Calgary’s Muslim mayor, Naheed Nenshi, has been held up as a symbol of the city’s tolerance. Which is ironic, given his own anti-Christian bigotry in return.
Last week, Nenshi ordered city police, backed up with a ridiculously large contingent of private security, to arrest a Christian pastor and five of his congregants who had the temerity to lead a Christmas service in the public atrium of Calgary’s City Hall.
Artur Pawlowski, lead pastor of Calgary’s Street Church, had foolishly taken the mayor at his word when he described city hall as the city’s “living room,” open to all.
What Pawlowski didn’t understand is that Nenshi didn’t mean Christians. Nenshi meant his own co-religionists — no, not Muslims, but the leftist activists who had comprised the Occupy Calgary protests for two months with Nenshi’s blessing.
h/t Neil.
messy.
The Pastor was trying to cause contraversy which he did.
The mayor is insighting confrontation, so that he can deny free speech, which he did.
Naheed Nenshi is a numpty. What sentient politician would call the cops on a street preacher making a nuisance of himself in the foyer of city hall? Now if the preacher were invading the mayor’s home a la Mary Walsh I would say the mayor was right in calling the cops.
As an occasional visitor and distant observer….I suspect that Calgary and Edmonton reflect more transplants from Ontariario than the pure laine Albertan. Immigrants are always a vexation……even from the GTA….they bring their baggage with them….doning stetsons and western boots don’t much change the mindset.
Don’t expect Nenshi to get tossed out next time round. My associates in the Calgary Police service indicate that Calgary’s Police are as “progressive” as Otnorot…….
Wild Rose will not likely be able to change that IMNSHO.
Someone has a slight stutter (let’s hope this comment makes no sense soon).
Calgary and Canada are what they are. The arbitrary, tyrannical exercise of power is Trudeautopia. Canada wished for it, praised it, voted for it repeatedly, and lives happily ever after under it. It’s too late to change it now.
Calgary sounds like Dearborn.
“even from the GTA”
Yeah, Allison Redford, born and bred in Scarborough.
Give it a rest, you breed ’em out there too.
Nenshi was right in tossing him out. It’s too bad that he didn’t have the parts to do it to the ‘occcupiers’.
BTW,Nenshi was elected with only 39% of the popular vote,therefore by leftard reasoning,he should not be taken seriously because he stole the election.
Both Redford and the mayor will not do well in their next election tries,IMNSHO also.
“Mayor” Nenshi has proudly claimed that non white people are not the poorest in Calgary, then goes on to say that more tax’s need to be taken from white area’s and redistributed to the “colored” North East area of Calgary.
Apparently these “not the poorest” colored people don’t see fit to put additional money into community centers and other traditional western infrastructure, so it will be up to the white communities to fund them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNAMH2_CLfo
A good piece by Ezra, but he is only preaching to the choir. The progressives are too dumbfounded to see the light.
I’m a Christian and I am no fan of Artur Pawlowski’s antics, but he does do a great job in this case pointing out the twisted bias of our politicians.
Calgary has serious hiring problems because of it’s policy decisions from the brass. Until that changes, you can expect to see people who want to become cops going anywhere else.
No injunction needed for this one eh?
I would be far more worried about an “occupier” high on God knows what than some preacher. You can walk around a preacher. You can barely escape the stench- or rape- of/by an “occupier”.
You get what you vote for.
I’d like to see a video of the eviction or some more detailed reports. If, this Minister and his five followers don’t have a
history of violence this sounds like an over reaction.
If this religious service is not permitted, then the police are only doing what someone, following the City Solicitor’s legal advice, prevented them from doing to the Occupy clowns.
Politicians go along with the advice of government lawyers. Few have the education or temerity to even question that.
How respectfully they proceeded is a fair question.
Obviously, this Pastor and his group have some history with the city. I’d like to know more about it.
I would not attribute this to religious discrimination by the Mayor. Ishmaili’s are very sensitive to that. If the Islamists take over the Ishmailis would be in more danger than Jews.
Most of the Ishmalis here fled religious/political persecution abroad in Africa the Middle East.
It is a mistake to confuse Ishmaili Muslims with the other mainstream sects. That error is common in the MSM and leads to invalid conclusions.
Mayor Nenshi is an Ismaili heretic as far as the mainstream sunni crowd would opine.
Born in Toronto to parents run out of Tanzania by some leftist crackpot/thieving scum
of the day. Got in as mayor as the two front runners shafted themselves or got shafted
by the MSM or both.
I didn’t realize that Calgary had a left-wing loonie muslim for a mayor. Haven’t been there in about 10 years. I thought all you western folk were smarter than that.
