Four weeks ago, when Toronto City Councillor Paula Fletcher facilitated the Islamic call to prayer at a Toronto mosque, she described it as “beautiful” and “East End Love.”
As the former leader of the Communist Party of Manitoba, she must have known of Mao Zedong’s most well-known quote, “A single spark can start a prairie fire.”
The fear of many Muslims that the mixing of state and religion would cause irreparable damage to our society, and that the loudspeaker had absolutely nothing to do with Islam, fell on deaf ears. We Muslims who stood up to some of the medievalists within our ranks found ourselves being labelled as ‘Islamophobes’ by the country’s left-liberal and even conservative political establishments.
We didn’t have to wait too long for our worst fears to be realized.
On May 16, one Firas Al Najim gave his own call to prayer using a loudspeaker in the parking lot of the Jaffari Islamic Centre in the City of Vaughan, where he promoted the views of the Iraqi cleric Ayatollah al-Sistani and then launched into tirade against “Zionists.”
Al Najim claimed that at the Jaffari Islamic Centre, “the majority of the followers, they follow (Ayatollah) Ali al-Husayni al-Sistani.” Quoting the Ayatollah, Al Najim proclaimed: “It is illegal, it is forbidden for any Muslim … to do any business transaction with any Zionist business.”
[Interesting Read]
