Boston's Muslim Children

The Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center officially opened its doors last week.

As well as a worship center, it hosts a number of cultural programs, and a summer school for children.

The photo above shows nine-year-old Sarah Erritouni practicing calligraphy.

Watch this video, called "Summer of Learning", showing young Muslims who were clearly brought up in America and speaking English with no accent whatsoever, learning to read the Koran in what appears to be very good Arabic accents.

This is the assimilation that is not taking place, wherever Muslims are present in large numbers.

Little Mosque in the Basement

No more basement mosque at Regent Park

The Globe and Mail has a timely article on a makeshift mosque in a Toronto neighborhood. The article talks about a basement mosque in a building in Regent Park, a social housing conglomerate. Regent Park is now being revitalized, with old buildings being torn down, and new ones (mostly high rises) coming up. This mosque will have to go with the building.

The mosque members are at a loss. Their basement place of worship was free of charge. They didn't have to pay any rent. With the new buildings coming up, they will have to either pay rent for any new space, or outright buy the property to house their mosque.

But, they are already coming up with excuses. "People living in this [area] are low-income and can't afford to buy space," says [mosque] member Shahan Ahia.

So how did these Muslims manage to have the space rent-free in the first place?

Here is part of the answer. According to The Globe and Mail article;

Members of the Khadem centre [KPA: Notice that the space is called both a mosque and a centre] remain skeptical that they will get help from TCHC [Toronto Community Housing Corp.]. For them, the five-year-old centre is not simply a place to pray. On weekends, more than 60 children come to the centre to learn English, Arabic, math and computer skills or to be mentored by university-aged Muslims about being a good Muslim and getting a good education.

This "centre", which functions as an all-purpose Islamic centre, most likely gets its funding from various levels of the government. It likely gets it rent money as well as funding for the several activities described above. To get its government funding, its sales pitch is probably:

- It teaches ESL [English as a Second Language] (good for assimilation)
- It teaches special skills like computers (good for assimilation via getting youth career and job ready)
- It maintains a heritage language component by teaching Arabic to children (good for multiculturalism)
- It keeps the young well-monitored by having adults supervise ethnic-centered activities (good for multiculturalism)

All these are 100% guarantees that it will get government funding. That is how many other cultural centers acquire their monies. Scroll down at Canadian Immigration Reform Blog's list of agencies which receive money from the government. For example in 2008, the Muslim Community Services received $4,115,064.00, and the Afghan Women’s Counselling and Integration Community Support got $512,006.00 (Canadian dollars).

With the right project and the right proposal (easy to do with many helping hands out there), there is no reason for the Khadm Mosque/Centre to worry about closing down.

But, of course the problem is bigger than receiving government money. The problem is that this center has already declared, openly in this Globe and Mail article, that it is a Islam-centric center. So, the government is funding young Muslims to get a Muslim education, through language and religious training.

I wonder how many more "basement" mosques there are, how many of them are fully funded by government monies? And how many such stories it will take before Canadians realize who and what they are funding?

More Books for the School Children

October as Islamic History Month was created by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2007. It is still at its nascent stage, and we didn't hear advertisements about it months in advance as we do about Black History Month. But, it will only be a matter of time.

But what is equally perturbing is that Muslims are adamant on reaching school children. Two women for the University of Calgary's Faculty of Education have developed Islamic history books for grades 1-6. This was launched in time for last year's Islamic History Month. More books are in the works, especially for the grade 7-12 group.

Here is an article praising Muslim "scientists" those precursors to microchips and space travel by Mohamed Elmasry president of the Canadian Islamic Congress:

In some way, we all come in daily contact with microchips, space travel, medicine, physical sciences, mathematics, engineering, music, literature, arts, architecture, and spirituality. But do any of us , including contemporary Muslims themselves, fully realize how directly all of these advances and disciplines have been built upon more than a millennium of achievements by Muslim scientists, scholars, engineers and artists? Probably not.

It is high time for Islamic civilization to be rediscovered and celebrated by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, especially in the West. And it is equally important that we ignore all those who, for political reasons, have a longtime vested interest in dismissing or suppressing Islamic civilization, to the point where it has become scarcely known and not even a footnote on most school and university curricula.

Well, the reason why it is "not even a footnote on most school and university curricula" is because there is nothing to report.

I'm sure Rahat Naqvi and Sally Goddard have rectified that in their text books. We already know that schools are not much interested in teaching the truth.

"Being A Muslim"

Haroon Siddiqui at a PEN Canada event.
He was past president of PEN.

In 2006, the Toronto Star journalist Haroon Siddiqui was already preparing the way for Canadian schools by writing his book "Being a Muslim. (Groundwork Guides)".

Getting the population young is the smartest way for ideologies to pass on their message. Why not try that for religions as well.

The premise of this book is clearly outlined in the first chapter of the book:

Contrary to the popular belief that the West is under siege from Muslim terrorists, it is Muslims who have become the biggest victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001, as inconceivable as that would have seemed in the aftermath of the murder of 2,900 Americans. Since then, between 34,000 and 100,000 Iraqis have been killed by the Americans or the insurgents. Nobody knows how many have been killed in Afghanistan. In the spots hit by terrorists – from London and Madrid to Amman, Istanbul, Riyadh and Jeddah, through Karachi to Bali and Jakarta – more Muslims have been killed and injured than non-Muslims.

The approximately 27 million Muslims living in Western nations have been targeted in other ways. They have been victims of racial profiling and frequent identity mix-ups at airports and border crossings, where they may be harassed and sometimes detained. Monitored by both the secret services and the media, they must be careful about what they say in emails, phone conversations and in public. They must think twice about keeping a beard or wearing overtly Muslim clothing and be mindful of their behavior in public. They must keep proving, in school and at work, that neither they nor their faith fit the caricature of Muslims and Islam drilled into the public consciousness.

Two high school teachers from Manitoba review this book and both find "Being a Muslim":

...a highly-accessible guide to the faith, an exploration of the social and economic challenges faced by Muslims living in societies (both European and North American) founded largely on Judeo-Christian values,

One elaborates even further by saying:

As a social studies teacher, I look forward to taking the entire first section of the book as a study of current events and of the effective use of persuasive style in nonfiction writing. . . Siddiqui is unequivocal and effective in exposing double standards and inconsistencies in contemporary media coverage of news stories in which Islam plays a part. One can only hope that a publisher sees the value in taking Siddiqui’s research and clear style and expanding the work into a more comprehensive contemporary treatment of Islam for high school students...”

In other words, what these young students are hearing about Islam is all wrong and that Siddiqui counters all the negative reports about Islam in his brilliantly persuasive book. Forget about 9/11 and the 3,000 that were murdered, think about all those Iraqis and Afghans that have been killed by American (and now Canadian) forces. And let's not forget the Muslims targeted in Western countries, those countries founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and whose prime purpose is now to oppress these poor Muslims.

And just like I mentioned earlier, this seasoned teacher was struck by the "effective use of persuasive style in nonfiction writing." This is exactly one strategy that writers like Siddiqui would need to cultivate in order to falsify the information even his ultra-left newspaper reports as true.

Just the way to reach the young Canadian minds.

One more thing, this is a writer who has received the Order of Canada, the highest civilian order, for his "journalistic contributions as well as his voluntary work in helping to forge the new Canadian identity." I suspect in Siddiqui's world, Western civilization is a threat to his Islamic culture, and has no place any more in the "new Canadian identity" that he is forging.