Update: June 2008 - Ken Stone: The man who ripped up his degree (Star) CCAR: Timing of arrests suspicious We urge people not to convict the Muslim men and boys, in the court of public opinion, based on sensational reporting in the media. June 6, 2006. KEN STONE HAMILTON: The Community Coalition Against Racism (CCAR) calls upon all Canadians not to rush to judgment about some seventeen Muslim men and boys arrested last week on terrorism-related charges. In accordance with the best traditions of a legal system embedded in our democratic society, every person charged with an offense is presumed innocent until proven guilty and is entitled to a fair trial. For this reason, we urge people not to convict the Muslim men and boys, in the court of public opinion, based on sensational reporting in the media. In short, let us have a fair trial in court and not in the media. At times like these, it is important to reflect on the atmosphere in which the arrests have taken place.  CCAR once again wishes to draw everyone’s attention to the fact that a pervasive Islamophobia (fear of Muslims) has swept Europe and North America for the past two decades. Editorial cartoons, TV shows, movies, newspapers, TV, radio, and statements by government officials have consistently projected a stereotype of Arabs and Muslims as terrorists. As a result, Canadian Muslims have been reduced to living, if not in fear, then under a cloud of suspicion in which they are butts of racists slurs and physical attacks in public places, and in which they suffer discrimination in employment, housing, and travelling across borders. There is even a new name for this prejudical treatment: racial profiling. Of course, not only Arabs and Muslims suffer from the indignity of racial profiling in Canada. However, they are on the receiving end of more and more of it. CCAR has consistently condemned Islamophobia and racial profiling and today insists that the arrests in Toronto not be used as a further excuse to attack Muslims in Canada or to stage military interventions against Muslim countries abroad. For example, we note that, in a cowardly nocturnal attack, a Toronto mosque was desecrated, an act reminiscent of the torching of the Hindu Samaj Temple in Hamilton after 9/11.  We call upon Mayor Dilanni and Police Chief Mullan to take steps to ensure the personal safety of all Muslims and Arabs in Hamilton as well as the security of all their religious and cultural institutions. Similarly, we call upon Mayor Miller and Chief Blair to do the same in Toronto. CCAR also reminds the public that it was not that long ago that CSIS and the RCMP rounded up twenty-six young male immigrants to Canada from Pakistan and South Asia on terrorism-related charges in an operation called “Project Thread”, which was centred around a Canadian school that catered to foreign students. It turned out that none of the young men were ever proven guilty of anything but minor immigration offenses, for which some of them were deported and others left voluntarily, their reputations stained permanently. Furthermore, Canadian authorities have yet to answer for the sending of  Maher Arar to be tortured in a Syrian prison and for the jailing of five Muslim men for the past four years on security certificates. These five men have not been allowed to answer the charges against them, or see the evidence, or (until recently in the case of one of them) even apply for bail. Three of the five are now on a hunger strike to protest these deplorable conditions. These are worrisome developments in Canada, a country that prides itself on operating according to the rule of law. The timing of these arrests is suspicious. Are they part of a hidden agenda to justify, for the Conservative government of Canada, its recent extension for two more years of the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan. Is it to curry favour with the US administration in its so-called “war on terror”? Does it have anything to do with the facts that the CSIS budget is soon to come up for review and that the Supreme Court of Canada will shortly decide on the constitutionality of the infamous “security certificates”? In CCAR, at this point, we can only speculate. However, whatever prompted these arrests at this time, the Community Coalition against Racism calls for calm, for patience, for a chance for the courts to do their deliberations, and, most of all for acceptance of Muslims and Arabs, as part of the Canadian mosaic. yayacanada Main Page for Terror Roundups