Posted on 09/13/2003 4:18:51 PM PDT by Pikamax
My B.S. filters automatically switched to maximum bandwith while reading this article, but either the Canadian gov't linked them to terror or they did not.
Mr. Kutty is the father of Faisal Kutty, a lawyer affilitated with Muslim civil-liberties groups. In the past, the younger Mr. Kutty has represented individuals and charities whom the Canadian government has tried to link to terrorist groups, most notably Ahmed Said Khadr, an Egyptian charity worker whose sons remain detained in Cuba after being arrested in Afghanistan while fighting for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
This Faisal Kutty guy is quite a character. Dollars to donuts he's a Hamas, or perhaps Hezbollah operative. (No doubt the kind who claim to be part of the 'political wing' of a terrorist group rather than the militant wing, as if there is any meaningful difference.
I notice that the article says he is involved with "civil liberties" groups but manages not to name exactly what groups he belongs to...
Get a load of this article :
Canada: Angry Muslims switching party allegiances
Andrew Chung for Toronto Star
7 January 2003
Bitterness taints the voice of Faisal Kutty, a 34-year-old Toronto lawyer, Muslim and card-carrying federal Liberal, when he talks of the governing party to which he belongs.
"I was shocked by them caving in to the Hezbollah issue," Kutty said.
The Anti-Terrorism Act 'Bill C-36' "really upset me. I'm watching closely the position on Iraq. Will they totally give in to the United States? I am so disillusioned with where the Liberals are going."
Angry over what they see as a failure of the governing Liberals to protect them in a security-conscious world, members of the Arab and Muslim communities warn that the party cannot count on their vote in the next election.
Community leaders say the traditional support for the pro-immigration Liberals is eroding, and allegiances like those of Kutty are shifting to the New Democratic Party.
"For the first time the NDP has been able to attract a fairly significant number of members of these ethnic communities into its ranks," said Zafar Bangash, 52, publisher of Crescent International, a bi-monthly news tabloid for the Ontario Muslim community.
"It has to do with the kinds of policies it has adopted and issues it has spoken about since Sept. 11 and the war hysteria that has been created."
The NDP has spoken out against the government's sweeping anti-terror legislation passed one year ago, which expanded police powers and secret intelligence hearings, and tackled terrorist financing.
The Anti-Terrorism Act was criticized as too broadly impinging on civil liberties.
The NDP has also repeatedly highlighted the problem of racial profiling at the U.S. border, where members of Arab and Muslim communities are being photographed and fingerprinted.
It has spoken out firmly against military action in Iraq and members have criticized the government's recent extension of its ban of the military wing of Lebanese organization Hezbollah to cover the whole group.
The NDP's Alexa McDonough was the only party leader at a candlelight vigil for Maher Arar, an Ottawa man deported by the U.S. to Syria for alleged terrorist ties.
"Muslims are feeling under siege," said Toronto community activist Uzma Shakir. "Their faith is being demonized and associated with terrorism. We can't travel, even with a Canadian passport; we don't know if our country will stop us from being deported. We don't know who will be picked up by whom and when. Our citizenship can be taken away."
So, Shakir said, a movement away from Liberals, under whose governance this perception has flourished, is not surprising.
Toronto Liberal MP Derek Lee (Scarborough-Rouge River), whose constituency has a large Muslim population, said he has had to "put up with criticisms of my party and my positions," including from Ontario NDP Leader Howard Hampton and McDonough at events in mosques.
But there has been no erosion of civil liberties, he said, and the NDP is "fear-mongering" in the Muslim community.
"If there has been a shifting of support," he added, "in my view it has been marginal."
He may be underestimating the undercurrent.
Ayub Qureshi, 65, a Scarborough grocer and producer of a radio show called "Voice of Pakistan," said he has warned Lee, whom he considers a friend, about the shift in allegiances.
Qureshi himself has voted Liberal since he came to Canada from Kashmir in 1969. He even met the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau.
But he recently took out an NDP membership.
As the NDP leadership vote nears, on Jan. 25, rookie Windsor MP Joe Comartin appears to have benefited the most from this community disaffection.
He went to Iraq on a trip funded by Palestine House, a Palestinian cultural centre based in Mississauga, and reported on the devastation he saw.
