Editor's Note: The National Council of Canadian Muslims asked the government of Canada to declare January 29 as a Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia. The NCCM claims that the only reason for the shootings in a Quebec City mosque on that day in 2017 was because the victims were Muslim. However, as Tom Quiggin writes, the real reasons are far more complex. He places the deadly January 2017 attack in the context of that mosque's Muslim Brotherhood connections and other incidents in which it was targeted. Which makes commemorating the attack as a random incident of Islamophobia on a designated day every year highly questionable.
Police survey the scene of a shooting at a Quebec City mosque on January 29, 2017. The one-year anniversary of the Quebec City mosque shooting will be commemorated over a period of four days, beginning today. It was on Jan. 29, 2017, that a shooter entered the Islamic cultural centre of Quebec City and killed six while injuring 19 others, five seriously.
The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau requesting that January 29 be designated as a “National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia.” This was the first anniversary of the attack on the Centre culturel islamique de Québec or CCIQ. Alexandre Bissonnette is charged with having killed six and wounded eight. In the letter, NCCM Executive Director Ihsaan Gardee says that this horrific act of violence occurred “solely because the victims were Muslims”. The January 29, 2017 attack was not an isolated event. In June 2016, a pig’s head was left at the mosque. Three weeks later the mosque’s neighbourhood was pamphleted and labelled as a Muslim Brotherhood centre. Following that, a blog site appeared. This blog also identified the CCIQ as a Muslim Brotherhood centre and raised the question “which one is more serious, a pig’s head or a genocide?” This suggests a connection between these three events. The January shooting followed and in August 2017 the President of the mosque had his car burned in an arson attack. The mosque annually donated money (2001-2010) to the charity International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN). This charity had its status revoked by the Canada Revenue Agency and was declared a terrorism entity by the Government of Canada. The reasons given were that it was set up to fund Hamas, which according to the Hamas Covenant, is one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestine. Abdullah Assafiri is a leading figure in the mosque. The mosque has identified him as the “directeur de la formation et de l’animation religieuse au Centre culturel islamique de Québec.” He has been a spokesperson for the mosque at government hearings. As was revealed in the Holy Land Relief Fund terrorism funding trials in the USA, the Muslim Brotherhood had a list of its Shura Council members in North America. Among them was Abdullah Assafiri, who was listed as the Masul (leader) for “Canada-East”. He played no role in the trial. In his testimony to the Senate of Canada, Muslim Brotherhood expert Dr. Lorenzo Vidino identified the NCCM as a Muslim Brotherhood front group. NCCM was formerly known as the Council for American Islamic Relations Canada (CAIR CAN). The parent agency of the Ottawa-based NCCM/CAIR CAN is CAIR USA. This has been confirmed by the U.S. State Department, CAIR USA and by the website of NCCM/CAIR CAN itself, which states that the Washington-based CAIR USA is its parent organization. Despite this evidence, Mr. Gardee has testified to the Parliament of Canada and to the CBC that the organizations have no relationship. CAIR USA was also shown in American court documents to have been founded to support Hamas and it was listed as a terrorism entity by the United Arab Emirates in 2014. According to Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star (former editorial page Editor Emeritus), the Muslim Brotherhood does not exist in North America. Mr. Siddiqui quoted Dr. Jamal Badawi for this assessment. Perhaps Mr. Siddiqui was unaware that the North American Muslim Brotherhood lists Dr. Badawi in its 1992 phone book as being on its Shura Council. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, stated “it is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to the dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to expend its power to the entire planet.” Unfortunately, this goal has the consequence of putting Muslim Brotherhood followers into conflict and competition with those who do not submit to their cause. The shooting at the mosque was a complex event, surrounded as it was by four other traumatic events. These highlight the political nature of the Islamist organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood. As such, we are left with a question: Was the mosque attacked solely because it was “Muslim” or is the situation something more complex? Tom Quiggin is a former military intelligence officer, a former intelligence contractor for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a court appointed expert on jihadist terrorism in both the Federal and criminal courts of Canada. The information for this op-ed is derived from the recently published book, SUBMISSION: The Danger of Political Islam to Canada – With a Warning to America, written with co-authors Tahir Gora, Saied Shoaaib, Jonathon Cotler, and Rick Gill with a foreword by Raheel Raza. This article was originally published on the Toronto Sun website on February 3, 2018, and can be viewed on their site by clicking here.