By Tom Zytaruk, Surrey Now, Feb. 10, 2011

SURREY – The federal Christian Heritage Party is calling for a national moratorium on immigration from Muslim countries to curb increasing radical Islamist power in Canada. Mike Schouten, CHP candidate for South Surrey-White Rock-Cloverdale, admits his party’s stance on this issue will likely result in charges of racism. But he says it’s about protecting Canadian values as outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“This issue, because of the climate of political correctness, is not allowed to be talked about,” Schouten noted.

Hesham Nabih, formerly a spokesman for the B.C. Muslim Association, said he was “very surprised” by this. “The best reply is just to ignore it,” he said. “Shouting matches don’t help.”

The CHP’s call for the moratorium comes on the heels of British Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent speech at the Munich Security Conference. His nation’s “hands-off tolerance” approach to immigrants who reject Western values has failed, he admitted. “I believe it’s time to turn the page on the failed policies of the past.”

Shouten considers Cameron’s comments “powerful.”

“Prime Minister Cameron’s acknowledgment that multiculturalism has, in essence, been a failure shows just how complacent the West has been towards radical Islam.”

At issue, Schouten argues, is the attempt to import Islamic sharia law into Canada. Such an attempt was abandoned in Ontario in 2005 after protests, and the Quebec National Assembly decided to block sharia law in Quebec courts that same year.

Citing research from the Pew Research Forum, a non-partisan “fact tank” based in Washington, DC, Shouten said 940,000 Muslims are living in Canada today, but that number is expected to swell to 2.7 million by 2030.

While the importation of sharia law has failed so far, he noted, “all it takes is numbers.”

According to the BC Muslim Association’s web site, the province’s Muslim population is experiencing “exponential growth,” from 10,000 in 1980 to 75,000-plus today. In 1980, there was only one prayer centre in Greater Vancouver. Today there are more than 15.

“It is na•ve to think that all cultures are compatible with Canadian values,” Shouten said. “Take the freedom of conscience, the freedom to practice, or not practice, the religion of our choice as an example. Sharia requires that those who renounce Islam be put to death by the faithful. It is never just, never lawful in Canada for a group to abridge the rights and freedoms of any other Canadian, regardless of their current or former relationship to that group, for instance apostate Muslims.”

Fear of violence from radical Muslims made headlines last month when Surrey’s Coptic churches requested RCMP protection during their Christmas celebrations, which fall on Jan. 7 for those following the Julian calendar.

Surrey Mounties were asked to keep watch over Whalley’s two Coptic Orthodox churches – St. George and Saint Mary – in light of a deadly terrorist attack against their church in Alexandria, Egypt, that killed 21 people and injured 97. Media at the time reported that nobody had yet declared responsibility for the bombing but authorities were investigating a group of Islamic hardliners in Egypt. Churches in Montreal and Toronto called off some of their Christmas celebrations.

Tony Sourial, a deacon at Saint Mary, noted that people immigrate to Canada for good reason. “Why change it?”

“If someone is coming to my house, he should be going by my rules,” he said.

One term being knocked about lately is “Immigration Jihad,” the concept involving non-Muslims being overwhelmed by population growth.

“That’s when they start dictating the rules,” Sourial said. “It’s not immigration, it’s basically an invasion. I hope North America will wake up in time.”

tzytaruk@thenownewspaper.com

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