https://nationalpost.com/opinion/te...as-to-be-hosted-by-ottawa-funded-muslim-group
Another year, another conference, another tableau of speakers associated with antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny and hatred.
The convening organization is not the grotesque Goyim Defense League, a Hitler-admiring American neo-fascist groupuscule linked to a spate of graffiti, leaflets and posters the RCMP has begun investigating in the Toronto area. It’s the federally-funded Muslim Association of Canada.
In recent years, the MAC’s conferences have come under increasing scrutiny from Muslim human rights activists and Jewish advocacy organizations. It’s the same story this year with the MAC’s annual gathering at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre this weekend.
Among the speakers, one is known for justifying wife-beating and suicide bombing. Another considers unveiled women to be demonstrating “a sign of weak faith and the domination of desires and lust over a woman.” Another justifies execution for the sin of adultery: “What is the punishment for them? He is to be stoned to death.”
The MAC has responded to criticism in the same way it’s responded in the past: It’s Islamophobia. The MAC conference this weekend will be hosting respected and highly reputable international scholars and theologians who are being subjected to a smear campaign that “epitomizes the persistent Islamophobia and divisiveness” the Muslim community faces in Canada, according to the MAC’s President-Strategy Sharaf Sharafeldin.
There is a bit of a difference this year, however. After inquiries from the National Post, the MAC has “temporarily” dissociated itself with the Egyptian sheikh Nashaat Ahmed, a man who Jewish advocacy groups have accused of openly praying for the Jewish people to be destroyed, and who refers to Jews as evil beasts, the worst of the earth’s living creatures, and the descendants of apes and pigs.
Independent translations of Ahmed’s various speeches feature several statements to the effect that Jews should be eliminated along with “all others who support them in countries around the world,” and suggest support for the Islamic State, the Al Qaida successor in Iraq and Syria. Translations of Ahmed’s speeches on Islamic piety further suggest his support for prohibiting women from leaving the home unaccompanied by a male relative.
On Wednesday, the MAC explained that the organization does not endorse supplications against Jews or any other group of people. “However it is a well established Islamic theological position to invoke the help of God against oppressors.” In a prepared statement, the MAC announced that while it is commonplace for anti-Israel rhetoric to conflate Israel with the Jewish people, it is wrong to do so, and while the MAC had asked Sheikh Ahmed for clarification, an initial review indicated that statements attributed to him had been mistranslated, misrepresented or incorrectly dated.
On Thursday, the MAC sent me a statement reiterating Sharafeldin’s claim that concerns about Ahmed’s statements are evidence of “a smear campaign involving deliberate mistranslations and quotes out of context” that are part of a “harmful pattern of targeting Muslim scholars to undermine religious freedom and perpetuate a cancel culture.”
However, Ahmed would nonetheless be pulled from the weekend program….
Another year, another conference, another tableau of speakers associated with antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny and hatred.
The convening organization is not the grotesque Goyim Defense League, a Hitler-admiring American neo-fascist groupuscule linked to a spate of graffiti, leaflets and posters the RCMP has begun investigating in the Toronto area. It’s the federally-funded Muslim Association of Canada.
In recent years, the MAC’s conferences have come under increasing scrutiny from Muslim human rights activists and Jewish advocacy organizations. It’s the same story this year with the MAC’s annual gathering at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre this weekend.
Among the speakers, one is known for justifying wife-beating and suicide bombing. Another considers unveiled women to be demonstrating “a sign of weak faith and the domination of desires and lust over a woman.” Another justifies execution for the sin of adultery: “What is the punishment for them? He is to be stoned to death.”
The MAC has responded to criticism in the same way it’s responded in the past: It’s Islamophobia. The MAC conference this weekend will be hosting respected and highly reputable international scholars and theologians who are being subjected to a smear campaign that “epitomizes the persistent Islamophobia and divisiveness” the Muslim community faces in Canada, according to the MAC’s President-Strategy Sharaf Sharafeldin.
There is a bit of a difference this year, however. After inquiries from the National Post, the MAC has “temporarily” dissociated itself with the Egyptian sheikh Nashaat Ahmed, a man who Jewish advocacy groups have accused of openly praying for the Jewish people to be destroyed, and who refers to Jews as evil beasts, the worst of the earth’s living creatures, and the descendants of apes and pigs.
Independent translations of Ahmed’s various speeches feature several statements to the effect that Jews should be eliminated along with “all others who support them in countries around the world,” and suggest support for the Islamic State, the Al Qaida successor in Iraq and Syria. Translations of Ahmed’s speeches on Islamic piety further suggest his support for prohibiting women from leaving the home unaccompanied by a male relative.
On Wednesday, the MAC explained that the organization does not endorse supplications against Jews or any other group of people. “However it is a well established Islamic theological position to invoke the help of God against oppressors.” In a prepared statement, the MAC announced that while it is commonplace for anti-Israel rhetoric to conflate Israel with the Jewish people, it is wrong to do so, and while the MAC had asked Sheikh Ahmed for clarification, an initial review indicated that statements attributed to him had been mistranslated, misrepresented or incorrectly dated.
On Thursday, the MAC sent me a statement reiterating Sharafeldin’s claim that concerns about Ahmed’s statements are evidence of “a smear campaign involving deliberate mistranslations and quotes out of context” that are part of a “harmful pattern of targeting Muslim scholars to undermine religious freedom and perpetuate a cancel culture.”
However, Ahmed would nonetheless be pulled from the weekend program….
