Is Stephen Harper Trying to Start a Hindu Muslim War in Canada?

I've always assumed Stephen Harper's grotesque anti-niqab crusade was primarily designed to win him the support of some Quebecers.

Like these two clowns who turned up to vote yesterday with their faces covered.



And of course to pleasure his rabid base in rural Alberta, for whom the only good Muslim is a dead one.

But Tasha Kheirridin suggests that Harper may have another reason for continuing to beat his hollow bigot drum. 

And it couldn't be more chilling.

Because it involves pandering to the anti-Muslim prejudices of some in the Hindu Canadian community.

Many observers have accused Harper of blowing a “dog whistle” to white or “old stock” Canadians (to use a recent Harper expression), fanning the flames of anti-Muslim sentiment. That may not be what’s happening here. Unfortunately, all groups, ethnicities and cultures harbour their own prejudices. 

When immigrants come to Canada, they don’t behind leave their struggles — or the racism that can accompany these experiences. And there is a very important Canadian diaspora currently caught in the cross-hairs of anti-Muslim sentiment: Hindu Canadians of South Asian descent.

It seeks to profit from heightened tensions between the two communities in the wake of a horrifying sectarian killing in India, in the hope it will win the Cons seats in Toronto and Vancouver.

And what's so chilling is that Kheirridin's suggestion does make perfect sense.

For what else can explain that a month after Jason Kenney launched his anti-niqab crusade, and Lynton Crosby started working for him, Harper should practically throw himself at the feet of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi?



Even going so far as to travel across the country with him on a triumphal tour of one Indo-Canadian community event after the other.



Even though Modi is a Hindu extremist, who has been accused of enabling mass murder. 

While Modi was chief minister of Gujarat, he was accused of “criminal conspiracy” in a pogrom against Muslims in 2002 in which more than 1,000 were killed, and over 100,000 were made refugees.



So Harper's passionate embrace of Modi couldn't be more appalling, just as his tacit support for Hindu extremism couldn't be more dangerous.

For the last thing we need to do is encourage ancient hatreds from the old country to play themselves out in this one...



And needless to say for fanning those foul flames, Harper is the last person to accuse anybody of cultural barbarism.

But then we know he's desperate, and that he has no moral compass, so he is capable of anything to try to cling to power.

And as I keep repeating, we can't defeat that monstrous maniac soon enough.

Before he sets this country on fire...



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