Post 77-- Canadian Muslims and Refugees

These days we all talk about refugees, all of us, no matter our status, profession or religion.  The media are full of it, not the least the Vancouver Sun (VS). So are churches, including the two with which I associate, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) and First Baptist Church (FBC), both of Vancouver. The former happens to be located right next to the world’s first refugee welcoming centre of its kind on Victoria Drive and is planning to be deeply involved in the centre’s programme, including prodding its fellow CRC congregations to sponsor refugees. FBC is in the early stage of sponsoring, not the first time for her.

But Christians are not the only ones participating in this crisis.  Muslims are as well, Canadian Muslims, that is. More specifically for our purpose here,  BC Muslims.  Douglas Todd of the VS covered the subject nicely in his “BC Muslims fear ‘backlash’” (Nov. 23, 2015, p. A3). According to his article, David Ali, spokesman for the BC Muslim Association, emphasizes the importance of the safety and security of Canadians as a prior concern, of all Canadians, not just Muslims. “It’s our No. 1 priority,” says Ali.  “If Canadian officials feel any possible refugee is suspect … they must do due diligence.”  In France, two suspects involved in the recent Paris bombing arrived in the guise of refugees. Any such happening in Canada would create a backlash for all Muslims. Ali says his people don’t want such people to cause problems for Canadian Muslims.  Apart from entertaining such fears, more positively, the 74,000 Muslims in Metro are collecting funds to sponsor refugees.

Those fears are not merely alarmist and Ali being Muslim, they can hardly be dubbed Islamophobic!  Many Canadians express them. Barry Cartwright, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University, thinks Ali’s concern is “well placed, since… it’s impossible to properly screen 25,000 refugees…in a couple of months.”  There’s no way, Cartwright argues, to “do criminal and police checks in a region where there are basically no recognized police departments.”  Where the do exist, they will be so corrupt that any "report" from them is at best suspect. The Federal Government seems to have acknowledged that difficulty by having extended the deadline to an indefinite one well into 2016.

So, Canada’s Muslims appear as concerned about the security issues involved in the refugee movement as are the rest of us, especially as it was first presented as a hasty procedure in which few people had any confidence. After all, militants have killed more Muslims all told than Christians, simply because there are more Muslims where militants operate, whether in the Middle East or in Nigeria’s far north. They have an equal stake in it with the rest of us. It can be even argued that they have more of a stake in it, for if things go wrong and militants pop out of the refugee woodworks, surely there will be a backlash against Canadian Muslims. Of course, they will have no stomach for that. 

But there is another stake they have in all of this: the missionary one.  Various Muslim world leaders have threatened the West that they will overcome the West through higher birthrate and the movement of Muslim peoples into the West. Various estimates have already forecast that Western Europe will in the foreseeable future be overrun by Muslims, not by the sword but by birth and immigration. It is not politically correct to agree with such predictions, but it is obvious, especially in view of the low birthrates among European Caucasians. And though the average Muslim may not be that concerned with these issues, there are leaders in the background who are consciously pushing the Muslim community towards that goal. Anyone who shrugs her shoulders at such suggestions is not doing herself or her compatriots a favour. 

Being a Christian missionary myself, I understand that “instinct.” There is nothing sinister about it and I do not deny them that missionary right. From their point of view, it is the best that can happen to the West.  Muslims are just more serious about their mission than Westerners are and will use all the powers at their disposal to advance it, including political and economic. And don’t kid yourself into thinking Canadian Muslims do not share that instinct.  Every Muslim allowed into Canada represents one tiny step towards that missionary goal. Every time the Federal Government accepts a Muslim refugee, it blindly contributes towards the achievement of that Muslim goal.  It is in plain denial. 

The above paragraph is not an argument for rejecting Muslim refugees, but it is an argument for extra carefulness. It is not an argument against compassion for Muslim refugees. Those that arrive should be embraced with compassion. But it is an argument for Canadian Christians to wake up and fight the ongoing legal and cultural struggles that are taking place against Christians by the secular powers in our own society, often behind the scenes in the courts, including fake “human rights” tribunals, where most people don’t notice. It is organizations like the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) and the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) who stand in the breach on our behalf. Follow them on the internet and support them.  And, I strongly  plead for Christian Canadians to sponsor fellow Christians, the ones who have suffered much more than their Muslim compatriots at the hands of these same Muslims throughout much of the Middle East for decades before anyone  even heard of refugees.  If this is interpreted as Islamophobia, so be it; Islamophobia at its best and most constructive for the future.