True North

On Christmas Eve, a Khalistani activist held an event in Brampton and gave an award to  Pakistan’s Army Chief, Qamar Jawed Bajwa. 

The award was given to celebrate the creation of a Sikh religious site on the India – Pakistan border. The location is also where the controversial organization Sikhs for Justice hopes to hold a conference and referendum next year to further the cause of Khalisani independence.

The Khalistan movement is a separatist faction of Sikhs who hope to carve out an independent Sikh ethnostate from the Punjab region of India. The movement has been responsible for several terrorist attacks in India and around the world, and dates back to sectarian violence between Sikhs and Hindus in the early 1970s.

At the height of tensions in India, Khalisani terrorists — led by mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar — carried out the 1985 Air India bombing which killed 329 people, including 268 Canadians.

It remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Canadian history.

The man who presented the award in Brampton, Sukhminder Singh Hansra, is a pro-Khalistan activist based in Canada. The award was accepted on Bajwa’s behalf by Toronto Pakistani consul general Imran Ahmed Siddiqui.

True North contacted Mr. Hansra to comment on his views about Khalistani independence and whether he saw himself as a Khalistani activist.

“I am (an) activist for the rights of minorities, including but not limited to Sikhs. Do consider me a Khalistani Activists (sic),” Hansra said in an email. “Khalistan is a land occupied by India. Sikhs came to realize it in 1984, since then a movement to liberate the occupied land is on. I advocate it.”

Pakistan and its intelligence service, the Inter-services Intelligence, are believed to be funding and supporting a new push for Khalistani independence in an attempt to destabilize India.

The latest terrorism report released by the federal department of Public Safety on December 11th listed Sikh and Khalistani extremism as a persisting national threat.

“Sikh (Khalistani) extremism also remain[s] of concern because while their attacks in Canada have been extremely limited, some Canadians continue to support these extremist groups, including through financing.”

Upon its release, the report caused a stir within the Liberal caucus when the Canadian Sikh Association called for all Sikh MPs to step down because of the government included a section on Khalistani extremism —  a well-known and well-documented concern in Canada.

Liberal MP Randeep Sarai from Surrey Centre wrote a letter to Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale condemning him for the inclusion and urging him to remove it.

Former British Columbia Premier and Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh expressed outrage when he heard about Liberal MPs calling for the removal of “Sikh terrorism” from the document.

“There is rot in Parliament. This is Trumplike. Questioning your own intelligence community,” he said in a tweet.

Randeep Sarai is also the MP who took the fall for inviting convicted Sikh terrorist Jaspal Atwal to a dinner with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during his ill-fated India trip last year, a story first reported by True North founder Candice Malcolm.

Atwal is a former member of the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF) and was convicted of attempting to assassinate an Indian government official on Vancouver Island in 1986.

Two Khalistani organizations, Babbar Khalsa and ISYF are listed terrorist or terrorist-affiliated entities under the Canadian criminal code.

A video of a BC Imam saying that wishing Christians a Merry Christmas is a sin worse than murder received international attention over the Christmas holiday.

Sheikh Younus Kathrada, an Islamic Cleric based out of Victoria, made these comments as part of a sermon to the Muslim Youth of Victoria.

The Imam took down the video, but not before it was widely distributed through a variety of websites online.

The Imam is now speaking out. He wrote a post on Facebook claiming his words had been taken out of context.

He accused media outlets of stirring up trouble by selectively cutting and pasting parts of his speech to boost sales.

“Tonight’s session is neither a retraction nor an apology,” he said in a follow-up video.

“I stand by what I said and I will not retract unless I am proven to be wrong. What you see is what you get, unedited, uncut.”

Rather than apologizing for his insidious and anti-Christian remarks, he doubled down on them.

Despite his claims that his words were taken out of context, Kathrada’s video, uploaded on December 23, 2018, leaves little to the imagination.

“There are those who will say to them ‘Merry Christmas.’ What are you congratulating them on? Congratulations on the birth of your Lord? Is that acceptable to a Muslim? Are you now approving of their beliefs by saying that you are approving of it,” he asked.

“Do you know that you and I must be offended when people say that they worship Jesus, or when they say that Jesus is the Son of God?”

As the Times of Israel reported, Kathrada made sure to insist the listeners do not kill non-Muslims for the celebrating their “false holidays”.

On his Facebook, Kathrada claims to be a “community and youth activist.”

