Mohamed Elmasry: European colonizers to blame, not Robert Mugabe

Several readers have brought to my attention this stunning Op-Ed column printed in the Montreal Gazette, written by none other than Mohamed "kill all the adult Jews in Israel" Elmasry, president-for-life of the Canadian Islamic Congress.

This, I take it, is his PR campaign to shore up his bona fides after his disastrous attempt to shake down Maclean's magazine.

If this is a thoughtful strategy of reputation management, I'd hate to see what Elmasry says when he's off the cuff. Come to think of it, I guess we do know what he says off the cuff.

Here are some of Elmasry's deepest thoughts:

Western media seldom report that Mugabe was and still is popular especially in the rural areas; his land reform has won him support among his own people.

Those lying, Western reporters! They're controlled by the zhoos, you know! That's what's wrong -- Western media, not Mugabe's Stalinist/Maoist seizure of farms, with predictably similar results.

Mugabe decided to hold a run-off election last month. But Tsvangirai pulled out and sought refuge in the Dutch embassy, which to some observers is a proof that he is a stooge of Western powers.

Again with the conspiracy theories. Funny, Tsvangirai doesn't look zhooish.

But thanks to Western sanctions the country's economy is in ruins. High inflation, high fuel costs and high unemployment are crippling the economy.

Yes, that's what's cause the farms to fall into delapidation, murder and torture of Mugabe's opponents, and a mass refugee problem -- because Western countries have curtailed diplomatic niceties and put restrictions on Zimbabwean air travel.

Etc. It might strike some readers as odd that Elmasry, self-appointed King of the Muslims, is defending Mugabe. What's his angle?

It's pretty simple. Mugabe is a cruel dictator who justifies his brutality by blaming "outside forces". Why, that's straight out of the handbook, Muslim Dictatorships 101. The fact that Mugabe is anti-Western just clinches it. Any enemy of America and Canada is a friend of Elmasry's.

I deeply regret this nutbar did not take the stand at the kangaroo hearing that bore his name in Vancouver.