Symposium: Homegrown Jihadis. A distinguished panel provides a diagnosis.

By Jamie Glazov

The recent Mumbai horror has been yet another chapter in the dark tale of homegrown terror, as evidence indicates that British-born Pakistanis were among the Mumbai terrorists.

In this special edition of Frontpage Symposium, we have assembled a distinguished panel to discuss the problem of the jihadization of homegrown Muslims. Our guests are:

Brigitte Gabriel, a terrorism expert and the founder of ACT! for America. Her new book is They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It.

Raheel Raza, a leading Muslim reformer, award winning writer, professional speaker, diversity consultant, documentary film maker and interfaith advocate. She is the author of Their Jihad . . . Not My Jihad. Visit her site at RaheelRaza.com.

Christine Williams, the producer and host of the live current affairs Canadian daily talk show On the Line. The program has been recipient of five international awards. She holds a degree in Research Psychology from McMaster University and has distinguished herself as a political and crime reporter.

Joan Lachkar, Ph.D., a licensed Marriage and Family therapist in private practice in Brentwood and Tarzana, California, who teaches psychoanalysis and is the author of How to Talk to a Narcissist (2007), The Many Faces of Abuse: Treating the Emotional Abuse of High -Functioning Women (1998), and The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Marital Treatment (1992). Dr. Lachkar speaks nationally and recently presented, "The Psychopathology of Terrorism" at the International Psychohistorical Association, and at the Rand Corporation. She is an affiliate member of the New Center for Psychoanalysis, and writes in the Journal of Emotional Abuse.

Dr. Nancy Kobrin, a psycho-analyst, Arabist, and counter-terrorism expert. Read more ...

Source: FrontPage Magazine

Reclaiming Islam: A leading Muslim feminist discusses her faith - and her battle against Islamic extremism

By Jamie Glazov

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Raheel Raza, a leading Muslim reformer, award winning writer, professional speaker, diversity consultant, documentary film maker and interfaith advocate. She is the author of Their Jihad ... Not My Jihad. Visit her site at RaheelRaza.com.

FP: First, tell us a little bit about your own religious and political journey. Why, for instance, have you ended up being a moderate and not an extremist Muslim? Why you do not veil yourself etc?

Raza: I was born into a Muslim family in Pakistan where I became a Muslim by rote -- i.e. without really understanding what the faith stands for and what our prayers mean because they are in Arabic which is not my first language. I grew up in a culture where women were supposed to be seen and not heard so questioning was not encouraged. However I was a rebel since an early age and did question the status quo but luckily for them, left Pakistan.

I truly learnt about the beauty and depth of my faith when I came to Canada 20 years ago which is ironic when you think that I came from a so-called Muslim country to this secular land. How? Like many other immigrant parents, we were concerned that our kids might lose their faith. So we used to take them to Sunday school where they read the Qur’an (the Muslim scripture meaning The Reading) in English and studied the life of our Prophet. They were fortunate to have excellent mentors and teachers who were academics and scholars, well versed in both secular and scriptural subjects. In the process my husband and I learnt the spiritual message of Islam and discovered to our amazement, that there is great beauty and wisdom there.

Our knowledge and research allowed us to shed much of our excess baggage in terms of rituals and cultural norms being passed off as faith and we were able to remove the veil on our minds and see the beauty of this spiritual message and also find much to our amazement, how similar it is to the message of the monotheistic faiths that came before Islam – Judaism and Christianity. This set me on the journey where I am now – as an interfaith advocate creating understanding and dialogue between faiths because I realize that much of the racism and hate around us is based on ignorance. Read more ...

Source: FrontPage MagazineRaheel Raza
Latest recipient of The MASH Award

Report from the Northern Front: Montreal Redux

By David B. Harris

Canada's awakening to radical-Islamist penetration of its political, bureaucratic and social infrastructure, reached a watershed moment this month.

Quebec's new French-language anti-Islamist website, Point de Bascule – "tipping point" – sponsored a dramatic press conference in Montreal Oct. 2 on the dangers of hard-line Islamist penetration of Canada. But this was consciousness-raising with a powerful difference.

All three panelists were moderate Canadian Muslims. All three face death fatwas. And all three spoke unsparingly – some giving names and startling specifics – of the Sharia surge and stealth jihad in Quebec and the rest of Canada. Indeed, detailed allegations were heard about Islamist inroads into the federal New Democratic Party (NDP), Canada's social democratic party, and about infiltration of a government commission with power to define and silence "hate" speech. These were momentous claims in the context of Canada's national election campaign – the national vote takes place today. As evidenced by the number of journalists in attendance, the Quebec media were galvanized.

India-born Dr. Salim Mansur of the University of Western Ontario opened by calling on Canadians to end the political correctness and self-censorship that has muffled efforts to debate the stealth jihad – the gradual radical-Islamicizing of Canadian society. Like other speakers, he distinguished between moderate Muslims and Islamists, and warned of accelerating fundamentalist efforts "to establish a parallel society within Quebec and within Canada, as they are doing in Europe, that will be administered on the basis of Sharia." Read more ...

Source: IPT News

The Islamist elephant in the room no politicians will acknowledge

By Barbara Kay

I had the privilege of spending a few hours today, October 2, amongst the bravest people in Canada.

One, Marc Lebuis, is a name you won't recognize, because up to now he's kept a low profile as the one-man show running www.pointdebasculecanada.ca. This is an anti-Islamist site that brings francophone Quebecers the news and frank opinions on the relentless push of the soft jihadists in our midst to Islamicize society, opinions that the mainstream media are too politically correct to publish. Marc and some close associates organized today's press conference on the subject, "Political Islam - A Threat to Our Freedoms."

The three other brave people appearing with him should be household names, but their courage and eloquence is, shamefully, only known and saluted by a relative handful of grateful Canadians: Salim Mansur, Tarek Fatah and Raheel Raza, three Canadian Muslims facing death threats by other Canadian Muslims for exposing the dangers of Islamism, a totalitarian ideology that wears the mask of religion.

The room at the Omni hotel in Montreal was filled to capacity, reverberating with frequent applause to statements like these from Salim Mansur: "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion."

Appreciation was shown as well for the statements of Tarek Fatah, who spoke about the threat to freedom of speech posed by Islamists who constantly seek to chill any perceived criticism of any Muslim. In explaining the danger Islamism poses to society, Fatah said that "Islam is to Islamism as uranium is to weapons of mass destruction." Having lived 30 years in Pakistan and 10 in Saudi Arabia, Fatah knows intimately what constitutes "soft jihad" when he sees it. He expressed his sorrow, as a lifetime social democrat that after 17 years of engaged support for the NDP, he could no longer be affiliated with that party. He saw the doors opening to Islamists under Alexa McDonough and now, under Layton, he has seen them "flood" into the party. Read more ...

Source: National Post