Mr. Speaker, when I was a child I dreamed of travel. When I became a young man I did my very level best to travel. Unfortunately the world is a very large place and I just could not get to all the corners of the world that I wanted to get to, so I decided to do something that reflects my ethnic origin which is British. I decided I would try to go to Timbuktu.
Timbuktu is on the other side of the Sahara desert. Timbuktu has a symbolism among the English speaking people as the place that is as far away as anywhere can possibly be, so it was a great adventure.
I embarked on that voyage in my early twenties. I was a graduate student at the University of Leeds in the north of England. I persuaded another young man who had the equipment, the rucksacks, the tents and all the rest of it, to hitchhike across France into Africa and across the Sahara desert to Timbuktu.
The reason I begin with this story is that it was my first encounter and my most memorable encounter with Islam. What happened is we arrived in Algiers on the day before Christmas. On the day after Christmas we set out on our journey from Algiers, the city, and we hitchhiked across the Atlas mountains. We realized that it was an impossible journey as we did not have the equipment or the money and we did not have the knowledge that would see us across the Sahara desert for 1,000 miles to see Timbuktu.
On a memorable morning we were outside an oasis just on the other side of the Atlas mountains, not really an oasis, a village. We were just in the semi-desert area of the Sahara desert and we resolved to hitchhike the first vehicle that came out of the oasis that morning.
In fact, two vehicles came out. They were two trucks and they had some people of the desert in the truck. I hesitate to use the word Arab because that does not really describe them. It is what people understand them to be. There were two rural Algerians or partly rural Algerians in the truck. Anyway, they said “come with us”. They put us on the top of the trucks which were carrying sacks of grain and they turned south.
For the next five days we were looked after by that party of Algerians in those two trucks. They put us on the top of the sacks of grain and they gave us the jalabas and we rolled across the Sahara desert.
One cannot imagine what the Sahara desert is like. One can understand why the great religions were formed in this backdrop of the grand erg, as they call it there, the great zero, because it is the most spectacular scenery that one can possibly ever hope to see.
The only thing that has ever matched it has been the High Arctic because as we rolled on the top of these trucks we would look out across the arid land to the mountains, and what we would see is the mountains that were purple and green in the distance. We could see where the whole idea of paradise came from, people who saw around them the desert waste and then looked over to see the land of milk and honey in the distance, but of course those hills were arid hills.
Those people who took us on that voyage across the Sahara desert, they were desert people. What I learned from them was that Islam is a religion of great generosity. They never asked about our religion. They never asked about our culture. It was sufficient that these two strange young men, attired in a very strange way, were standing there at the edge of the desert by the road and that we were seeking their help. For days on end the hospitality was absolutely incredible.
In the evening what they would do is they would stop the trucks. They would cut a dry type of bush that they would gather wherever they could, and we would have a campfire in which they would put a great tin bowl and they would fill it with semolina which is the material that couscous is made out of. Each man would sit around, there were a total of eight of us, and we would share from the two bowls and we would eat together.
At night what would happen is they would roll the blankets on the desert floor and we would lie down like cord wood, all of us, myself and my friend and the others, and the last man on the end would roll the blanket on top. Lying out in the great Sahara desert and looking up at strange stars, it was an experience that was a defining moment in my life.
After that trip as my young family was growing up, when my wife and I wanted to take holidays occasionally we took separate holidays. She would go to Europe. I would go to North Africa. Over the years I visited Algeria again. I visited Morocco. I visited Tunis. I was actually thrown out of Libya at gunpoint, so I have mixed feelings about Mr. Khadafi, and then I went several times to Egypt.
All of this is to say that I have learned much about Islam. It is not definitive perhaps, but I have an emotional feeling for it because I realize and I learned that it is a religion of generosity. It is a religion that seeks to help the oppressed and puts that hand out, no questions asked.
I should add in passing that it gave me an understanding of the so-called Palestinian problem because among Muslims, I think around the globe, there is this desire to help people who are oppressed and there is this strong sense that the Palestinians have been wrongly done by and should deserve the support of Muslims around the world, but in saying that, there is nothing in my experience with the many Muslims I have met both at home here and in Africa that would ever suggest that violence is a part of what Islam is.
I say all this in addressing the part of this motion that deals with the problem of intolerance in the context of this dreadful occurrence at the World Trade Centre, this terrorist act.
My experience in travel made me realize how much we are children of this world. Whether we are Hebrew, whether we are Christian, whether we are Hindu, whether we are Muslim, we are still people of this world and people of the same God, if you will, Mr. Speaker.
When we learn that kind of thing, we realize that Canada's strength is in the fact that so many people from various parts of the world have come to this land. While I had, shall we say, this enlarging experience because I travelled to a remote corner of the world, many Canadians do not have that opportunity.
In the last 25 years because there has been such an influx of people from all around the world of different races, of different ethnicities, of different religions, if you will, Mr. Speaker, I have great confidence, and indeed I believe I see it every day, that Canadians as a people have a level of understanding and compassion and tolerance for people who are different than them. It is the very essence of this country of Canada. It is the very essence of the charter of rights and freedoms.
When I come to this motion which suggests that there is a rising tide of intolerance, I hesitate because what I think we are really dealing with is natural fear that happens among any nation and any group of people when terrible crimes are committed, but I do not think for one moment that it is something we could characterize as a rising tide of intolerance.
I do not think it is something that is addressed by governments. I think of it as something that is addressed by parliament. We as members of parliament should lead the way and make sure that our hands are out there in our communities bringing people together in these troubled times to quiet the fears, because I believe absolutely that in the end Canadians are far stronger than any terrorists anywhere in the world.