Within hours of Saudi Arabia expelling Canada’s ambassador, the country’s broadcasters and pro-government social media accounts ramped into high gear digging up dirt on its newest enemy.

A recurring theme of Saudi attacks against Canada is “those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” an expression that is roughly the same in both English and Arabic.

For this argument to hold up, though, it has placed Saudi propagandists in the uncomfortable position of having to prove that Canada is a pariah state of oppression, death and misery.

Below, a quick summary on how they did.

Special thanks to Rev. Majed El Shafie, founder of the Toronto-based non-profit One Free World International, for helping with Arabic translation. We’ve written before about his work to rescue Yazidi refugees from Iraqi Kurdistan.

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian political prisoner

This whole spat began because Canada has publicly campaigned against the jailing of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi. As a result, the easiest way to discredit Canada would be to find evidence of us similarly jailing political dissidents. On Monday, the Saudi-owned TV channel Al Arabiya ran a segment on the allegedly appalling conditions in Canadian prisons. Amid claims that 75 per cent of Canadian detainees die before standing trial, the segment also claimed that University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson is a Canadian prisoner of conscience. Peterson certainly has his qualms with the Canadian justice system; he first rose to prominence as a critic of an Ontario law regarding gender expression. But the professor remains a free man. In fact, he’s arguably the opposite of incarcerated: An extraordinarily wealthy best-selling author who is selling out theatres across the continent. In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, people who criticize the Saudi government don’t become messianic thought leaders. Rather, they actually get jailed. Another Canadian “political prisoner” highlighted by the Al Arabiya report was Denis Rancourt, a tenured University of Ottawa professor who was fired because he didn’t believe in grading. But Rancourt is also free. In fact, just this week he was speaking with the pro-Russian outlet Sputnik News. He told them he thought Canada’s criticisms of Saudi human rights were “disingenuous.”

The streets are strewn with homeless

Most of the entries on this list are thanks to İyad el-Baghdadi, an Oslo-based refugee and commentator on Arab affairs (he also has a podcast). He was the first to catalogue Saudi Arabia’s anti-Canadian attacks in a lengthy Twitter thread, and said that while the campaign might seem “crazy” to Westerners, “it’s also the new normal within the Arab world since the failing of the Arab Spring.” Canadian homelessness has been a frequent target of pro-Saudi Twitter accounts, with most posts using the exact same photograph: An image taken from the website of the Canadian Roger and Tatum Foundation showing a Montrealer carrying a sign reading “Canada Land of the Homeless.” “Saudis demand improved status of homeless children in Canada,” read one typical post. They’re not wrong: Montreal alone has an estimated 3,000 people sleeping rough. In 2007, however, a report from the Riyadh-based Imam Mohammad Bin Saud Islamic University estimated that Saudi Arabia has up to 83,000 homeless children. But the problem is not nearly as visible due to frequent crackdowns by Saudi authorities. Saudi Arabia routinely arrests “beggars” and has jailed journalists attempting to photograph the country’s poorer areas.

#السعوديه_تطرد_السفير_الكندي

:

There is no homeless in #SaudiArabia such as #Canada because our government knows how dealing with citizens very well 👌🏻

:@CanEmbSA

: pic.twitter.com/RucAWVRGVa — 🇸🇦 م. فـــارس الشابحي 🇸🇦 (@ENGFARIS11) August 6, 2018

Canada is one of the world’s worst oppressors of women

Of all the ways to dig up dirt on Canada, Saudi sources are inexplicably fixating on our treatment of women. Kuwaiti commentator Fahad Alshlimi claimed on Saudi TV this week that Canada has one of the world’s highest rates of oppression against women. “What about the mystery of 1000 murdered women in Canada?!” wrote one widely followed Riyadh-based Twitter account. Saudi social media accounts were Statistics Canada report on violence against women, calling it Canada’s “shame.” However, a deeper dive into that report would have revealed that it spends a lot of its time cataloguing things that Saudi Arabia does not even consider to be crimes. Domestic violence and spousal rape are not criminalized in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi women can be lashed for adultery if they are raped. Ironically, Saudi condemnations of Canada as a sexist backwater are happening simultaneously with Saudi criticism of Canadian foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland. Of course, female cabinet ministers like Freeland do not exist in Saudi Arabia. Unlike Saudi women, she is also legally allowed to make employment and travel decisions without the permission of a male guardian.

