As more information about last week's Danforth Ave. shooting in Toronto comes to light, the entire episode becomes less surprising.
The shooter who killed two girls and injured 13 others was, as we noted last week, another member of what Mark calls the Amalgamated Union of Known Wolves.
Faisal Hussain's brother had ties to the Thorncliffe Park Kings, a street gang headquartered in the neighborbood with an 80 per cent Muslim population. That same brother once lived at a house where police recovered 33 guns and 42 kilograms of carfentanil. Carfentanil is a powerful street drug, but also has the potential to be used as a chemical weapon.
Hussain himself previously threatened to cut his building security guard's throat, the guard told the Toronto Sun.
His family prayed at a mosque that'll surely be familiar to longtime readers. The Hussain family went to the Masjid Dar-us Salaam, the mosque that served as the force behind the infamous "mosqueteria" at the nearby Valley Park Middle School in Toronto, where, every Friday, the cafeteria played host to sharia-compliant Islamic prayers.
Here's what Mark had to say in The [Un]documented Mark Steyn about the mosqueteria when its existence was first broken by blogger Blazingcatfur.
Take a look at this photograph. It appeared in The Toronto Star's education section on Saturday:
It's the scene every Friday at the cafeteria of Valley Park Middle School in Toronto. That's not a private academy, it's a public school funded by taxpayers. And yet, oddly enough, what's going on is a prayer service – oh, relax, it's not Anglican or anything improper like that; it's Muslim Friday prayers, and the Toronto District School Board says don't worry, it's just for convenience: They put the cafeteria at the local imams' disposal because otherwise the kids would have to troop off to the local mosque and then they'd be late for Lesbian History class or whatever subject is scheduled for Friday afternoon.
The picture is taken from the back of the cafeteria. In the distance are the boys. They're male, so they get to sit up front at prayers. Behind them are the girls. They're female, so they have to sit behind the boys because they're second-class citizens – not in the whole of Canada, not formally, not yet, but in the cafeteria of a middle school run by the Toronto District School Board they most certainly are.
And the third row? The ones with their backs to us in the foreground of the picture? Well, let the Star's caption writer explain:
At Valley Park Middle School, Muslim students participate in the Friday prayer service. Menstruating girls, at the very back, do not take part.
Oh. As Kathy Shaidle says:
Yep, that's part of the caption of the Toronto Star photo.
Yes, the country is Canada and the year is 2011.
Just so. Not some exotic photojournalism essay from an upcountry village in Krappistan. But a typical Friday at a middle school in the largest city in Canada. I forget which brand of tampon used to advertise itself with the pitch "Now with new [whatever] you can go horse-riding, water-ski-ing, ballet dancing, whatever you want to do", but perhaps they can just add the tag: "But not participate in Friday prayers at an Ontario public school."
Some Canadians will look at this picture and react as Miss Shaidle did, or Tasha Kheiriddin in The National Post:
Is this the Middle Ages? Have I stumbled into a time warp, where "unclean" women must be prevented from "defiling" other persons? It's bad enough that the girls at Valley Park have to enter the cafeteria from the back, while the boys enter from the front, but does the entire school have the right to know they are menstruating?
But a lot of Canadians will glance at the picture and think, "Aw, diversity, ain't it a beautiful thing?" – no different from the Sikh Mountie in Prince William's escort. And even if they read the caption and get to the bit about a Toronto public school separating menstruating girls from the rest of the student body and feel their multiculti pieties wobbling just a bit, they can no longer quite articulate on what basis they're supposed to object to it. Indeed, thanks to the likes of Ontario "Human Rights" Commission chief commissar Barbara Hall, the very words in which they might object to it have been all but criminalized.
Islam understands the reality of Commissar Hall's "social justice": You give 'em an inch, and they'll take the rest. Following a 1988 cease-and-desist court judgment against the Lord's Prayer in public school, the Ontario Education Act forbids "any person to conduct religious exercises or to provide instruction that includes religious indoctrination in a particular religion or religious belief in a school." That seems clear enough. If somebody at Valley Park stood up in the cafeteria and started in with "Our Father, which art in Heaven", the full weight of the School Board would come crashing down on them. Fortunately, Valley Park is 80-90 per cent Muslim, so there are no takers for the Lord's Prayer. And, when it comes to the prayers they do want to say, the local Islamic enforcers go ahead secure in the knowledge that the diversity pansies aren't going to do a thing about it.
Nobody would know a thing about the "mosqueteria" story were it not for the blogger Blazing Cat Fur, whom I was honoured to say a word for in Ottawa a few months back. He broke this story and then saw it get picked up without credit by the Toronto media. He does that a lot. Currently, he's featuring the thoughts of Jawed Anwar, the editor of The Muslim, a publication for Greater Toronto Area Muslims, and of Dr Bilal Philips, a "Canadian religious scholar" who was born in Jamaica but grew up in Toronto and has many prestigious degrees not only from Saudi Arabia but also from the University of Wales, where he completed a PhD in "Islamic Theology". Dr Philips is in favour of death for homosexuals and, as one Canadian to another, Mr Anwar was anxious to explain to his readers that that's nothing to get alarmed about:
Although, there is no clear-cut verse in Qur'an that categorically suggests killing of homosexuals, sayings of Prophet Muhammad suggests three types of sentences, and among that one is death. Bilal Philips is suggesting, based on his opinion on the Qur'anic/Prophetic principles of society. He is not advising the Islamic judiciary to kill any gay person they found, but what he is "suggesting" is judicial punishment of death sentence for those who confess or are seen "performing homosexual acts" by "four reliable witnesses without any doubt."
The essence of Islamic laws is to protect the life of human beings. And it happens that sometimes killing of a person can save thousands and sometimes millions of lives. The Islamic judiciary can punish a person with death sentence to save others' lives.
Okay, great, thanks. Glad you cleared that up. Two eminent "Canadian" Muslims are openly discussing the conditions under which homosexuals should be executed – and doing so in the cheerful knowledge that Commissar Hall, so determined to slap down my "Islamophobia", isn't going to do a thing about their "homophobia". She's more likely to accept a complaint from another "Canadian", Mohammad Baghery, who accuses Michael Coren of the crime of "making fun of Muslims". (Barbara Hall's incoherent thoughts can be heard here: appropriately enough, she sounds like the robot voice that instructs you to buckle your seatbelt.)
Imagine if you're a soi-disant moderate Muslim, genuinely so. You came to Canada because Yemen's a dump, and you don't want to waste your life there. And your daughter loves it, and wants to be Canadian, and be just like the other girls in her street. And then she goes to Valley Park Middle School: What if she doesn't feel it's a religious obligation to attend Friday prayers (as some Muslims argue)? Think there's much chance of being able to opt out easily at Valley Park? What if she wants to dress as she wishes to rather than as the Wahhabi/Salafist imam orders? What if she doesn't want to tell the creepy perve imam whether she's menstruating or not? What, in other words, is her chance of being able to attend Valley Park as a regular Canadian schoolgirl?
For the rest of Mark's musings on this topic and more, head on over to the SteynStore to grab a copy of The [Un]documented Mark Steyn. Also, there's no separation by gender or menstrual status on the Mark Steyn Cruise, which is rapidly booking up. Chat about this, or whatever else is on your mind with Mark, Blazingcatfur, and the other stellar guests aboard MS Rotterdam.