Terrorist-by-association logic reduced a retired lawyer to a distant cleric’s connection.

Evidence

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: A striking absurdity: guilt-by-association stretched across grandparents and a mosque makes a lawyer’s sharia advocacy equal to fighting Al Qaeda.