Canadian Marc Lebuis on the business of Islamophobia

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio. This is Frank Gaffney, your host and guide for what I think of as an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. We don’t often get good news in that war these days, I’m sorry to say, but I am very pleased to be able to present a little bit, at least for the moment. And to call back to our microphones for that purpose a man I’ve come to admire greatly and who has been indispensable in bringing about this bit of good news. He is Marc LeBuis. He is the founder and director of Point de Bascule, or Tipping Point, a web-based, investigative magazine that you can find online. It’s based in Montreal, Canada. And this bit of good news comes there, from Canada, from Quebec province, specifically. And to talk a little bit about it, I’m delighted to say congratulations and welcome, Marc LeBuis.

MARC LeBUIS:

Well, thank you. And thank you for having me, Frank.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

So tell us about this development. Bill 59 is something that you’ve been warning about for some time. You’ve been working hard against. And I think as a result, in no small measure of your efforts, it’s come undone. Talk a little bit about what happened.

MARC LeBUIS:

Well, Bill 59, of course, is technically a censorship bill. And the current government in place, it’s called the Quebec liberal government, gave in after a lot of a backlash, the backlash against the bill would not die down. Now the entire civil society, I could say almost with just a couple of exceptions, have been opposing this bill systematically for months. It’s been almost a year that it’s been very actively pushed forward. And then, there’s the opposition to the bill, PQ Representative Agnes Maltais who stood technically almost alone, she is doing what I think in English we call a filibuster where she would systematically oppose the bill in what she called intelligent opposition. So out of sixty to eighty hours of debate over the bill, only one and a half articles out of something like twenty-five were read. They were systematically asking question. And Agnes Maltais basically got it. There’s quite a few politicians, they may participate in these types of debate, but sometimes they don’t really get it. Well, she did get it. She expressed a couple of weeks ago that she felt that this was, out of about twenty years of [UNCLEAR] as a politician, she felt that this was the most important and significant debate that Quebec has ever faced in terms of the danger that it was for democracy.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

This is so important. And Marc, I want to make sure while we acknowledge and express appreciation for this sort of Horatius at the Bridge in the parliament, Agnes Maltais, your own role in helping get that civil society engaged on this issue, understanding the implications of this censorship in the name of not offending Muslims was incalculably important. And you may not want to boast about it, but let me just say thank you to you specifically. I was struck by the minister of justice in Quebec, Stephanie Vallee, indicating that while this kind of regulation of so-called hate speech is adopted elsewhere, she said, quote, we’re not ready for that, unquote. So it doesn’t necessarily mean this is a commutation of sentence, maybe it’s just a stay of execution. But in that regard, Marc, talk if you would a little bit about how things seems to be developing in terms of trying to classify as racism so-called Islamophobia and what implications it might have.

MARC LeBUIS:

Well, there is – there is what we call now, what we’re noticing, a form of axis, I mean, Islamophobia bills or efforts or lobbies trying to push Islamophobia. We know that it’s happening all over the West. But there is a particular axis right now developing which we call the Paris-Brussels-Quebec-Ottawa Axis. There is now an organisation in – based out of Paris, led by a man by the name of Marwan Muhammad who’s very close to Tariq Ramadan, close also to organisations that are linked with Yusuf al-Qaradawi out of Qatar. And he’s also very, very close to not just Muslim Brotherhood operatives but also other Salafist-based Islamist operatives who are known to have radical views in France. And they’re working together with, for example, recently they have met very, very powerful lobbies out of Canada called the CAIR Canada or the new name, the NCCM, that they’re using, and they seem to be coordinating a lot of effort to push institutions and policies inside of Canada to be able to qualify or equate Islamophobia as a racism and this would be happening. What that means, it’s even worse than having a bill that would do censorship. It would take on the current laws on racism and just basically hook onto them or piggyback on them and then would be able to have the same effect in order to kill free speech, kill criticism of anything that’s related to Islamist activities in Canada and maybe in Europe.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Now I know, Marc LeBuis, that you have been accused of being an Islamophobe, I certainly have, many of those we work with have. Just dissect for us this concept that this is in fact some sort of racism. There is no race. Islam is practiced by people of many different races. And what I think we all are concentrating on is not even Islam itself as much as it is the political, military, legal doctrine of shariah that its Islamic supremacist adherents are trying to impose on all of us. And if we were to accede to this idea that this is somehow a racist activity, where would a country like Canada find itself? Where would, you know, people like you who are warning about what’s coming if they’re not careful?

MARC LeBUIS:

Well, there definitely would be, even more difficult than it is now to be able to name the threat that we’re facing, specifically the jihadist threat. It would be extremely difficult to – notions of infiltration, and I’m talking about serious infiltration inside government agencies, when we would try to expose how certain lobbies, associations, or individuals are trying to penetrate a political party, a police force, or even a legal institution. It recalls –

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Or the government itself for that matter.

MARC LeBUIS:

Or the government itself. There’s this leader called Jamal Badawi out of Canada, and I think he’s very known in the United States, who basically, in an interview in the early 2000s said that we should – Muslims should penetrate government institutions, specifically become judges so they can use their own personal discretion in order to avoid applying legal references that will go against shariah. So he’s encouraging Muslims to enter and penetrate and infiltrate. Become lawyers, police officers, and any type of form of positions of power that allows them to have a certain amount of discretionary power.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

As you look at this effort on the part of the Islamists, these Islamic supremacists, to promote shariah, when you find yourself confronting these pressures, Marc, just as the takeaway from your efforts on Bill 59, what should all of us learn from it and take heart from?

MARC LeBUIS:

Well, on our part, I think having the information well-structured, intelligently put together, was able to help some of the people that are pushing these policies, some politicians that could understand what’s happening, to be able to be well-equipped to articulate a defence and even, sometimes, even be on the offensive. So documenting what these organisations are doing, quoting them, knowing exactly – and also, exactly like you said, the memorandum is a perfect example. There are so many plans out there to demonstrate that there is a coordinated effort to disrupt our civilisation, to change laws. There are plans out there that clearly express that.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Marc, we have to leave it at that for the moment, but there’s so much more to talk about. I look forward to doing so with you and just want to say, hats off to you and all of those in Canada who have fought this important fight. We’ll talk with you again very soon. Next up, Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy joins us. We’ll talk about how this problem is manifesting itself here thanks to our so-called friends, the Saudis, among others. That and more straight ahead.