By Iqbal Jassat

If Canada is hailed as a country known for its ethnocultural and religious diversity, why is it targeting Muslims?

A recent report published by The Conversation has revealed shocking facts about what it describes as “institutional Islamophobia” in Canada.

It cited the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) as the main culprit for aggressively victimizing Muslims.

The clue that the targeted campaign is in all probability driven by intelligence agents linked to Israel, is the fact that Muslims who are critical of the state’s pro-Zionist policies have been specifically singled out.

“Those politically active and critical of the Canadian state found themselves at higher risk for interrogation. In our study, we found those who criticize state policies — particularly concerning politics in the Middle East — come under increased surveillance”.

Research required investigators who came up with their findings after interviewing scores of Muslim community leaders across five major Canadian cities to learn about their treatment by the CSIS.

They found a wide variety of “anti-Muslim tactics” deployed by the CSIS as part of its efforts to maintain the Muslim community under “radicalized surveillance.”

“We found that CSIS adopts specific surveillance practices that are informed by Islamophobic tropes,” the researchers wrote.

Shockingly but not surprising given the unsavory track record of Israel’s notorious Mossad operations, the investigators found that the CSIS has turned mosques “into sites of surveillance.”

This features monitoring the mosques’ frequenters, especially imams, who “are subject to interrogation and forced to provide intelligence on their congregations,” and also placing “operatives” at the places of worship.

Exact copycats of Mossad. In fact, the use of “coercive techniques,” including pressuring ordinary individuals to turn them into “informants,” and making unsolicited visits to people’s homes in the middle of the night in order to catch them at times, when they “are unable to access legal counsel or community support”, is a replica of Israel’s subversion of Palestinian human rights.

The paranoia of Muslim youth especially those engaged in activities of Muslim student movements may be an additional reason for “frequently” interrogating them.

“Muslim university students who we spoke to informed us they have found recording devices in their campus prayer spaces and had their social media scanned,” the report said.

According to the authors of the probe, the CSIS is the Canadian counterpart to the United Kingdom’s M15 and the US CIA.

“Drawing on 95 in-depth interviews with Muslim community leaders in five Canadian cities, we explore how the racial logics embedded in the ‘War on Terror’ shape CSIS’s tactical operations.

“Our research explores how particular racial narratives that associate ‘radicalization’ and ‘extremism’ with Islam inform CSIS’s surveillance strategies.

“These narratives give rise to specific tactical on-the-ground strategies that we define as anti-Muslim surveillance tactics.

“The research also gives voice to the experiences of Canadian Muslims who have been traumatized by the widespread infiltration and monitoring of their communities by CSIS”.

As a state institution, CSIS reflects the reality of a Canada unable or unwilling to shrug off the illegal construct of right-wing neoconservative elements linked to Israel.

Known as the “War on Terror,” led by America and NATO allies, including Canada, it unleashed mass-scale massacres in Muslim countries, devastated by relentless bombing leading to invasion and occupation.

Not surprisingly, the authors of the probe on CSIS’s own mini “War on Muslims”, define “War on Terror” as “a racial project, on the pre-existing and long-standing history of racism toward Muslims to enable the rapid enforcement of extreme surveillance practices that produce the exclusionary treatment of Muslim people”.

Confirming Edward Said’s study on Orientalism, the probe argues that “it is rooted in Orientalism’s specific knowledge about Muslims, labeling them religious fanatics, hyper-traditional, anti-rational, anti-democratic, patriarchal, barbaric, and prone to violence”.

Unfortunately for Muslims in Canada, for as long as the CSIS remains wedded to the “War on Terror” paradigm, they will continue to be profiled and targeted as an existential threat.

– Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the South Africa-based Media Review Network. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Visit: www.mediareviewnet.com