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Uk Tourist or Celebritty Terrorist
1-26-2016
On January 12, three Muslim visitors to Vancouver from UK for medical treatment received unwanted attention. Thanks to Vancity Buzz, an online local news website, and its editor in chief, Farhan Mohamed to make public an internal Vancouver Police Department memo on an active investigation about three middle eastern looking men taking pictures at Vancouver Pacific Center Mall.
The trio, instantly gained celebrity status. AlAmeen Post, Managing Editor, Mr. Jafar Bhamji met with the trio, Mohammed Sharaz, Kareem and Salahuddin afterwards, and the trio had no hard feelings towards anyone. In fact, they view this as a lesson for everyone. They have a message for the local Muslim Community, engage with the wider community at large to educate and inform others about them and their religion, to avoid such incidents from occurring in the future; establish civil liberties association to fight Islamophobia, “reach out and voice your opinion, there is justice out there!”
Sharaz’s message to the community is to learn from their experience, “If you feel that you’ve been treated unfairly, or unjustly, speak out, reach out, voice your opinion. No one is going to come to assist us. We have to do it ourselves. There is help out there.” Use the media positively, “we cleared our names through the media. We didn’t hide and left quietly.”
The trio had only kind words for the Canadians, especially, for the local Journalist, Salim Jiwa, Vancouver Mayor, Mr. Gregor Robertson, Vancouver Police Chief, Mr. Adam Palmer, and the RCMP. Through these individuals, they experienced the great Canadian hospitality, kindness, and acceptance of others at its best. Especially, when the doubts raised by the Vancity Buzz were addressed. This is something they will remember the most. This is something they will take back with them to UK. Finally, they intend to visit Vancouver again in near future.
Just a brief overview, for those who are unfamiliar with the story. One of the man initially had been seen taking pictures inside the mall, from different angles, in particular, mall exits. The mall security, immediately notified the police. However, by the time police arrived the men had left.
An internal police memo was leaked to a local website, which decided to make this public. Shortly after having their faces plastered all over the web, and social media, Mr. Shahraz immediately contacted the VPD, and clarified their situation.
Mr. Sharaz told CBC News he was travelling to Vancouver from Manchester with his son and a friend, Kareem and Salahuddin, who were in town getting treatment for vision impairment. Police have since said their actions were “completely innocent.”
“My friend, when he looks at anything head on, he doesn’t see like me and you do,” Sharaz said. “So he’ll take a picture or a movie and then later on when he gets back he zooms into it and he watches stuff. He takes pictures of anything and everything.”
Dr. Weidong Yu confirmed to Global News, the two men are his patients. Both Sharaz’s friend and son are getting treated at the Wellspring Clinic for Holistic Medicine. “Because they don’t see well, they take more photos,” He described the men as “very nice folks.”
To say the least, this was indeed a knee-jerk reaction on part of the website to make an internal active police investigation memo public. The website claims they had sought proper authorization, before making this information public, and they did so in “public interests.”
However, VPD Chief, Mr. Adam Palmer on January 13th confirmed in a news conference about the innocence of these three individuals, as well as, he stated unequivocally, “The information obtained by the media was part of an internal police information bulletin shared among police officers throughout the province of BC. That information, including photographs was obtained by a Vancouver news outlet, via an unknown source, and was intended or authorized to be shared with the general public.” He added that there would not be a need for such news conference, if it was not for the media outlet to make the information public. The police had no plans to go public with the information, so “regardless of what race these people were or were not, we were not planning to go public with it at all.”
The trio were really touched by the kind gesture, offered by Vancouver Mayor, Mr. Robertson. Sharaz told AlAmeen Post, that the Mayor went out of his way to come and meet with them and apologized for the mishap. Although, Sharaz stated that the Mayor did not have to do that, especially apologize but he did that. Sharaz said “He felt sorry for the mayor” for having to apologize.
In addition, the VPD Chief, Mr. Palmer and the RCMP also met the trio and apologized for the misunderstanding and the unnecessary negative publicity. Once again, Sharaz felt that although it was necessary, but they went out of their way to apologize, “Apologize for doing their job.”
As far as Sharaz is concerned the Police were doing their job. However, he also holds Muslims accountable and responsible for not doing our jobs as Muslims. He feels Muslims have failed to highlight the beautiful teachings of Islam, thus resulting in situations which they were dealt with. He feels if Muslims were doing their job on properly projecting Islam, these sort of confusions would not arise. He also feels that Muslims have also failed in looking after the new converts, in helping, assisting, teaching and guiding them to the real teachings of Islam. Therefore, resulting in new Muslim converts falling into wrong hands, and being misguided by those who and are bent on defaming Islam and Muslims around the world. He does not blame the new converts who take up arms associating with terror groups, because they are being misled by those who themselves have convoluted and misguided understanding of Islam. Someone who is born and raised as Muslims would never subscribe to such non sense.
At the end they were pleased that the authorities and the local media did justice to them, once the truth was uncovered. The only hard feelings Mr. Sharaz told AlAmeen he had was that the media outlet, Vancity Buzz, who created this entire mayhem for them in the first place has yet to apologize. “They are the ones who should be apologizing to them, but they haven’t, instead, people who were doing their job, Police and Mayor, have apologized to us.”
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