Ismailis aren’t normally racist. The Aga Khans always marry white women and don’t make them wear the potato sack. Considering how absolutely useless police are in solving real crime, perhaps the question “what harm” could have been asked. What kind of a threat is 6 people seriously? While the loony left can get away with jackbooting Christians, a Muslim should know better. Too bad he didn’t use his head instead of ingrained racism.
“even from the GTA”
Yeah, Allison Redford, born and bred in Scarborough.
Give it a rest, you breed ’em out there too.”
If we’re being accurate:
“Redford was born March 7, 1965 in Kitimat, British Columbia. Her family moved to Nova Scotia and Borneo, and to Calgary by the time Redford was 12.”
Yes, born and bred. She’s about as Albertan as the sirloin you buy at Galen Weston’s Superstore.
I didn’t realize that Calgary had a left-wing loonie muslim for a mayor.
All Calgary Mayors have been Lefties since Rod Sykes and he was fairly conservative…for a Liberal.
The sad fact is that the federal NDP and Liberal political machines operate at the provincial and civic level to get their people elected while the federal conservative political machine has never had much interest in competing at the civil or provincial level despite provincial and civic governments constantly haranguing Ottawa for funds.
You’d think the federal conservatives would want their own people running the provinces and cities just to get along better with those governments.
Her family moved to Nova Scotia and Borneo
I wonder if she conspired with Barry Soetoro in Borneo. Tell me she didn’t become an anti-American Muslim like Barry when she was there.
Brian M >
“I thought all you western folk were smarter than that.”
Allot of us saw the writing on the wall awhile ago and ran out. White flight is just getting going in Alberta as it has been in most other parts of the western world. It’s the frog in the boiling water scenario that gets hard working Albertans to look the other way while the Liberal left relentlessly pushes through multicultural agendas to populate and liberalize Alberta. A huge immigrant push comming out of Toronto as they unload thier undesirables on us.
I got out of Calgary 20 years ago, and never looked back; it’s been an unbelievable blessing in improved lifestyle. Unfortunately the small Alberta city I escaped to is itself getting bigger as the handout crowd chases the producers to ever smaller corners of the world.
Soon it’ll be time to move again for me fortunately I can afford to do so, not so much for most people, which only puts their backs against a wall. It’s disheartening to say the least to see our aged war hero’s or their widows forced to live in ghettoized downtown areas plagued with indignant foreign immigrants and the subsequent liberalized crime.
One day there will be nowhere left to run.
We must remember that Naheed Nenshi is a graduate of the Robert Kennedy School of Law at Harvard, same as Ingatief, Obama, and the rest of the Liberal/Socialist leaders all over this great land.
They are all singing from the same song sheet, allowing the commies to do their destabilization of the nations.
Nothing to see here…move along!!!!
A recent Bloomberg Interview with Alison Redford, well worth the read.
Included is an interview with Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi – “The investment and immigration has changed the face of the province”.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-28/calgary-oil-transforming-canada-to-energy-superpower-built-with-immigrants.html
Only from here can Albertan’s understand where they are, as these two drive down your wages and sell off your province.
A bit of background, written before Ezra loosed his tether & sailed off into the ideolgical void —
City Hall stumbles into an era of openness
By Licia Corbella, Calgary Herald November 16, 2011
As someone on SDA said before, we need to pay close attention to our municipal politics, even at the rural level in BC. The green zealots, earthmuffins, fungus-lovers and Islands Trust power trippers who want to be agents of ‘change’ and all that entails, are into moving on UP. Private property rights are being trampled.
It looks like my link didn’t link properly – copy and paste to Goggle should give the story on top of the list.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-28/calgary-oil-transforming-canada-to-energy-superpower-built-with-immigrants.html
The “Nenshis” always show up after the hard work is finished. “Built by immigrants”. Yeah, it was built by immigrants, alright. From Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Texas, Oklahoma. The South Asians, ME, East Europeans, and assorted others didn’t show up until the 70s, well after the heavy lifting had been done. I’ve been in the oilpatch since 1976, and the real work is still being done by us “privileged” white boys. The Nenshis are just parasites on the real producers.
coach >
Bingo.
I have spent the last nearly two decades working overseas in all the places these people come from. What works in their oilfields were built by the same people who built ours, which is us. Any non western “National Oil company” abroad is an utter chaotic disaster. That is why they ALL have at least a few expats somewhere in their mix to try and sort things as best they can.
The logistics and the by and large uselessness of the local populations in these countries is something you need to see firsthand to believe. That is why people like me go over there, to make it work right. This is not what we want be importing, believe me!
Pawlowski’s group has been at odds with the City of Calgary since 2005, and yet that Muslim hating racist Levant spins this to make it look like it’s all the current mayor’s fault. All proving that facts are stupid things to racist right wingers.
lberia
everyone, Christian, Jewish, Athiest or any other non-muslim should be standing together and shouting this from the rooftops….
