Critics React to Senate Report Calling for Certification of Muslim Clerics as a Means to Cut Down On Extremism

Not surprisingly, Official Muslims are outraged by the suggestion. The head of the outfit formerly known as CAIR-CAN, for instance, has some choice words--the ones you'd expect--for the report and its certification idea:

"This report, while ostensibly about improving national security, in fact stigmatizes and marginalizes Canadian Muslim communities and portrays them as a threat rather than as a partner in the fight against violent extremism," executive director Ihsaan Gardee said in a statement. 

Gardee said there’s no need to unfairly target imams when the criminal code already has provisions to deal with people suspected of promoting terrorist ideology. 

“This recommendation bears the hallmarks of racial and religious discrimination and is contrary to the Charter and human rights codes. It is not the role of the state in a democracy to regulate religion,” he said. 

Agreed. But what do you do when some key members of a religion are preaching jihad, an ideology designed to topple the very freedoms that enable these clerics to operate with impunity?

Kind of a Catch-22, wouldn't you say?

Meanwhile, one of the jihad's useful idiots asks, a la Dean Swift's hyperbolic A Modest Proposal, " Why stop with just one religion? Shouldn’t Ottawa certify clerics for all religions?"

No worries, pal. The government has no intention of certifying anyone, least of all the jihad-preachers.