Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is promising to continue to welcome Syrian refugees and to strengthen the Muslim community's involvement in politics.
In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which aired last week, Trudeau said that “Canada is benefiting from welcoming in people who are so deeply committed to living up to the opportunity given to them.”
Asked about other countries that have stepped away from welcoming refugees from Syria, he said, “I challenge any of one of those governments, or their citizens to sit down around a table like this and break bread and not be afraid of the other, but understand that you are being open to different experiences, to different paths and stories as we‘re sharing the same goals and building a better future for our kids, more opportunities for our neighbors and better peaceful success for all of us, that we’re much better coming at it from a whole bunch of different angles and working together to achieve.”
Trudeau, who heads the Liberal party, also encouraged Muslims in Canada to join the Conservative party and other parties in Canada “to make sure that no party gets to run against Muslim Canadians or any other group of Canadians and demonize them.”
“I think the way we do that is by getting involved in the whole breadth of the political spectrum in Canada. I’d like people to decide they’re more aligned with me and my party but they should also think about being active and aligned with parties that disagree with me on certain issues,” he said.
Since winning the election last year, Trudeau has taken the view that Islam is "not incompatible with the Western secular democracy."
In more questionable behavior vis-a-vis the Hamas terrorist group, Trudeau appointed Omar Alghabra as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Alghabra was previously the head of the radical Canadian Arab Federation (CAF), which ran afoul of the state for its open support of Hamas.
He also said earlier this year that Canada is not at war with the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group after French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said "we are at war" against jihadists.