If there's one thing I've picked up on since I've moved to Canada, it's that Canada -- well, politicians and anyone else whose job it is to make nationalist rhetoric -- prides itself on being socially progressive.
Yet sometimes we sing a different tune.
The CBC reports Prime Minister Stephen Harper says "the biggest threat" to Canada is Islamic terrorism. As CBC writes:
"There are other threats out there, but that is the one that I can tell you occupies the security apparatus most regularly in terms of actual terrorist threats," Harper said.
Harper cautioned that terrorist threats can "come out of the blue" from a different source, such as the recent Norway attacks, where a lone gunman who hated Muslims killed 77 people.
But Harper said terrorism by Islamic radicals is still the top threat, though a "diffuse" one.
Despite acknowledging the variety of backgrounds that comprise terrorists, Harper insists Islamic terrorism is the top threat. Even if the majority of terrorist attacks committed in the past decade were by Islamic extremists, justifying rights-defying laws like arresting suspects without a warrant and detaining them without charges inherently relies on prejudice.
If intelligence defined the "biggest terrorist threats" as the largest and most notable attacks globally, such as the incidents in Norway, I can't help but think that Harper wouldn't adjust his foreign policy to focus on Christian extremists.
