Top Cop Boasts of Success of Muslim Outreach

From the Toronto Star:

Last week, the city’s top law enforcement officer devoted two hours to a panel discussion put on by the Intercultural Dialogue Institute, a Turkish Canadian peace group.

The audience was pathetically small (fewer than 25 people). The topic — Reading the Aftermath of 9/11: the Sociopolitical and Moral Implications — was far too big for a lunchtime panel. The discussion was unfocused.

But there was a remarkable convergence between presentations: Blair’s and that of Hamid Slimi, chairman of the Canadian Council of Imams.

The police chief zeroed in on a single legacy of the 2001 terrorist attack on America that shocked — and changed — the world.

“The day after 9/11, we knew we needed to reach out to the city’s diverse cultural communities,” he recounted. “We went to the faith leaders, secular leaders and business leaders of these communities and tried to build relationships of trust.”

It took time. It took work. It took openness on both sides. The strongest partnership the police developed, Blair said, was with the Muslim community.

It was instrumental in the arrest of the Toronto 18 — all radicalized young Islamic men — five years later.

“We received a lot of advice from Muslim friends,” he said. “I announced the arrests with the leaders of the community. We stood together in front of the world’s media.”

That allowed him to separate the suspects’ criminal conduct from their faith. It shielded him from accusations of Muslim profiling...

And, hey, isn't that what's most important--being shielded from accusations of "profiling"? (FYI, the real reason they nabbed the Toronto 18 is because of Mubin Sheikh, who is now seen as a turncoat/pariah within his own community; I rather tend to doubt that old Bill gave Mubin a shout-out as he tugged on his dhimmi forelock before the "pathetically small" crowd.)

It's hard to know who's more delusional here--Chief Blair or the Star reporter who wrote this piffle. Of course, there's always a chance it could be a folie a deux.

Update: Recall that at the time of the Toronto 18 arrests the cops were so worried about being accused of "profiling" that they preferred to make themselves sound idiotic by refusing to connect the obvious Muslim dots and referring--in that memorably deathless phrase--to the "broad strata of society" from which these jihadis had supposedly emerged.