Disunited they stand: Canada's moderate Muslim majority may lack cohesion, but they're a bulwark for their faith and their country against extremism.

IN April and May, millions of Turks demonstrated in support of their country's tradition of secular government and against a possible run for president by the Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "We respect belief, but not extremism," was a popular slogan. Similar anti-extremist rallies took place in Pakistan in April, with 100,000 moderates clamouring against a plan, advanced by the leadership of a powerful Islamabad mosque, to establish a court based on sharia, the Muslim legal code.

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But in Canada, it can sometimes seem as if moderate Muslims don't exist, says Tarek Fatah, former communications director of the Canadian Muslim Congress. "Moderate Muslims don't have a platform or institution that represents them," he says. Fatah explains that many Canadian imams come from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, areas noted for extremism, and have a different agenda than moderate Canadian-born Muslims.

There is no question that moderate Canadian Muslims do exist, however, and that they are struggling to get their voices heard. Following the June 2006 arrest in Ontario of 17 Muslim youths--charged with, among other things, plotting to bomb Parliament and behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper--Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity, convened a who's who of moderate Canadian Muslim leaders to discuss strategies to combat extremism.

Among the roughly 20 participants were: Adam Esse, president of the Coalition for Muslim Organizations; Abdul-Basit Khan, chair of the advisory board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada; Dany Assaf, a member of the board of the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations; Mehmet Tohti, president of the Uyghur Canadian Association; and Salim Mansur, University of Western Ontario political science professor and Western Standard contributor.

"It was a useful meeting," says Kenney, "very productive." He adds that consideration was given to having a "systematic, permanent exchange" between moderate Muslim leaders and the Canadian government, but the plan was sidetracked by the war between Israel and Hizb' allah in July and August, which divided the pro-Israel Harper government and Muslim leaders.

Noticeably absent from the roundtable was the more extremist Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. Elmasry has declared that all adult Israelis are legitimate targets for suicide bombers; he has supported sharia law in Ontario, and praised the "heroic" and "extraordinary" resistance of Iraqi militants to the allied effort to install a democratic government in that country. But Elmasry is still often sought out by the news media as a Muslim representative, a practice some observers find worrisome.

Many Canadians want to promote moderate Muslims over their Islamist extremist counterparts, especially after the terrorist attacks of September 11. But there is no single organization that speaks for Canadian Muslims, notes Tohti. "Muslims have different ethnic backgrounds, different social backgrounds, so we don't always come to common understanding on an issue." Tohti points to the support of the Canadian Muslim Congress for same-sex marriage as an example of how one group fails to represent the vast majority of Canadian Muslims, whom he thinks are socially conservative.

Part of the problem is that few agree on what exactly defines a moderate Muslim. "Everyone has their own definition," says Fatah. But Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum and the author of 12 books on the Middle East and Islam, says that a general definition concerns sharia. "It's a complex topic, but at base the Islamist aspires to apply the Islamic law to all aspects of life everywhere and the moderate resists this ambition," Pipes says. Moderate Muslims seek a separation of mosque and state.

Determining how many Islamist extremists live in Canada is also tricky. Tohti thinks "they are an extremely small number, a criminal element, which exists in any group of people." Recent actions of a Muslim leader in Calgary support the view that most adherents of the faith in this country do not support radicalism. It has been reported that an imam there tipped police to the growing radicalism of Sohail Qureshi, a 24-year-old University of Calgary computer sciences graduate. Qureshi was arrested in Afghanistan in May on suspicion of being involved in terrorist activities. Pipes also feels most Canadian Muslims eschew extremism, saying that "the general circumstances of Muslims and Islam in Canada is unusually favourable compared to other western countries." Pipes has estimated that 10 to 15 per cent of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims are Islamists.

But a poll of Muslims in Canada paints a more troubling picture. Conducted by Environics Research Group, the February survey found that a majority of Canadian Muslims would like to see sharia adopted for divorce and other family law disputes, and that a full 12 per cent thought the Ontario terror suspects were justified. This is equivalent to 84,000 Canadians supporting Harper's beheading.

Author Irshad Manji, perhaps the most famous and controversial of Canada's moderate Muslims, argued soon after al Qaeda's 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. that Islam was in denial about the extremism in its midst. Manji has faced several death threats, and has had to bulletproof her Toronto home. Likewise, Fatah resigned from the Canadian Muslim Congress in fear for his family's safety. "The threats haven't stopped though," he says. These threats deter moderate Muslims from coming forth as leaders of their community.

Kenney points to Mississauga-Streetsville MP Wajid Khan as the ideal moderate Muslim leader. "Right after those [Ontario suspects] were accused, he went on television and condemned them and said that Muslims cannot support extremism," says Kenney. Elected as a Liberal, Kahn defected to the Conservatives and now acts as the special advisor to the prime minister on the Middle East and South Asia.

As long as terrorism remains a problem facing western countries, Canadians will look to Muslim leaders to use their influence to curb extremism. But those expecting a united front among moderate Muslims must understand that Canadian Muslims are as diverse as every other group in the country, and that unity is unlikely to come easily.