Saudi Arabia, and it's on the record, in terms of us selling arms to them.

But when it comes to actually dealing with and taking on our responsibility, do you not believe that there has to be some engagement with religious communities and mosques to connect with the very people who we're concerned about being radicalized? The RCMP has a list. We know that. We also want to make sure that the list isn't going to grow. In fact, we want to make sure that if anything that list is going to eventually be zero. But at the end of the day how do we connect with people who we are concerned are being radicalized if we're not actually engaged with faith leaders?

[Tarek Fatah]

To begin with, the New Democrat members of Parliament who are Muslim share the same views as I do. They are members of Parliament primarily as politicians not because they're Muslim.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Correct.

[Tarek Fatah]

We just ended up over here. I didn't come to Canada to be a Muslim. I came from Saudi Arabia to get away from the atrocities over there. So I have deep respect for not only the women but the gentleman, my namesake in your caucus, who is also.... They have a French background. They have a North African background. They know this but they are unwilling to get engaged with us, or maybe your caucus doesn't allow it for them. The only people New Democrats are engaging with are—you know it and I know it—the Maher Arars and the Monia Mazighs of this world. I dare say that in this entire struggle we didn't hear a word of where they stood on the various terrorist organizations within Syria.

But coming to your point of how to engage, I do not have to engage with Nazis to fight Hitler. I fight them and I defeat them. The whole notion that there is no truth, this post-modernist notion that everybody has a point of view, would only be valid if the people coming to this country would be standing up and owning up to the oaths they took and not send women to the back of the bus or not declare that gays have to killed.

I can assure you, and your members of caucus would bear me out, that no more than 10% of Canada's Muslims are linked with any mosque. In Toronto, we have half a million Muslims, 50 mosques. On Good Friday, the only day where there's no obstacle to going to a mosque, 450,000 of them stay home.

In RCMP....

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I appreciate your point, and I entirely disagree with you about whether or not any of our caucus members should or shouldn't talk to anyone. That's up to them.

[Tarek Fatah]

But they don't talk to us.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Well, these are individual freedoms, my friend.

[Tarek Fatah]

I understand.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

We all have the right to talk and not to talk.

I'm trying to get an answer from you on how we engage with people in the community somewhere. What I'm hearing you say is don't talk to anyone—