With all due respect, and without accusing the new Minister of Transportation of anything as he said, Mr. Blanchet had the courage to raise questions about Mr. Al Ghabra. Check the reaction of the media below (Bambi spared you a long list, just posting a couple of articles).
Knowing that this politician tends to be reasonable, Bambi spent some time since yesterday searching the net for evidence about this Mr. Al Ghabra and his sympathy or ties with Islamism or his support of the Sharia law in Ontario (as a choice for litigation in Ontario family tribunals or something).
She had trouble finding any evidence to links (not functional anymore at times, but only through secondary sources). However, she insisted in searching more this evening. She looked for any article or speech in Arabic, telling herself as even if they wanted to make it mysteriously disappear from the net, they may not understand the language, and thus forget about it :). Well, indeed, she found that precious piece of evidence coming from the own mouth of Mr. Al Ghabra himself. See the end of this post!
At the time of this story concerning the Sharia law, Bambi was living in Toronto and was not overjoyed to hear about such a thing. Why? We are in Canada and not in the Middle East. In her mind, clearly there should be ONE rule of law for all of us in Canada, and not one for each group or tribe or religion or culture, regardless of which one it is. Period.
Bambi is saying so and she has many religious and ultra-religious Muslim friends in more than one province. They all know what she thinks and all respect her opinion. No one has ever called her racist because of that. So, why are we doing this to Mr. Blanchet, once again?
Mr. Al Ghabra, why don’t you and your peers who are supporting you with collegiality put aside the silly victim card (as you cleverly said in your interview in Arabic from many years ago, perhaps 2006) and courageously take responsibility for your own (past?) opinions. You sounded wiser in the Arabic interview back then, more than now when you are speaking the language of political correctness of Mr. Trudeau et al.
OK, Bambi is saying all this and Mr. Al Ghabra is free to have his own opinion about the Sharia law of course, but should he have the decency to tell us that Mr. Blanchet was right?
Same for the journalist from the Journal of Montreal (that the English-Canadian media is calling “right-wing” without naming it and it is not even to the right, just like the historic Québec :)!) and even the more real right-wing Mr. Ezra Levant. Yes, it turned out that they are all right in pointing to the fact that Mr. Al Ghabra supported Sharia law back then (maybe he changed his mind now and that’s fine. End of the story).
Mind you, he also supported Hezbollah and Hamas (and maybe he changed his mind now too). Why doesn’t he openly tell us that? Bambi has changed her mind on many topics, including the Hezbollah itself. At first, she thought it was a true resistance movement (when Israel was occupying Lebanon). Now, she clearly sees that it is not only a state in a state, but rather a MUCH larger (Iranian or type of Islamist) state than the Lebanese state.
So, Mr. Al Ghabra may end up being a wonderful Minister of Transportation. This is not the issue. He seems to be passionate and competent. He also seems to be a nice character (maybe a bit shy and that has charm) in both English and Arabic. He is also a highly educated man, one must say (Engineering degree and MBA, etc.). He came to Canada at age 19 from Saudi Arabia and of Syrian origins. Bravo for him for being where he is now, and Bambi is sorry to hear that he lost his dad a few years ago during war.
So, all this to say, he seems to be devoted Liberal politician… but his past opinions raise questions indeed, to use Mr. Blanchet’s words. How can we trust that his ideology is behind him now, if he denies it like that? And what about the Canadian Arab Federation saga (see article in French and its Google Translation)? How can we trust Mr. Trudeau’s judgment, knowing that in the past, he has flirted with radical Islamists, knowingly or more naively? Again, Bambi is not talking about Muslims or Arabs… and she is one of the latter, for the record.
Yesterday or today, Mr. Al Ghabra condemned the violence against a synagogue in Montreal. Well done. The other day, he defended the rights of the Canadian families of the victims of the Ukrainian airplane brought down by the Iranians. He also contributed to raise funds and support Syrian civilians. He also spoke about the rights of the Palestinian and Lebanese people. This is noble, bravo (even if he may have also supported Islamist organizations in power).
Below are the media articles and the tweet of one of his colleagues that is making us think that he is a victim of injustice. Ironically, he is from Québec like Mr. Blanchet and Bambi, so he reads French too. He can go read the article called “Omar et Justin” following the tweet below.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/omar-alghabra-bloc-quebecois-accusations-1.5872482
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2016/01/21/omar-et-justin
Google Translate of the French article above, “Omar & Justin“.
Now finally, Bambi will conclude this post with the evidence of Mr. Al Ghabra’s support of the Sharia law in Ontario. He gave this interview to a “Al Moughtarib” (meaning “the emigrant” and by the way, his family name means “the dust”). The journalist asked him, among all the questions, about this Sharia law that did not pass. Check his response in bold. It is this support of the Sharia law that is disturbing for Mr. Blanchet who believes in the separation of the state and church, to use his own words (Bill 21 is all about that, no?). Like Mr. Blanchet, Bambi believes in a secular state as well. This being said, those who can understand Arabic can check the fourth column toward the middle. It reads as follows: “Unfortunately, the Islamic majority remained silent during the debate about this bill [on the implementation of Sharia law], leaving the room wide open for the minority opposing it, which was more vocal, and thus managed to make this bill fail. This was not meant to be against Muslims, but it is us who were divided and did not how to speak in one voice“.
