Salim Mansur

Salim Mansur is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. He is a former columnist for the London Free Press and the Toronto Sun, and has contributed to various publications including National Review, the Middle East Forum and Frontpagemag. He often presents analysis on the Muslim world, Islam, South Asia, Middle East.^[1] On two occasions, fatwas (religion edicts) were issued against him, calling for his death.^[2] He is also a member of the Freedom Party of Ontario.^[3]

Biography

Mansur was born in Calcutta, India and moved to Toronto, Canada where he completed his doctorate studies in political science.^[1][4]

Mansur is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, a group which seeks to support democracies and placed particular emphasis on calling for the Government of Canada to adopt a pro-Israel stance.

Salim Mansur was one of the founding members of Canadians Against Suicide Bombing, a group that has lobbied to amend Canada’s Criminal Code to cite suicide bombing as a terrorist crime, efforts which resulted in the passing of Bill S-215 in December 2010.^[5]

He is an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.^[6]

He is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000, being defeated by Sue Barnes.^[7]

Mansur,^[8] said he was ostracized after writing columns for the condemning the Taliban and comparing it to the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia. According to Mansur, the severe backlash has prompted him to stop going to his local mosque.^[9]

At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.^[10]

Views on Israel and the Palestinians

In 2008, Mansur congratulated Israel for its 60th anniversary, and declared that the Jewish state "deserves admiration": "Israel is a tiny sliver of land in a vast tempest-ridden sea of the Arab-Muslim world, and yet it is here the ancient world's most enduring story is made fresh again by Jews to live God's covenant with Abraham as told in their sacred literature."^[11] In 2010, he wrote: "The story of modern Israel, as many have noted, is a miracle unlike any [...] It is a robust and inclusive democracy, and is at the leading edge of science and technology [...] What hypocrites demand of Israelis and the scrutiny Israel is subjected to by them, they would not dare make of any other nation."^[12]

Mansur wrote that a Palestinian state was de facto created by Britain in Jordan by partitioning its Palestine Mandate in 1922, and the Palestinians would have had a state of their own, had they accepted Israel and reconciled themselves to the rights of the Jews in Jerusalem and the Holy Land.^[13]

Criticism of the Arab and Muslim World

Mansur writes that, From Algeria to Indonesia, from Central Asian republics to Sudan, the entire Muslim world "has turned its back on modernity".^[14] He says the Muslim world must stop blaming the West for its own ailments.^[15]

Mansur's criticisms of other parts of the world have extended so far that he has testified on October 1, 2012 to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration that Canada should stop immigration from Muslim countries. Mansur stated:

The flow of immigration into Canada from around the world, and in particular the flow from Muslim countries, means a pouring in of numbers into a liberal society of people from cultures at best non-liberal. But we know through our studies and observations that the illiberal mix of cultures poses one of the greatest dilemmas and an unprecedented challenge to liberal societies, such as ours, when there is no demand placed on immigrants any longer to assimilate into the founding liberal values of the country to which they have immigrated to and, instead, by a misguided and thoroughly wrong-headed policy of multiculturalism encourage the opposite.^[16]

Skepticism about Mainstream Scientific Position on Climate Change

Mansur has insisted that "the claim of man-made global warming" has been "falsified."^[17] He has also suggested that climate scientists, "corrupted by the lure of money and influence, subscribed to the UN-based scheme for the largest global tax grab and revenue transfer -- some version of global carbon tax -- by raising false alarms about impending planetary doom in the name of science."^[18]

Books

• 2011: Delectable Lie: a liberal repudiation of multiculturalism. Brantford, ON: Mantua Books.
• 2009: Islam’s Predicament: Perspectives of a Dissident Muslim. Oakville, Canada and Niagara Falls, NY: Mosaic Press.
• 1994: (with N.K. Choudhry) (eds). The Indira-Rajiv Years: The Indian Economy and Polity 1966-1991. Toronto: Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Toronto.

Articles by Salim Mansur

• Time to crush terror
• Muslims, Democracy, and the American Experience
• Dissecting the Danish Cartoon Controversy
• Empty Gestures
• Canadians Against Suicide Bombing Salim Mansur leading member
• Climate Under Fire
• Mansur: Gore under spotlight
• Is there global warming 'truth'?

External links

• Robert Fulford: Canada's angriest 'moderate', November 21, 2009, by Robert Fulford, National Post.

References