Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress-- one of those progressive Muslims who is sometimes accused of being an "Uncle Tom" for daring to criticize regressive Muslims-- retweeted this video from an ex-Muslim talking about Canadian imams preaching death for apostates.
https://twitter.com/TarekFatah/status/837024177156722689These aren't exclusive examples... many imams in western countries have been caught on video saying awful things... but my point is that these guys say this stuff, in Canadian mosques, and the congregation reacts ... with silence. Either agreement, or I imagine in many cases just uncomfortable awkwardness... but either way, it goes unchallenged.
Every once in a while one of these stories hits the mainstream-- like the recent Toronto Masjid controversy, where somebody found sermons imploring Allah to slay the Jews on their website-- and we get an apology "gosh, that totally does not reflect our values!" and Aymen Elkasawry gets disinvited from speaking there again and the sermons get quietly removed from the Masjid website. But... the sermons were on the website for months, and surely Elkasawry wasn't speaking to an empty room when he gave them. And Elkasawry himself says he totally mis-spoke and that he totally loves all people of all faiths, even though the wording he used is pretty unambiguous. For me I have a hard time believing that Elkasawry or the Masjid are actually sorry for the content of the sermons... I think they're just sorry that people found out about them.
And these sermons didn't get "outed" by concerned members of the congregation. They got "outed" because someone from a Jewish website did some looking at the Masjid website during the recent anti-Muslim protest outside the Toronto Masjid mosque.
It seems most Canadian Muslims are willing to turn a blind eye to problems within their own community, for whatever reason.
-k
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