Thank you. To answer your kind questions, I would start by saying that the public opinion, the culture, and the legal infrastructure in Canada are not easy to duplicate in Iraq or Syria or other places because there are cultural differences and we have to understand and appreciate those differences.
I was an advocate of democracy and liberalism and the peaceful transition of authority. However, time has shown the failure of democracy in our countries. There is a religious and cultural and intellectual structure that refuses democracy, and the rising tide of terrorism in our regions is due to the weakness of the central dictatorial state. To be honest, perhaps we have our differences. After all the experiences I have seen in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, and Afghanistan, I have given up on what is called democracy. Democracy is not good for those people. What suits those people is dictatorial, military, German-style rule following Atatürk's model. Atatürk has had the only success in changing an eastern or a middle eastern society, Turkey, into a nearly western society. The Atatürk experience of secular and military dictatorship is the only one that has worked.
If we try to use something like the Canadian system of democracy and human rights.... Human rights are for those who respect human rights. How are you going to give freedom to those who do not respect human rights, who want to kill you? Please bear with me.
In the Middle East, ISIL has not done anything outside of Islamic jurisprudence. When ISIL killed people and sold their wives, that was not something new. Sunni jurisprudence and Shiite jurisprudence both agree that Yazidis have no right to live. Either they embrace Islam or they die. The jurisprudence, Sunni and Shiite, believes that atheists have no right to live. Either they embrace Islam or they die. In the jurisprudence of both Sunnis and Shiites, a Muslim who abandons his Islam should be killed. All Muslims welcome a Christian who converts to Islam, but the reverse would lead to death.
So there is a cultural structure, an intellectual structure, and Islamic jurisprudence has all these structures. You've never heard a Muslim saying that to kill a Yazidi is illegitimate, even the al-Azhar Islamic institution never said that, despite the fact that it is a moderate institution, which I respect. They all say that those Yazidis in Iraq should either embrace Islam or be killed. You know how the jurisprudence, Sunni or Shiite, divides human beings into Muslims, who have the right to live; Christians or Jews, who have the right to live but who are to be treated as half-citizens or second-class citizens; and others, who have no right to live. That applies to Chinese and to other people who are considered atheists.