Is Stephen Harper off his rocker? Forget the Canadian Prime Minister’s trip to Jerusalem last year, when he said that criticism of Israel was a “mask” for anti-Semitism. Ignore his utter failure to bring home to Canada Al Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy, whose retrial was staged by the Egyptian government to give him the chance to leave for his country of adoption.Cast aside his Blair-like contention that the Islamist murders of Canadian soldiers had nothing to do with his decision to send Canada’s F-18 jets against ISIS.

Now Mr Harper, the man whose pro-Israeli policies might win him a seat in the Knesset, is about to push a truly eccentric piece of legislation through in Ottawa. It’s called – and I urge readers to repeat the words lest they think it’s already April Fool’s Day – the “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act”. Yup, when I first read the phrase I felt sure it was a joke, a line from a Channel 4 mocu-drama about Nigel Farage’s first premiership.

Nope. It’s all real. But let me quickly explain that the “barbaric cultural practices” in question are polygamy, “gender-based” family violence, “honour” killing and forcing children under 16 to leave Canada for marriages abroad.

I’ve no problem with legislation against this, of course. Nor have most Canadians. I’m also against illegally invading foreign countries, colonising other people’s land, waterboarding, bombing wedding parties or firing drone missiles into Waziristan villages. But these aren’t quite the barbaric cultural practices Mr Harper has in mind.

What’s odd about the “barbarism” he’s thinking about is that these practices are already forbidden by Canadian law. Polygamy is illegal in Canada (although Mormon polygamists in British Columbia appear strangely untouched by the new legislation); and Canadians were a bit nonplussed to learn from their government last week that there are “hundreds” of polygamists in their country. As for “honour” killing, murder is murder in Canada as in Britain, the US and almost every other country in the world.

No, the catch is that this legislation, which Canadian MPs will be discussing again tomorrow, doesn’t come from the country’s minister of justice, Peter MacKay, but from the minister of citizenship and immigration. Now isn’t that odd? The chap in charge of Canada’s immigration policies is Christopher Alexander, who is himself a pretty “cultured” politician, a McGill and Balliol man, a former Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan – where there’s plenty of polygamy and “honour” killing and child marriage and the rest.

In truth, the new Canadian legislation is about foreigners or – more to the point – Muslims. Hence the BC Mormons have nothing to worry about, because the act is playing what Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom calls the “foreign barbarian card”. It foregrounds not crime per se, but crime specifically associated with Muslims, hence the Canadian government’s legislative gloss that it is against barbaric “traditions”. And Muslims, as we know, have for centuries been famous in Western legend for harems, multiple wives and disrespect for women.

There are indeed plenty of things wrong with Muslim societies, and I’ve written extensively about the scourge of “honour” killings: the slaughter of young women for refusing arranged marriages or adultery, or who were rumoured to have behaved “immorally” (by calling a man on a mobile phone, for instance), in Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan, “Palestine”, Jordan and Egypt. We’ll forget for a moment that non-governmental organisations have also told me that, per head of population, “honour” killing may be practised even more widely among Egyptian and Jordanian Christian communities.

It is odd, too, that “barbaric” is part of the ISIS vocabulary for foreigners who bomb predominantly Muslim countries (America’s bombing of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Yemen and Libya over the past 42 years come to mind) or who collude with the occupation and theft of land from Arab Muslims by the very same country whose critics are in danger of being called “anti-Semitic” by Stephen Harper.

You can be sure that this same prime minister will now be avoiding all talk of a little scandal that must be bothering him quite a bit: the Turkish accusation that a Syrian intelligence operative who allegedly helped three British girls cross into ISIS-held Syria was also working for Canadian intelligence employees; or mention that these agents operated from the Canadian embassy in Amman – where the ambassador was hand-picked by Mr Harper after being his top bodyguard in Ottawa.

Now, I’m not going to take the side of the Turkish police – they deported me from their country in 1991 after I found Turkish troops stealing blankets and food from Iraqi refugees. But their computer records reportedly show that the supposed spy for Canada, a Mr Rashed, entered Turkey 33 times on a Syrian passport and had also travelled to Canada.

The man does not work for CSIS, Canada’s spy outfit, according to Ottawa government sources. But CSIS, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Mr Harper’s office have all refused to comment. The Ottawa Citizen has been highlighting another new bit of Harper legislation: bill C-44, which would allow judges to authorise CSIS activities abroad “to investigate a threat to the security” of Canada “without regard to any other law, including that of any foreign state”.

Plenty to think about there. But no, it’s those pesky Canadian Muslims who are the guilty ones; those who engage in “barbaric cultural practices”.

By arrangement with The Independent

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2015

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