Narendra Modi: Harper’s kind of guy

By Montreal Simon

You had to see it to believe it. Stephen Harper welcoming the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Canada.

Then travelling on the plane with him to a massive rally in Toronto.

Even though Modi is a Hindu extremist, and has been accused of enabling mass murder.

Until a year ago, Modi was denied a visa to visit the U.S. because of “severe violations of religious freedom.” While Modi was chief minister of Gujarat, he was accused of “criminal conspiracy” in a pogrom against Muslims in 2002 in which more than 1,000 were killed, and over 100,000 were made refugees.

A man whose image is being reinvented by Big Business while back in India his supporters run wild.

With Modi in power, his emboldened brotherhood in the Sangh Parivar has intensified the targeting of minorities — Christians, Muslims, indigenous tribes and lower castes. Women are kidnapped for marrying Muslim or Christian men as part of the “love jihad” campaign. Churches are being attacked; a nun was raped. But Modi pretends that the everyday violence and intolerance doesn’t exist. He is busy travelling the world, signing business deals and meeting his diaspora supporters.

But why should anyone be surprised, when Harper and Modi resemble each other?

In many ways, Harper and Modi are natural allies, both conservatives with strong corporate backing. Just like Harper has been using Islamophobia to stir up fear and insecurity, Modi uses anti-Muslim rhetoric during his election campaigns, too, but violent consequences often follow his words.

And the Cons are harvesting religious extremism to try to win the next election.

Because to understand that all you have to do is look at who attended this demonstration against the Ontario government’s new sex education curriculum the other day…

Then look at the man who organized it, the notorious anti-gay bigot Charles McVety.

The man known as the PMO’s chaplain, who once claimed he could get Harper on the phone quicker than a cabinet minister.

And then read what Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne had to say about a similar demonstration last month.

What truly bothers the premier is her belief that such protests may be politically motivated — orchestrated by federal Conservative activists profiting from parents’ fears in order to boost their own partisan ambitions in a “despicable” way.

“I think the federal Conservatives are going to use this issue in certain communities in the federal election, which I think is despicable,” Wynne said. “It’s something that we need to call them out on.”

And the strategy becomes only too clear.

Cons like Jason Kenney have flooded the country with hundreds of thousands of immigrants chosen for their backward religious and cultural beliefs.

They have nurtured them by attending one ethnic religious event after the other.

And are now preparing to wield these communities in an all-out assault on our values, and use them to try to steal the next election.

For only a Con like Kenney could embrace a leader whose supporters are murdering Christians and raping nuns . . .

While at the same time using the anti-niqab campaign he started to make it look like the Cons are against what they call barbarous cultural practices. Or fooling his sucker base into believing they are against immigration.

And all I can say is if the Cons succeed it will be a pyrrhic victory. For it will leave multiculturalism as a smouldering ruin, divide Canadians to an extent never seen before.

And change this country into a living hell . . .

For if you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.

And if you harvest religious extremism for crass political purposes, you are, for that alone, unfit to remain office.

Wake up Canadians. Stand up for our secular values of tolerance and inclusion.

Don’t let those Con fanatics get away with it.

Don’t let Stephen Harper destroy our Canada . . .