Al-Jazeera English Coming to Canada?

VANCOUVER — The Canadian managing director of Al-Jazeera’s English service says the Qatar-based news channel could be available in this country later this year.
Tony Burman, former editor-in-chief of CBC News, said a Canadian cable firm will soon apply to the CRTC, the broadcast regulator, for permission to carry the channel. He was in Canada last week on a panel marking the 10th anniversary of the University of British Columbia’s journalism school, the Vancouver Sun reported.
Burman said it’s ironic the service isn’t available in Canada, partly for political reasons, when it’s available in Israel and interviews Israeli leaders and officials.
Al-Jazeera has been criticized for airing Islamist and virulently anti-Semitic content. Earlier this month, British lawmakers condemned it for broadcasting a controversial Muslim cleric’s sermon in Arabic that celebrated the Holocaust and prayed for the killing of all Jews.
Sheik Yusuf al-Quaradawi, who hosts the popular program Shariah and Life on Al-Jazeera’s Arabic-language service, described the Shoah as “divine punishment” and prayed to Allah to kill Jews “down to the very last one.”
John Whittingdale, head of the House of Commons media select committee, called on Al-Jazeera to apologize and to ban al-Quaradawi from appearing in future. But the network refused to apologize, claiming it can’t control the content of live broadcasts.

Cotler Raises Flags

OTTAWA — Liberal MP Irwin Cotler said he hopes the election of a new Bangladeshi prime minister will end the “unjust prosecution” of a pro-Israel Muslim journalist who was jailed for spying after trying to attend a writer’s conference in Tel Aviv. In a meeting earlier this month with Bangladesh’s high commissioner to Canada, the former justice minister said he’s “deeply concerned” by accusations of blasphemy, treason and sedition against Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who fosters interfaith dialogue among Muslims, Jews and Christians. Choudhury has been in solitary confinement for more than a year and faces the death penalty if convicted, said Cotler, who is Choudhury’s international counsel.