A step in the right direction or a decoy to lull the unwary into a false sense of security?

A group of Canadian and U.S. Islamic leaders on Friday issued a fatwa, or religious edict, declaring that an attack by extremists on the two countries would constitute an attack on the 10 million Muslims living in North America.

The 20 imams associated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada said this marked the first fatwa by the Muslim clergy declaring attacks on Canada and the U.S. as attacks on Muslims.

“In our view, these attacks are evil, and Islam requires Muslims to stand up against this evil,” the imams said in their fatwa.

The imams also said it is a duty of every Muslim in Canada and the U.S. to safeguard the two countries.

“They must expose any person, Muslim or non-Muslim, who would cause harm to fellow Canadians or Americans,” they said.

The 20 imams who signed the fatwa come from B.C., Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Houston.

The fatwa comes just weeks after an attempted bombing on Christmas Day of a U.S. airliner bound for Detroit from Amsterdam.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian Muslim man, has been indicted on six charges, which include attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted murder.

The Islamic Supreme Council of Canada was founded in 2000 by Syed Soharwardy, the person who initiated the Alberta Human Rights Commission complaint against Ezra Levant for publishing the infamous Danish cartoons. The complaint was eventually withdrawn, but not before 2 years of wasted time and money.

Syed Soharwardy is the author of such nonsense as:

“Presently, what Israeli forces are doing to Palestinians is worse than the Holocaust of World War II.”

and

“Sharia cannot be customized for specific countries. These universal, divine laws are for all people of all countries for all times.”

and on Christians who assisted those struck by the 2004 tsunami:

“ISCC . . . strongly condemns the exploitation of tsunami victims by the Christian missionaries. There have been several reports that the Christian missionaries are kidnapping Muslim children in Indonesia. . . . It is now proven that the Christian missionaries do not help people on humanitarian grounds. They help people in order to exploit their needs and convert them to Christianity.”

All of which points to the likelihood that the founder of the ISCC is devious, impervious to truth and would probably do almost anything – even make sympathetic noises – to Islamise Canada.