ShareThisBy MARINA JIMENEZ
When Ahmed Farooq crosses the Canadian-U.S. border, he isn't surprised when he is singled out for questioning. He is, after all, a young, single Muslim man born in Saudi Arabia who fits the racial profile of would-be terrorists.
But the fourth-year medical resident at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba never expected to be hauled off a United Airlines flight for praying.
That's what happened last month, after a fellow passenger complained that Dr. Farooq was trying to "control the aisles" when he exchanged seats to pray next to a window. The accusation meant Farooq _ who was returning to Winnipeg from a physics course in Sacramento, Calif. _ was marooned at his own expense in Denver for a day.
"Why should I be taken off a plane just because I'm a certain religion?" said Farooq, 27, who immigrated to Canada when he was 12. "I have seen people take out their Bibles to pray. But if I had taken out a Koran in the environment there is now, it would have created fear."
The Denver police officer who interviewed him told him the crew overreacted, he said, while an airline spokesman has said the company is obliged to take any allegations threatening passenger safety seriously.
Five years after the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States _ and just over one year after London's terror attack _ Canada's Muslim community is still feeling the sting of guilt by association.
The incident with Farooq on the United Airlines flight occurred a week after Scotland Yard foiled an alleged terrorist plot in London to use liquid explosives to blow up trans-Atlantic passenger planes. And then there is Toronto's own "homegrown" terrorist cell that became public this summer, when 18 Muslim youths were arrested on charges of hatching a plot to blow up targets in downtown Toronto.
These events have spurred Canada's Muslim community of 750,000 to engage in a sometimes painful and divisive debate about how to speak out against terrorism and at the same time address larger questions of discrimination, civil rights and integration of newcomers.
"Since 9/11, we feel we have to come forward and denounce terrorism and extremism and violence. But at the same time, we resent that we have to do this," explains Karl Nickner, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada (CAIR-CAN).
The debate among Canadian Muslims hasn't generated a consensus over the vexing questions facing the community. There are signs the divisions are growing wider, over competing interpretations of the religion, how to articulate a shared vision of Islam, and the relationship Muslims want to have with one another and with non-Muslims.
A telling example of how difficult the struggle has been was the implosion last month of the Muslim Canadian Congress. The MCC, a small, progressive, secular group, announced it was splitting up, with the breakaway group claiming the MCC was out of step with mainstream Muslims.
"The message that MCC has been giving out is not addressed to Muslims, it is aimed at making Muslim-haters feel secure in their thinking," noted a press release from the newly formed group, the Canadian Muslim Union.
Niaz Salini, the CMU's president, says she wants to work within the wider Muslim community to promote progressive values, including gender equality, freedom of speech and gay rights.
Mohamed Elmasry, president of the more conservative Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), says living in the shadow of 9/11 has been a challenge for Muslims.
"We want to live and let live. But we don't want self-hating Muslims to smear Islam. That is what the moderate groups have done," he says.
