A woman showed up at a meet and greet with NDP leadership candidate Jagmeet Singh to demand that the Sikh politician stop implementing Sharia law. To be completely clear, just so we all know for the rest of this article, Sikhism and Islam are two different religions.
The event took place at the Professor’s Lake Community Centre in Brampton, Ontario, on Wednesday night. Singh, one of the frontrunners in the NDP leadership race, walked in front of the crowd and asks them if they would prefer him to use a microphone or just project his voice when the woman stepped directly in front of him and began an extended tirade directed at Singh.
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The woman introduced herself as Jennifer and described herself as a women’s advocate and the video, shot by the Brampton Focus, then promptly goes off the rails.
“We know you’re about Sharia Law. We know you’re about the Muslim Brotherhood. We know about your vote,” she yelled in Singh’s face.
The woman went on to say that Singh wouldn’t take any of her calls so she decided to show up to his event directly, and spent a large portion of the video telling nobody to touch her or she will call the police.
“When is your Sharia going to end?” the woman asked the Sikh politician in regards to, again, Islamic Law. “At what point, when we’re throwing gays off rooftops?”
This incident is indicative of a growing anti-Islam, anti-immigration, and anti-diversity movement in Canada. Far-right groups formed primarily around anti-immigration, anti-Islam or both are forming at a rapid place and we’ve seen numerous rallies across Canada speaking out against immigration, Muslims, and multiculturalism. These groups routinely paint all Muslim with extremists brushes and some view all brown people as Muslims or Muslim supporters.
Many, spurred on by opportunistic politicians and anti-Islam media outlets, believe that Canada’s left-leaning parties are ushering in creeping Sharia through the political machine—an idea that was seen most prominently with the far-right meltdown surrounding the M-103 motion. This woman, in particular, seemed to be spouting off the rhetoric of an anti-Islam women’s group called Suffragettes Against Silence who are familiar faces in the far-right, anti-Islam circle in Canada. This group believes that Islam is an existential threat to the woman of Canada.
Near the end of the video, the woman reiterates her reason for being there by asking, again, about when Singh is “going to stop with the Sharia! At what point is he going to stop voting for Sharia?” Singh, for the most part, spoke to the audience during the interruption and had them chant at the women about “love.”
“What this is, we don’t want to be intimidated by hate. We don’t want hatred to ruin a positive event, so lets show people how we treat people with love,” Singh said directly to the woman.
“We welcome you, we support you and we love you.”
After about five minutes, some of the people working with Singh came in and try to block her from the politician with signs. The woman again yelled about no one touching her but soon became frustrated and stormed out. The video of Singh handling the protester has been seen over 200K times in less than 24 hours.
“You know growing up as a brown-skinned, turbaned, bearded man, I faced things like this before,” Singh said seconds after the woman walked away from him. “It’s not a problem, we can deal with it. It’s not a problem, there are going to be other obstacles that we face and we’re going to face them with love and courage.”
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