Trudeau at Islamic Conference Ignores moderate Muslim Canadian Congress, states he “believes” in the people he sees

So Justin Trudeau finally did speak to the "Reviving the Islamic Spirit" conference in Toronto yesterday while refusing to meet with representatives of the Muslim Canadian Congress and B'nai B'rith who expressed concern that this Conference had been taken over by Islamists. 

Trudeau then attacks his critics for practising the politics of division while speaking to Islamists who have made division and exclusion the hallmarks of their public face without uttering a word about that. Trudeau then, graciously, defends his critics' right to criticize him on the very weekend when the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt - the Brotherhood being the mother organization of leading sponsors and speakers of the conference Justin spoke at - institutionalizes division and exclusion in a Sharia constitution that by its very nature threatens to relegate women, gays,lesbians, Christians and Jews to underclass status and compromises freedom of expression. 

Trudeau invoked Laurier's words of the need for ethnic unity in his speech, while never having the courage to draw a distinction between Islam and Islamism. Trudeau said he was at the Conference because he "believed" in the attendees, yet failed to even acknowledge the criticisms of the Conference by the Muslim Canadian Congress which is dedicated not only to a separation of faith and state but has been in the front ranks fighting Islamism. 

This Justin Trudeau, who rejects the politics of division, would be the same Justin Trudeau who said not that long ago that he would consider being a separatist if Canadians continue to support the politics of Stephen Harper. So for Justin, electoral support for the Muslim Brotherhood Sharia-based creed is legitimate, while electoral support for Conservative policies in Canada is illegitimate and would be cause for the division of this country. One should not be terribly surprised though. 

This is the same Justin Trudeau who criticized the use of the word "barbaric" as not being “neutral” enough when it was introduced into Canada's new Citizenship Guide to describe practices like "honour killings" and female genital mutilation. Many of us, this writer included, did not sound alarm bells. But this time, silence would be complicity. 

Trudeau not only spoke but treated his critics, including moderate Canadian Muslims, with arrogant disdain,  he has demonstrated either suffocating naievté or purposeful pandering. In either case, his words manifested an immaturity that is dangerous for this, and any other, nation loyal to the principles of liberal pluralism. Fidelity to liberal democracy does not demand obsequiesce acceptance of illiberal thought. Those whose principles run contrary to western liberalism certainly have the right to express them, but constitutional liberals don't have to validate them through slavish sophistry in a rush for votes.