We will NOT go quietly into the night or be second-class citizens under any caliphate !!!!
and we should be protecting the ones being killed by islamists in the name of islam…take the fight back to them now or it will be too late later on.
Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian priest Yohanna Qulta, deputy patriarch of the Coptic Catholic church, which aired on Al-Hayat TV on December 10, 2011.
Interviewer: When I asked if the Copts were thinking of leaving Egypt, you said: “Absolutely.”
Yohanna Qulta: Of course. The fear we encounter on TV and in national newspapers, which I don’t want to name… Actually, why not? Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar… They run large headlines, quoting the Salafis as saying that the Copts should either leave Egypt or pay the jizya poll tax in submission.
[…]
The world has changed. The Copts did not fight you [Muslims] or drive you out of your homes, so why do you want to expel them? Do the Copts constitute a foreign community? They tell you that Switzerland persecutes the Muslims, France persecutes the Muslims… The persecution of any group is unacceptable – but we are not even a community of immigrants. We have deep roots in this country.
[…]
Interviewer: Do you Copts fear these Salafi statements? If they do come to power and instate the jizya poll tax – I’m not saying that this will happen, but let’s assume this for the sake of argument – how will you respond?
Yohanna Qulta: We will oppose this fiercely, to the point of martyrdom. Returning to the Middle Ages is out of the question. We will not turn to the UN or to the Western countries, but to Al-Azhar, to Islamic moral values, and to the vast majority of Muslims, who are moderate. Gone are the days of paying the jizya, the days of slavery. What the Salafis and the others need to understand is that the religious state has failed, from East to West, in every era, both in Christian and Muslims countries.
The Church was liberated the day religious was separated from state. Has the Catholic Church collapsed in Europe, or in France? No, it still exists, despite the separate of Church and state.
It has been proven that a religious state is not compatible with human nature. The role of religion is to educate the human conscience. It shapes the conscience of Man, so that merchants have a conscience, engineers have a conscience, laborers have a conscience… Religion is not supposed to regulate traffic or taxes, or to determine whether one should wear the hijab or niqab. Religion is supposed to advise and guide, but to leave one with freedom of choice. Religion is freedom.
[…]
What did America – with 150,000 soldiers armed to the teeth – do for the Christians of Iraq? Churches were burnt down, Christians were martyred, and America did nothing. What did America do for the Christians of Lebanon? What did it do for the Arab Christians? What did it do for the Christians of Rwanda and Burundi, one million of whom were killed?
This is a lie. I’d rather turn to my Muslim neighbors.
[…]
O.k. o.k. i am sorry but i will again have to preach to the choir again i know…
but we here in calgary (me excluded cause i livei n airdrie) elected this man…stop whining and start voting start FRIKEN protesting you people your so frustrating you cry whine P!ss and moan about all of the attck’s on christians around the world but DO nothing about it you can protest you can write to your mp/mla so on and so forth but most don’t cause there lives are SOOO busy that they will let just one more of there freedoms get trampled on but this is the last one ….lol!!!
The link from dizzy seems to contradict, sort of, Ezra’s essay. I don’t fully trust either one.
Alberta desperately needs every immigrant it can get heck Canada as a whole sure does. Thank goodness we have a (relatively) open immigration system.
Another glaring example of why the Alberta “advantage” is looooong gone – replaced by the growing Alberta disadvantage. If politics keep going like they are in Alberta it will be indistinguishable from Ontario’s socialist cesspool.
It’s funny watching some segments of the left now catching on to their personal losses via mass third world immigration.
In addition more established ethnic immigrants are starting to speak out against further multiculturalism as they are finding themselves surrounded by other less palatable immigrants. This realization is compounded with more white flight from major urban areas to less ethnic areas, leaving long standing immigrants more isolated with increasing urban property values, more traffic/ shopping congestion, and increasing gang violence.
What Canadian “niceness” they ask; a little difficult when everyone in the community comes from some third world craphole where they used to chop each other’s hands off.
As mayor Naheed Nenshi continues to promote his social engineering plan to redistribute the wealth and encourage more ethnic immigration to Calgary as he did in Toronto a few months ago, he will eventually find himself in charge of little Detroit on the prairie.
Oz and Knight99 – thanks for the insight. I travel across Canada several times a year but I’ve missed Calgary in for quite a while. The Conservative base needs to attack all levels of government aggressively. Lord knows, I’ve tried to help here in my native Ontario (apparently without much success – although Jim Flaherty is my MP and his wife is my MPP). I don’t personally know anyone who has written to more municipal, provincial and federal politicians than myself, however I’m sure there are many who have. I always attempt to be respectful but firm in my convictions and I do get responses. Some are fluff, others not so much. I think it’s time to go back to snail mail (or fax) as a means of expressing my opinion because I’m really starting to believe email is too easy for most and too voluminous for the receiver to process. I’ll let you know how it goes.
