Recently,
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau met privately with a group of Islamic
leaders inside a Regina mosque, an event from which the media were
barred. The Liberal party is keeping a tight lid on what transpired
during the two-hour, closed-door session last Tuesday.
TORONTO SUN The
gathering may well be one of the few election events of 2015 that will
go unreported because as one correspondent assigned to cover the story
told me: “Unfortunately I wasn’t permitted inside.”It seems almost every time Trudeau steps inside a mosque, he walks into a minefield of controversy.
In March 2011 he visited a mosque in Montreal that
a month later was classified by U.S. intelligence as an al-QaEda
recruitment centre. Trudeau pleaded ignorance, arguing the mosque’s link
to al-Qaeda came up only after he had visited it. In fact, as early as
2006, CBC’s Radio Canada had done a lengthy investigative report on that
mosque, identifying it as a well-known centre of radical anti-West
rhetoric.
In 2013, Trudeau spent an evening at
the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) Islamic centre west of
Toronto during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The parent organization
of ISNA in the U.S. has been listed by the U.S. Justice Department as
an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a terror funding trial.
ISNA was never charged with any crime,
but prosecutors listed it as one of the “entities who are and/or were
members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood”. (A federal judge later ruled
the document should not have been released and ISNA said its inclusion
was guilt by association.)
The Regina mosque where Trudeau held
his closed-door meeting last week “recommends” the ISNA website to its
members on its web page.
A Liberal press release made no
mention of the event. When I pressed for an explanation, a Liberal
staffer in Ottawa called me saying it was not Liberal policy to make
visits to religious institutions open to the media.
But that’s not accurate. Trudeau has been photographed praying alongside Muslims in a Surrey mosque.
Next, I asked Liberal MP Ralph Goodale
who had accompanied Trudeau, why the media was barred from the Regina
mosque event. His answer was: “Media was present for coverage at door to
mosque. Inside was regular evening prayer. Not our place to invite
media.”
But that does not match the account by Regina’s Leader-Post newspaper.
It said, “The Liberal leader arrived in Regina on Tuesday evening and
headed to a south-end mosque where … the media was not permitted to
attend.” The reporter, Nathan Liewicki, later told me, “A (Liberal)
party spokesperson said Trudeau was going to be at the mosque and that
the media were not able to attend.”
Trudeau was keynote speaker at Hamas-linked Islamic Relief function
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the mosque
told me in an email Trudeau met with many members of the local Muslim
community during his visit adding: “It was wrongly reported in the media
that they were not allowed to attend. The coordinator from the Liberal
party was asked to arrange for (a) media person if they wanted.”
Contrast the Liberals’ secrecy with
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s visit to a Hindu temple in Toronto
on Monday. It was an open event with no restrictions on the media while
the Liberal one was shrouded in secrecy.
Trudeau owes an explanation to Canadians. What was discussed behind closed doors with Islamic leaders inside that mosque?
Trudeau outed for meeting with Muslim leader Shaykh Omar Subedar
who publishes that men should beat their wives
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