#كندا_إن_السعوديين_يشعرون_بقلق_بالغ_إزاء Is this how you treat & respect your women ??

Shame on u Canada pic.twitter.com/OIxY1lfMfn — Dr. A. Samman (@Dr_A_Samman) August 5, 2018

Canada treats its Indigenous just as badly as Myanmar treats the Rohingya

Canadians and their government would be among the first to note that this country’s treatment of Indigenous people has been abominable from day one, and that the shockwaves of that treatment continues to this day. It’s also why, whenever we get into spats with authoritarian regimes, this is the first issue they hit us on. When Canada placed sanctions on South Africa in the late 1980s, the Apartheid government suddenly developed a deep concern for the plight of Canada’s first peoples. Iran did the same after Canada broke off diplomatic relations in 2012, even going so far as to broadcast wild stories about counter-terrorism teams stealing Indigenous children for profit. Saudi defenders are attempting to follow suit, but instead of focusing on more contemporary Indigenous problems such as inadequate housing and education, many posts seem to be framing Canada’s Indigenous as having no legal rights whatsoever. In a panel discussion this week on Saudi TV, commentators compared the plight of Canada’s “original” peoples to those of the Rohingya, an ethnic minority currently suffering massacres, mass rapes and expulsion at the hands of Myanmar authorities. “If we talk about human rights, you must first return to Europe and leave Canada to the indigenous people,” read one message repeated verbatim on multiple Saudi Twitter accounts. One Saudi defender even posted a paper about the legacy of racist Canadian Indian policy that she wrote while a student at a Canadian university. There’s nothing untrue in the paper, but it’s worth noting that similar criticism of his own government is what got Raif Badawi jailed in the first place. The Saudi student, meanwhile, reported that she got “high distinction” from her Canadian instructor.

Racism thrives under the maple leaf

Remember, four months ago, when a woman in a Lethbridge Denny’s went on a drunken racist rant against a table full of Afghan men? It instantly became one of the country’s top stories, spurring coast-to-coast condemnation of the woman, and a flood of support for the men that she targeted. On Tuesday, Salman Al-Ansari, a top Washington, D.C. lobbyist for Saudi Arabia, posted the video to Twitter with the note “racism in Canada is very concerning!” This might be a good place to mention that Saudi Arabia bans the public practice of non-Muslim religions and that according to Human Rights Watch, government resources are routinely used to vilify the country’s Shia minority. This week, Al-Ansari could also be seen on the BBC saying that Canada “is of the top 10 countries for domestic violence.”

Canada is a supporter of international terrorism

Again, this is extraordinarily thin ice for the Saudis. Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers were Saudi Arabians. There’s also a good case to be made that Saudi Arabia’s worldwide promotion of its uniquely harsh brand of Islam has been singularly responsible for the global spread in extremist Islamic violence. Nevertheless, here is a clip from Saudi TV of a commentator claiming that by opposing Saudi Arabia, Canada stands with terrorism.

Quebecers are an oppressed minority yearning to breathe free

And finally, a handful of pro-Saudi Twitter accounts have spared a thought for the plight of Canada’s oppressed Quebecers. “In Saudi Arabia we … support the right of Quebec to become an independent nation,” wrote also voiced its support for a Quebec Libre, although it seemed not to know what language is actually spoken there. “In Saudi Arabia we deeply worried and concerned about Anglophones for Quebec independence people,” it read. Arabic-speaking Canadians, many of whom live in Quebec, were the most enthusiastic critics of these comments. “I’m sure you’d support the right of Shias in Arabia to have their own nation, right?” wrote one subtweet. Both places also happen to have wildly different views on head coverings.

• Twitter: TristinHopper | Email: thopper@nationalpost.com