Sheikh Kathrada has a history of division and spreading hate. A Globe and Mail article from 2008 reports that he once called Jewish people “the brothers of monkeys and the swine” and asked Allah to kill them. 

The RCMP had confirmed that Kathrada was subject to a hate crime investigation for his anti-Semitic remarks at the time.

Despite his grotesque remarks, this controversial Imam continues to preach from the Dar Al-Ihsan Islamic Centre in Victoria, which was founded by the Muslim Youth of Victoria in 2018.

The True North reached out to Sheikh Younus Kathrada, but he has yet to respond to our questions.

Mahmoud Jaballah is seeking to claim $34 million in damages from the federal government for him and his family as well as an additional $3.4 million in punitive damages. Jaballah’s lawsuit claims that the federal government repeatedly violated his human rights.

Mahmoud Jaballah and his family have a long history in Canada.

Mahmoud Jaballah has been in trouble with Canadian authorities since 1999, when he was first arrested through a national security certificate. The certificate is a legal tool that allows for evidence to be withheld from the accused and gives the government the right to deport the individual named.

Jaballah moved to Canada with his family in 1996 under false pretenses with forged Saudi Arabia passports. Jaballah spent time in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Azerbaijan before travelling to Toronto. He was granted refugee status by the Canadian government claiming the Egyptian government had persecuted him because of alleged ties to Al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda is an Islamist terror organization that was once led by Osama bin Laden, and is responsible for a number of terrorist attacks, including the deadly attacks in the US on September 11, 2001. They are a listed terrorist entity in Canada.

While in Egypt, Jaballah was accused of participating in the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the third president of Egypt and having participated in a Jihadi organization. He was arrested twice for these charges but found innocent of these claims both times.

He has been under investigation by CSIS since his arrival to Canada. The lawsuit statement of claim says that Jaballah has had his phone tapped and was interviewed by CSIS agents multiple times.

Between 2008 and 2016, Jaballah and his family lived under house arrest.

In 2006, Mahmoud Jaballah admitted he had once invited Ahmed “Al-Kanadi” Khadr to his Toronto home for tea once in 1998. Khadr was an alleged financier of Al-Qaeda and close associate of Osama bin Laden.

“Of course he came in with her and he drank tea or coffee. He stayed 15 minutes, then he left. I see him at mosque and I shake his hand. This is our culture, this is our religion,” said Jaballah about the incident.

The federal government has attempted to have Jaballah removed from the country for over a decade but to no avail, as the deportation orders have been overturned by the justice system each time citing a lack of evidence.

The first time he was detained on a security certificate was in 1999 and since then, the government has issued two more certificates in an attempt to remove Jaballah from the country.

Mahmoud Jaballah is not the only one in his family to have run-ins with the law.

Mr. Jaballah’s son, Al-Munzir Es-Sayyid, was also arrested in 2007 for gang related offences, including wielding a sawed off shotgun. Al-Munzir was arrested when he was 18 for leading a gang and committing several robberies on sex-workers.

According to the police, Al-Munzir’s gang used methods such as death threats, restraining people with duct tape and assault during their crimes. He received a 2.5 year prison sentence for these crimes which was further extended after three grams of heroin was found on his person while in jail.

After his conviction, the federal government has been seeking to strip him of his refugee status.

Mahmoud pleaded on his son’s behalf for federal authorities to allow him to remain in Canada, despite his family’s criminal past.

He was successfully deported in 2012 for being “a danger to the public”.

This isn’t the first time that an alleged member of Al-Qaeda has sued the Canadian government.

In 2017, Omar Khadr was awarded $10.5 million by the federal government for human rights abuses suffered at Guantanamo Bay despite being suspected to have caused the death of Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer while he was fighting for the terrorist group.

A young woman fears for her life as she may be soon deported back to Saudi Arabia.

Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, 18, of Saudi Arabia, is currently in Thailand and desperately trying to avoid a pending deportation order.

Ranaf wanted to escape her abusive family and a forced marriage to older man in Saudi Arabia, when she got on a plane to Thailand with the hope of claiming asylum in Australia. She had a stopover in Thailand, and while transfering to her next flight, she was confronted by a man who claimed he was going to help her get asylum. He seized her passport instead.

Now she’s trapped in Bangkok and desperately trying to attract international attention in the hopes that someone, anyone, in the Western world will be able to help her.

She was set to be forced onto a plane at 4:15 am EST, Monday morning.

