Boreal

The Canadian Jewish Congress and the

Spread of Islamism in Canada

The Canadian Jewish Congress, a familiar face in many legal and paralegal challenges to secular law has made extremely difficult, if not impossible for the Courts to refuse Islam's demand for the same preferential treatment afforded the Jewish religious community and other religions, and many of their demands are far from benign.

The Canadian Jewish Congress, for example, obtained the status of intervener in the case of the Ontario Human Rights Commission and Theresa O'Malley (Vincent) Appellants and Simpsons Sears Limited. Theresa O'Malley was the first beneficiary of what I refer to as the first accommodation based on religious beliefs. The Court's watershed decision opened the floodgates to religious interference in what had been, until then, a purely secular matter.

The Canadian Jewish Congress, by supporting exceptions to secular law on religious grounds, has facilitated the rise of Islamism in Canada. Islamists, like the small Canadian Hasidic communities, prefer to live in the past and outside the Canadian mainstream.

Canadian Jewish leaders, by using their considerable influence to get exceptions to the rule of man-made-laws for a small minority of their brethren, is making it possible for Canada's growing Islamists population to do the same. This is shortsighted in the extreme.

Bernard Payeur