Comartin has criticized Israeli "atrocities" in the occupied territories, but also denounced Palestinian suicide bombings.
Of the 4,000 members Comartin convinced to become paid party members, two-thirds are Arab or Muslim or both.
"I made a conscious effort to reach out to them," Comartin said. "They are alienated from the Liberal party and are looking for a new home."
There are nearly 300,000 Arabs and West Asians in Canada, according to the 1996 census 85,000 in Greater Toronto.
Estimates place the number of Muslims in Canada at 650,000.
There's a pretty good chance Kutty is also affiliated with the Palestine House
Who's next, clergymen of the Religion of Peace?
GO DEAN!
- "Uproar over Canadian Muslim clerics expulsion," By Khalid Hasan, Daily Times, Pakistan, Sept 13, 2003, http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_14-9-2003_pg7_42
WASHINGTON: The Muslim community in Canada and the United States is in an uproar about the arrest and deportation to Canada of two respected Muslims clerics by Florida immigration authorities.
The two clerics Ahmad Kutty, 59, and Abdool Hamid, 37 who landed at Fort Lauderdale from Toronto on September 11 were told by one of the immigration officers, You guys have picked the wrong time to fly.
They could not be admitted because of security reasons, Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Nina Pruneda said, refusing to elaborate.
We cleared them. We didnt think there was any reason to detain them any longer, Federal Bureau of Investigation Miami spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said. Whatever Customs decided to do, it wasnt anything we told them to do. This would mean that there was no legitimate security concern, American Civil Liberties Union in Florida Executive Director Howard Simon said.
Ahmad Kutty has been described as one of Canadas most moderate and respected Muslim clerics who has preached tolerance and peace throughout North America for more than two decades. He is an imam and a scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto and at the citys Jami Mosque. In the wake of 9/11, Kutty is said to have became a beacon of reason and calm within the citys Muslim community.
In an October 2001 column, the Stars Jim Coyle quoted one of the imams sermons at the Jami Mosque in which he cautioned his congregation against Islamic extremism: Let us make no mistake about it: Today, Muslims have no enemy greater than fanatics in their midst. Let us know that fanaticism is ignorance; it is nothing but sickness and bigotry; let us know that fanaticism is opposed to both scripture and reason.
Abdool Hamid is also a respected figure among the several million Canadian Muslims.
He is associated with the Islamic Centre of Canada in Mississauga, Ontario. Both were ordered off the Orlando-bound flight from Toronto and interrogated in an airport holding cell and a local jail for 16 hours as the US marked the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Kutty was seen as a risk to national security. The pair had travelled to Florida to attend seminars and give a series of lectures and sermons on, among other things, the dangers of fanaticism in the Islamic world.
Kutty told a Canadian newspaper, We have gone through a traumatic experience. Really it dehumanised us. He said he was pulled off the plane at 9:30 am on Thursday and grilled by at least 10 officials until about 1:30 am on Friday. They handcuffed us and took us to jail, he said.
Kutty said immigration officials told him his Islamic Institute of Toronto organisation sounded familiar in name to the Islamic Institution of America, which he assumed was some sort of suspect group. Kutty said the authorities were especially interested in a business card that he carried in his wallet bearing the Islamic Society of North Americas name. He said immigration officials made him sign a waiver giving up his application to enter the United States. Kutty also said he would not return to the United States and would caution other Canadian Muslims from doing so.
Council on American-Islamic Relations Florida Executive Director Altaf Ali who visited Hamid in a Fort Lauderdale jail later said, This is by far the most bizarre incident I have ever heard of or witnessed.
Ali said he was denied permission to see Hamids affidavit by the Homeland Security department.
How can Muslims throughout the world be told that they cannot travel on September 11? Does that mean we are being held responsible for the actions of 19 individuals? he asked.
Im totally flabbergasted. Ive heard some crazy things in the past about people being detained, but this beats them all, he said.
Khurrum Wahid, a New York lawyer who spoke to Kutty, called the decision outrageous and said he would be willing to file a lawsuit against the US government if Kutty wanted to take the case further. Muslim leaders in Canada denounced the detentions as racially motivated and were calling on Ottawa to condemn the incident and insist on fairer treatment for Islamic Canadians and Arabs travelling to the United States.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.