Ranaf told the BBC that she renounced Islam, a crime in Saudi Arabia, and that she no longer considers herself a Muslim. This will make things even worse for the young dissident, as the punishment for apostasy is death in the Saudi Kingdom.  

Rahaf fears that she will be abused or killed by her family if she returns home. She will now also have to deal with the wrath of the tyrannical Saudi regime and its Islamist fundamentalist legal system, known as Sharia Law.

While her situation is bleak, Rahaf has received an outpouring of support from around the world, with many activists and journalists trying to help her.

Activist Ensaf Haider, a Canadian whose husband remains in a Saudi prison for insulting the Islam, claimed on Twitter to have had a promising phone call with Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. “There is a lot of hope guys #SaveRanaf,” she wrote

Many on social media are questioning why countries with extensive records of taking in refugees are not acting at a time of a young woman’s immediate danger.

These criticisms have also been aimed at international bodies.

“Where are you UN @Refugees Agency?” asked Sun News columnist Tarek Fatah.

“Where are your highly paid staff members who are supposed to help victims of barbarism such as Rahaf who is facing death in Saudi Arabia and held in Bangkok,” said Fatah.

Thailand has a record of denying asylum to persons in danger in their home country, claimed a Human Rights Watch official. However, in a surprising turn of events, Thailand authorities said they won’t be repatriating Alqunun after her lawyers filed an injunction to avoid her deportation order.

No nation, including Canada, has made a statement in her favour.

It’s hard to fathom how two people who compared Jordan Peterson to Hitler could be suing someone else as part of a defamation case, but that’s what Wilfrid Laurier University professors Nathan Rambukkana and Herbert Pimlott are doing.

No, they aren’t suing Jordan Peterson, who they called a charlatan.

Instead, they’re going after Lindsay Shepherd, their former teaching assistant, for publicly exposing their comments, made in an infamous closed-door interrogation in November of 2017.

It’s yet another absurd twist in a saga that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Rambukkana and Pimlott have reportedly filed a third-party claim arguing Shepherd is liable for any defamation of Peterson because she distributed her covert recording of the meeting.

They say this while simultaneously maintaining Peterson wasn’t defamed. Even though Rambukkana apologized more than a year ago for what he said about Peterson in the meeting.

Dizzy yet?

A lawyer friend of mine termed it a “lawsuit within a lawsuit.” Shepherd would only have a judgment against her if Peterson’s claim against the professors and the professors’ claim against her are both successful.

Peterson’s $1.5 million lawsuit is against Laurier and the professors, though Laurier says the action against Shepherd is not part of its case.

In a separate case, Shepherd is suing Laurier, Pimlott, Rambukkana, and the university’s gender violence and diversity czar Adria Joel—who was also part of the session—for $3.6 million, arguing their negligence rendered her unemployable in academia. That claim has not yet been tested in court.

Rambukkana and Pimlott clearly think they should be able to say whatever they want about Jordan Peterson with impunity.

Three lawsuits (for now) all because two leftist professors put their political beliefs ahead of diversity of opinion in the classroom—a common occurrence in Canadian universities.

Rambukkana’s and Pimlott’s claim focuses on Shepherd’s “power and control” in recording the meeting.

Seriously.

Did they forget the power they were exercising over her by punishing her for the supposed sin of neutrally showing a public access television clip about gender pronouns?

Their attempt to point the finger at Shepherd has a gaping hole, pointed out by Shepherd’s lawyer, Howard Levitt. Shepherd didn’t post the audio herself, but rather shared it with select media outlets that made the decision to publish the recording. The professors aren’t going after any of the journalists or publications who actually did publish the recording and transcripts.

It’s unfortunate that Shepherd has to defend herself against such an outrageous claim. Especially since it was only a year ago that Laurier apologized to Shepherd for the way she was treated.

Laurier’s president, on behalf of the school, publicly and unreservedly apologized to Shepherd for the meeting. Rambukkana did as well, most notably recanting the Hitler comparison that seemed to most directly raise the ire of Peterson.

Shepherd was vindicated and Rambukkana and Pimlott were exposed for bullying and pushing an extreme ideology onto their students.

It’s only because of the recording that Shepherd had the ability to defend herself and punch back against her authoritarian professors.

She continues to fight back. It’s a shame Rambukkana and Pimlott haven’t yet figured out they’re on the wrong side.

Andrew Lawton is a Fellow at the True North.