Opponents framed Muslim proponents of sharia as terrorists through guilt by distant association.

Evidence

The real threat, however, lay not with the importation of feudal values but, more directly, in the presence of dangerous Muslims. A journalist spelled out these connections in a popular women’s magazine by writing about Mumtaz Syed Ali that the retired Toronto lawyer was ‘linked to a “self-described fundamentalist” who is the cleric at a mosque attended by the grandparents of a young man who has admitted his connections to Al Qaeda.’ Terrorist by association (and a long one at that), to stop Syed Mumtaz Ali and the Islamic Institute was to take on terrorism itself. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 387

Categorization

• CANDY: The absurd ‘terrorist by association (and a long one at that)’ chain — a lawyer linked to a cleric at a mosque attended by grandparents of someone connected to Al Qaeda — is a striking, tellable example of guilt-by-association logic.
• SEED: Angle: tracing how Canadian mainstream media deployed tenuous association chains to taint sharia-arbitration supporters — a case study in discursive delegitimization.
• XREF: connects to: Anti-sharia experts framed Islamic charity as criminal material support for terror — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 408; The network smeared a secular educator by fabricating guilt-by-association with Muslim groups; Anti-sharia litigation frames mosques as terrorist-breeding sites to justify exclusion. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 372 (+1 more)