Finding Voices Of Reason

It's been two days since the war on terror came to our quiet little corner of the world. Sort of. No bombs exploded, no one was shot and no one died.

Now many of you would say that this was the case because the RCMP and CSIS did their jobs and apprehended the 17 suspects before they could carry out their attack. You might also be right. But we're not here to place blame or talk about what ifs what we are here to talk about is staying calm.

Police Chief Bill Blair is calling for it after a mosque was vandalized over the weekend. These kinds of attacks on the Muslim community is exactly what we were afraid of. Attacking innocent and law-abiding Canadians because they happen to share a religion with the men arrested this weekend is just plain wrong.

The blogosphere isn't always the most rational place so we looked long and hard for those who, like the Police Chief are appealing for calm, reason and rationality in a climate of fear and uncertainty.

There's Mezba on Crescent Canuck, a local Muslim, who calls on members of the Muslim community to be more vigilant for those preaching hate and planning violence within their own community.

James Bow echoes Mayor Miller's question, why did so many of these men, particularly the ones born here want to kill fellow Canadians?

The indoctriNATION blog comments on Thomas Walkom's level-headed analysis in the Star that while these men may have had some suspicious materials, the evidence seized isn't really a smoking gun and that these men must have their day in court before we condemn them. The blog also leads us to the Vive le Canada blog where the author worries that these arrests will lead to US style erosion of civil liberties.

We also found ourselves nodding along with Dr. Dawg on Dawg's blog. Despite the silly name we thank him for sifting through some very shrill, angry, fearful and sometimes bigoted commentary on this weekend's events.

He sums it up nicely when he writes:

Seeping through every crack in the foundation of our polity is the presumption of guilt, unfettered paranoia, vengefulness, opportunist attacks on more-accessible-than-ever targets of the far Right, and a pure unadulterated hateful raving that beggars description.

It's the kind of "unadulterated hateful raving" that sadly we can see in places like the Star coming from people like Rosie DiManno. She asks us to take a good long look at what's going on here. Well we're trying Rosie but all of this paranoia is clouding the issue.