Terry Newman: Integration or Islamicization?

On July 26, an Islamic convention called “LIT” was held at the Embassy Plaza in the Montreal suburb of Laval. What was said there raises serious concerns about how some Muslim communities integrate into Canadian society.

The conference’s website states that the target audience of “Montreal’s largest Islamic convention” was youth aged 15 to 30, and its purpose was to “unify the Muslims.” Yet based on recordings of the talks reviewed by National Post, the purpose of unifying Muslim youth appears to include encouraging them to detach themselves from Canadian society and its “immoral” western law-based paradigm, in favour of a community-based Islamic one.

Attendees were urged by one speaker to build a “circular economy” by supporting Muslim-owned businesses, where Canadian currency might be replaced with gold and where their wealth may be used to exert political influence.

LIT’s title sponsor was the Qibla Foundation, which recently received a grant of over $20,000 from the federal government. According to attendees and photos of the conference circulated on social media, the main event hall was segregated, with women on one side and men on the other, separated by a curtain.

The one-day conference featured 11 speakers. Of particular note were speeches made by Navaid Aziz, Yasir Nadeem and Daood Butt.

Aziz’s bio at the Islamic Information Society of Calgary, where he serves as director of religious and social services, says he’s “focused on the education and integration of Muslim youth.” But his speech on July 26 raises serious questions, from my perspective, as to whether that includes integrating them into Canadian society.

Aziz began by telling attendees that he’s happy to now see Halal food everywhere, but finds Quebec’s new laïcité laws “very, very disheartening,” and suggested that, despite their numbers, Quebec Muslims “are still unable to protect” themselves.

In an effort to explain why Muslim youth need to live for Allah and not just material things, Aziz told a story about a Jew, a Muslim and a well in Medina. The well, he said, was owned by a Jewish man who “knew that he had a monopoly, that he could charge whatever he wanted because there was no competition for him.”

Long story short, the Muslim tricks the Jew into selling half the well and is then able to give Muslims the water for free on specific days, foiling the Jew’s plans to make money. The Muslim, in contrast, is presented as trying to make the world a better place.

Aziz told the youth that it’s great to have political aspirations, but that “there’s a ceiling that Muslims will reach in the political sphere,” and “eventually you will have to compromise on your beliefs.”

Because of this political ceiling, Aziz suggested that Muslims should amass wealth in order to influence politics, explaining that this is something that the “Zionist lobby does this amazingly well.

“They have no problem in lining the pockets of the politicians. They don’t need the politicians to believe in their causes. They just need to line their pockets so the politicians will log and advocate for them. And that’s what I need you to think about.”

Aziz then argued that to create wealth, Muslims must build a “circular economy,” where they buy from their own community. Aziz said that he is trying to develop an infrastructure solution where Muslims can avoid using fiat currency, and instead back their wealth in gold. That solution is called Phi Wallet.

Aziz told them that for every dollar that Jews spend, 92 to 97 cents stays within the Jewish community.

I emailed Aziz for a comment about his remarks. His responded by saying that he “did not suggest that Muslims should limit themselves to an insular economy supporting only Muslim-owned businesses, and claiming that, “At a time of rising Islamophobia, Canadian Muslims, like all Canadians, should consider buying Canadian first, and should also support businesses owned by disenfranchised communities.”

Aziz did not, however, promote buying Canadian products in his speech as I heard it.

In regards to the story about the well, and whether it could be interpreted as antisemitic, Aziz said: “Within the Muslim scholastic tradition, we are taught that selfishness and generosity are found in every faith community; that there are Muslims who fall short, just as there are Jewish and Christian figures held up as models of ethical behaviour, and vice versa.”

He further denied suggesting that youth amass wealth to buy politicians, and claimed that the Israel lobby’s attempts to do so are “well established.”

In regards to the claim that 92 to 97 cents of every dollar Jews spend stays within their community, when asked for a source to back up this claim, Aziz provided two, neither of which supported his figures in my reading.

In his response, Aziz also took a shot at Quebec, saying: “I would also note the irony in raising concerns about integration in the context of Quebec, a province that has repeatedly sought to separate from Canada and has a documented record of discriminating against minorities.”

In his speech, Daood Butt — director of community outreach and education at the Islamic Community Center in Milton, Ont. — told the audience that their friends “will either help them in life or encourage them to go down a path that is wrong and bad for them, and there will be a point in time where our friends need to stop us from committing haram (sins)” and help them turn to Allah instead.

Butt warned the audience that the habits and lifestyles of their closest friends would eventually become their own. This is why, he explained, “Your friends should be people who, when you look at them, they remind you of Allah.”

Butt also told the youth that some things are just haram (forbidden): “Sometimes you find a brother who says, ‘This is my girlfriend.’ OK, that’s weird, right? But we live in a society where yes, young brothers and sisters are going to school, going to university, and they have friends, and those friends get a lot closer to them, and they become boyfriend and girlfriend, and that we know in Islam is not permissible, right?'”

Asked whether he would advise Muslim youth not to have Christian, Jews or atheist friends, Butt told National Post that, “I urge Canadians and especially young people to reflect on their friends, and whether their friends, both Muslim and non-Muslim, help them improve as ethical beings or are bad company that take them away from being the highest versions of themselves.”

Asked about dating being haram for Muslim youth, which is likely not the case for many of their peers, Butt replied, “I encourage youth, and adults as well, to respect the institution of marriage and its sanctity.”

In his speech, Yasir Nadeem al Wajidi, founder and president of a private K-12 Islamic school in Illinois, argued that rules in western societies come from human legislators instead of Allah, and that Muslim youth have been “brainwashed” by the western paradigm.

Wajidi also bemoaned the fact that if youth were struggling to change the framework in a country to an Islamic one, they would be seen as terrorists rather than political activists.

Speaking about the LGBT community, Wajidi said that he often gets questions, such as: “What’s wrong if we join them in their protest? What’s wrong if we join them on Pride day? They joined us.”

Wajidi referred to the desire of some Muslims to stand with the LGBT community as a “confusion,” explaining, “The reason why some individuals start thinking this way (is) because they have already been brainwashed by this western paradigm, and they are trying to compare it with the Islamic paradigm, which they have no idea what it is.”

Wajidi told the youth that “we should not go and join them,” and should instead “de-secularize.” This remark seems particularly insensitive given that it was made the day after an Islamist attacked a Pride event in Berlin.

I sent Wajidi a request for comment on his remarks, but did not receive a response by deadline.

Muslim youth attending this convention were advised that western man-made laws are immoral and were encouraged to operate in economic and social spheres that would seem to me to minimize their interactions with the rest of Canadian society in order to amass wealth to exert political influence. Britain is already dealing with the effects of having in some cases almost completely separate Muslim communities, many of which detest the West. We don’t need this in Canada, too.

National Post