Daily Times

A wave of new sort of terrorism has just been sweeping across America and Canada. Within a week, mosques in Texas in America and in the Cubic city in Canada were attacked. The former mosque was put in ablaze by the “unknown” haters of Islam on 28 January — the only mosque in the Gulf coast Victoria city in Texas. The mosque was just built sixteen years ago and was named as the Victoria Islamic Centre. The mosque was defaced a week earlier. The reason of the fire were unknown. This was the second mosque burned to the grounds in Taxes in about a month. The earlier incident took place on 7 January.

In the Cubic mosque, called the Islamic Cultural Centre, six people, who were saying prays, were killed, and wounded another 19 and many more perhaps on 29 January. This made Canada’s worst murder in recent past. Hate pamphlets were also thrown, finding similarities between Islam and terrorism. There are seminaries both in Texas and Cubic cases.

Muslims were occasionally attacked while they are on their way to mosques in indifferent places in the United States and Canada. Media often reports such incidents but attackers easily escaped. Interestingly, Police and law enforcement authorities hardly find causes and motives behind such incidents to apprehend terrorists. Hate is, however, the most common cause found in such cases.

These were terrorist attacks inside America and Canada — same as they happened in other countries. This was a clear example of “Western sectarianism”, religious divide, violent Islam hate–abhorrence against Muslims and Islam that are rapidly spreading in full swing in the Americas that had considered to be much safer place in the past. The entire “credit” cannot be given to the newly sworn US President Donald Trump and conservative elite in Canada.

The repugnance against Muslims and the Islamic-phobia were there in the West for quite some time but they systematically aggravated after 9/11. The hate was socially ingrained. Trump has just made policy decision about the entry of people from seven Muslim countries. This spread chaos and panic. Individuals and their institutions were targeted. The recurrence of these incidents also questioned security measures taken from within the United States and Canada — hope it is not plundering into another Arab Spring, Iraq, and Afghanistan type of situation the United States and NATO have created decade ago to destabilise the region.

The Muslims were not out of common place of worship as their mosque was burned out in Texas. There was an immediate arrangement. The most striking point is that the Jewish community in Victoria handed over the key of their only synagogue to Muslims in Texas to continue their prays in that place while they will rebuild their mosque.

A number of the Jewish and Muslim organisations raised US$ one million fund within a day through an online Go Fund Me campaign to rebuild the mosque. In Islamic history and in the Jewish-Muslim relations such a harmonious gesture had hardly seen. This recalls of the Muslim-Jewish relations in the City State of Madia during the time of the Holy Prophet of Islam. The Jewish-Muslim relation was a new opening in the United States after 9/11 and this relationship has been further reinforced now. This is a shining example of the close inter-faith harmony rapidly taking place in America between and among fractured religious communities. As a whole, intolerance against the Muslims is on the rise in America. Many people correlates such happenings with Trump’s policy against the foreign citizens’ entry into America particularly from five Arab countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria) and two African countries (Somalia and Sudan), all predominantly Muslim countries.

There is a severe reaction within America, Canada, and Europe. Millions of people are protesting against the decision. The policy will reshape the relations of Muslims in America and Canada with the rest of religious communities. The impact of this religious divide will come in the long-run. America and Canada have been shrinking their doors and becoming an inward looking Christian countries — something similar to Modi’s Hindutva in India.

This marks the end of their centuries-long openness. The Trump policy is a setback to America’s pursuance of 400 years of liberal democracy and the post-war globalisation. The new America would be a “closed America” — making an end to its human-rights and openness. The defence and strength of America will the “first” as told by Trump.

In the Canadian case, hate shooting took place after Ontario conservative MP Kellie Leitch asked for screening of newcomers to Canada. Such an idea of screening provoked the shooter to target Muslims inside the mosque. Unfortunately, religious prosecution and massacre are taking place in the highly civilised claimed Western democracies.

Politics is turning around the right wing fascist ideologies of the white man’s supremacy while making the lives of common people hard to live, work, study, worship, and visit. One should ask if the social fabric of the United States and Canada is on the transforming side or these countries are radicalising and de-Islamising their lands.

The writer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad. He writes on China, Japan, and East Asian affairs