Muslim advisory panels at DND

I missed the item last week in which the Kays (mother and son) debate the wisdom of having paid full-time Muslim advisory panels at DND.

Barbara Kay:

The cancellation of [Imam Delic's] speech by Defence Minister MacKay raises the question of why any government ministry would fund any religious consulting group. Why is there a paid “Muslim Working Group” permanently embedded at Foreign Affairs, whose job it is to advise the government on their foreign policy wherever it touches on areas of Muslim density? Why not a “Christian Working Group” or a “Sikh Working Group”? Can you imagine if there were a “Jewish Working Group” to advise on the Middle East? Don’t make me laugh. To me this is a scandal, and I don’t understand why it has not been addressed. Some of the people in this group hold very insalubrious views or are attached to groups with discomfiting agendas.

Amen! But Barbara's squishy liberal sonny boy, Jonathan Kay, thinks mom is all wet and that Muslim outreach is just what's needed at DND. He argues it was done with Germans and Italians in WWII to help win the war.

Barbara responds:

It’s more likely that Defence or Foreign Affairs invited the Muslims in as an appeasing gesture rather than a step towards victory, and that the motives for the Working Group are not to defeat radical Islam, but to spin it and promote the idea that radical Islam is not our enemy at all. You don’t need an embedded working group to help the military reach out to Muslims. The Israeli government doesn’t hire Arabic leaders to advise the Mossad.

... We’ve had a Communist party for generations, but the military never formed a panel to think about how best to reach out to them.

Jonathan might have a point if the so-called "advisory" panel weren't self-appointed representatives of the most radical and outspoken Muslim group (the CIC) in the country.  I seriously doubt that the CIC will be helping DND figure out how to more effectively kill our Islamist enemies.  Barbara is correct - this effort is more politically correct "community" outreach than anything. In other words, totally irrelevant to defence.

Meanwhile, Blazing Cat Fur asks: "What the hell is going on at DFAIT?"