Bullies maintain that their victims are being overly sensitive — making too much fuss about nothing, really. Similarly, a Conservative senator is berating Canadian Muslims for being “thin-skinned” in reacting to increasing hostility towards them.

Senator Lynn Beyak did so last week at a hearing of the Senate committee on national security, as my colleague Tim Harper wrote Monday, bemoaning this “slide into intolerance.”

Beyak and her Conservative colleagues — Daniel Lang (chair), Jean-Guy Dagenais, Carolyn Stewart Olsen and Vern White (all Stephen Harper appointees) — have packed the hearings with ideological soulmates and have been using their parliamentary platform to recycle the anti-Muslim rhetoric of extreme right-wingers in Europe and the United States.

This runs counter to the claims of Stephen Harper and his cabinet colleagues that the war on terror is not cultural warfare on Muslims.

The hearings, featuring wild accusations and unsubstantiated claims of Muslim militants crawling under every Canadian minaret, are reminiscent of the 1950s hearings in Washington by U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy hunting down alleged Communists and their sympathizers.

A “witch-hunt,” said an Ottawa-based Muslim organization. “An inquisition,” said a hijab-wearing witness who appeared Feb. 23 and contrasted her treatment with the hero’s welcome given a blogger from Montreal seen as anti-Muslim.

Marc Lebuis testified that “the main danger facing Canada may go beyond the violent jihadist threat, and made worse, by a little discussed associated phenomenon — the penetration of our institutions by Islamists.” They and their “sympathizers” have wormed their way into “a range of institutions, from political and government organizations to NGOs and corporate entities,” in order to “sway policy from the inside.”

Yet Ottawa is blind to it, according to Lebuis. In 2012, Vic Toews, then minister of public safety, met “a delegation of Islamist leaders linked to the Muslim Brotherhood infrastructure operating in Canada.” The RCMP is doing outreach to Muslims. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is even avoiding referring to “Islamic concepts such as jihad to describe the Islamist threat.” And the government is oblivious to “the central role of the mosque, which according to an early 19th-century Egyptian Islamist, was ‘the centre of Islamic revolution.’”

Mosques and Muslim institutions are “controlled and financed, proven, by countries known to harbour the most radical fringes of Muslim, the Wahhabism fringes.” A copy of the Qur’an “spread by the Saudi government” has an annotation about jihad being central to the Islamic faith.

This prompted Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell to deadpan:

“So, I guess we shouldn’t be selling them military vehicles.”

He was referring to the $15-billion contract of armoured vehicles from London-based General Dynamics to Saudi Arabia, a sale that the Harper government is proud of.

Mitchell accused Lebuis for making “very, very sweeping allegations, based on anecdotal evidence,” without “any intellectual, academic, empirical evidence.”

But the Conservative senators thought otherwise.

Senator Beyak: “Thank you, Mr. Lebuis, for an excellent, well-informed and documented presentation.” Senator Stewart Olsen: “Thank you, Mr. Lebuis. What you are suggesting is that vigilance is necessary for the preservation of democracy and that our ancestors were extremely vigilant.”

Another witness was Shahina Siddiqui (no relation), head of the Islamic Social Services Association, Winnipeg: “Please do not treat Muslim Canadians as if they are the enemy because we are not … Don’t give in to fear and propaganda, otherwise, we will tear each other apart.”

Senator Beyak told her, thrice, to stop being “thin-skinned.” Canadians are “tired of hearing excuses. If 21 Christians were beheaded by Jews, they would be called ‘radical extremist Jews.’ And if pilots were burned in cages by a Christian, they would be called ‘radical violent Christians’ … What would you answer to people who are legitimately concerned” (emphasis mine).

So, this Muslim from Manitoba must answer for the atrocities committed by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

But she remained remarkably calm: “Canadians are as concerned about the loss of innocent life, whether it is done by ISIL, Al Qaeda or by all other terrorist groups. The number one target of these groups are Muslims.

“It’s not about Muslim versus Canadians or Canadians versus Muslims; it is humanity versus terrorism.”

Liberal Senator Joseph Day told her:

“I have a grave, grave concern that we’re going to see more retaliation. We’re going to see more bullet holes in mosques and mosques burned …

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“As soon as your community starts seeing this activity, which has been triggered by something happening way off somewhere else, more and more young people are going to join up to go fight for the jihad. It’s going to be more and more difficult for your community ... We’ve got to stop it now or it’s going to get out of control.”

Siddiqui: “We have to stop it now because we have the experience of Japanese internment. We did that to Japanese-Canadians out of fear. I hope this is not going to go there.”

She told me later that the committee hearing felt like the “Tea Party was in action. It was a very charged atmosphere — more like an inquisition from her (Senator Beyak).”