As far as immigration goes, I agree that we need a certain level. Demographics dictate that as the boomers retire and age and require more health care. What we DO need to do is cherry pick the best, brightest and most productive immigrants and say no to the dregs. No to refugees as well. Sorry gang but there’s only so much Canada to go around.
And as for people from Islamic countries? As Nancy Reagan once said – “just say no”.
ok4ua “The Pastor was trying to cause contraversy which he did.”
– and the tent dwellers weren’t…?
It’s funny watching some segments of the left now catching on to their personal losses via mass third world immigration.
In addition more established ethnic immigrants are starting to speak out against further multiculturalism as they are finding themselves surrounded by other less palatable immigrants. This realization is compounded with more white flight from major urban areas to less ethnic areas, leaving long standing immigrants more isolated with increasing urban property values, more traffic/ shopping congestion, and increasing gang violence.
What Canadian “niceness” they ask; a little difficult when everyone in the community comes from some third world craphole where they used to chop each other’s hands off.
As mayor Naheed Nenshi continues to promote his social engineering plan to redistribute the wealth and encourage more ethnic immigration to Calgary as he did in Toronto a few months ago, he will eventually find himself in charge of little Detroit on the prairie.
Brian M. >
“What we DO need to do is cherry pick the best, brightest and most productive immigrants and say no to the dregs”.
That is right on one level, certainly from established first world nations. What is wrong with that is on the Third World level because we are then taking the supposed “best & brightest” out of the Third World.
Since everyone on all sides of the political spectrum cries about saving the third world, why then are we pulling out all the local smart people who should be changing those countries for the better?
Obviously the unskilled, uneducated from those countries only do us harm, which sensibly leaves us with banning third world immigration altogether, for the sake of everyone.
Iberia: “Pawlowski’s group has been at odds with the City of Calgary since 2005”.. meaning that with SIX years of this guy being a pest (if that’s the case), the City Hall bureaucrats & new mayor have had lots of time to figure out how to deal with this problem. That is, to quote noted philosopher James Montgomery Scott: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” City Hall dropped the ball, no matter the top dog, and thus the optics (as Ezra points out) are terrible.
If immigration laws were eased just a bit, it would increase world GDP by trillions. Current restrictions on immigration are robbery.
http://reason.com/blog/2011/09/28/dont-pick-up-that-trillion-dol
It’s a street church which is why they go on the street. They care for the homeless. The pastor has been arrested over 8 times because they took the church outside the four walls.
He was interviewed on Adler and he is not a kook, nor a problem to the city.
If you don’t acquaint yourself with the facts but just repeat what is essentially half-truths and gossip, you’re aligning yourself with those whose goal is to shut Christians out of the public square. Which is actually where Jesus said they are to go.
The group have had the support of the courts up to now, so they’ve broken no laws.
It’s just more discrimination against Christian activity in public and we had better get used to it. I’m not sure it matters who the mayor is in Calgary since he obviously has the support of the voters.
This ministry had its’ charity status stripped by the CRA for speaking the truths of scripture. The agency cited that “members of the Board of Directors espouse strong negative views about sensitive and controversial issues, which may also be viewed as political, such as abortion, homosexuality, divorce, etc” as the reason for denial.
Their website is http://www.streetchurch.ca and the interview with Adler is on it.
“Alberta desperately needs every immigrant it can get heck Canada as a whole sure does. Thank goodness we have a (relatively) open immigration system.”
“Toronto saw a 13 per cent drop in homicides, reaching its lowest level since 1999, according to a new Statistics Canada report.” 10/26/2011
http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/news/national/article/163864–toronto-homicide-rate-drops-to-lowest-level-in-12-years
More immigrants, less homicides. Is there a correlation? Maybe it is just a coincidence.
“Asians work like dogs.” Rob Ford, Toronto Mayor
It makes one wonder…what type of people voted this mayor into office….he seems to have something missing in logic dept….
A Liberal is a person who believes his own Bull.
“insighting a confrontation”, either the poster is a genius at punning, or another example of semi-literacy on the Left.
Our own county council lost thousands, hosting a New Years party featuring Julian Austin. Julian who?
Yeah right….
Yes we need more immigrants for sure but we don’t need anymore aging grandmothers brought over as family class. That helps no one except the granny.
We also don’t need people who refuse to leave their retrograde aspects of their culture behind. If you want to beat your wife and make her wear a burqa stay in crapystan. You are not welcome here. I will never accommodate any of that crap.