Call it peace
Well how nice for Toronto – unlike poor sad deprived Britain, it gets to have Zakir Naik telling it what’s what.
Zakir Naik, founder of online Peace TV in Mumbai, India, tops the bill at the Journey of Faith Conference, July 2-4, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. It is being described as the largest Islamic conference ever in North America. In videos on YouTube, Naik advocates death to homosexuals and to Muslims who leave the faith…“This guy has absolute hatred for the West,” Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress said Friday.
And homosexuals and apostates, apparently. I bet he’s not much of a feminist, either.
“What we want him to preach here is peace. We want him to talk about how we can live and coexist with non-Muslim communities,” said Rageh, the imam of Abu Huraira Centre. “I would not invite anybody who has problem with this message.”
Hmm. It sounds as if Rageh may have mixed up his file cards.
But it’s the Journey of Faith conference. You’re not going to go all Islamophobic on us here, are you?
You know, sometimes it seems that you care more about human rights than Peace.
This makes one wonder:
1. Are the conference organizers actually closet extremist sympathizers who are disingenously expressing an interest in peace?
2. Are they just another example of the bafflingly common and clueless believers in belief, so infected with the idea that religion is good that they literally cannot hear it when someone says “death to homosexuals?”
I’m against the ban on him coming to the UK for two reasons:
(1) I’m actually pretty serious about free speech, even for bigots: it’s a fundamental principle of democracy and one of the things with which we define ourselves against theocracy. And no, this isn’t shouting Fire! in a theatre, each and everyone who listens is entirely responsible for their actions.
(2) because everytime a faithist spouts his bile they undermine the moral authority of their religion. I’d rather they exposed their hatred in public than hide it behind empty platitudes about god being love or Allah being merciful while plotting their next outrage.
It is the millions of muslims who appear to uncritically listen to the filth that Naik and the likes of Qaradawi spew out that frightens me. I have been aware of Naik for several years now and it is astonishing how much jew hatred gets a rousing reception from his acolytes, his reactionary views and females and gays are pretty standard for muslim preachers and his political opinions arent that different from that of the average british lefty.
I remember the time the foreign minister of Singapore went all out to meet Qaradawi and even praised him on his blog for his supposedly progessive stance on educating his daughters. The bloody idiotic FM (catholic but representing a secular state) did so solely on account of Q’s influence over the masses, including the millions in South East Asia. It seems to me that it is the so-called community organisations in the west that so enthusiastically host hate preachers which should be called to account. It’d be impossible in Singapore or India to even publicly criticise Naik or Qaradawi- the rageboys would erupt on the streets in India and while Singapore itself would remain calm, the neighbouring muslim states would boil over with offence.
“What we want him to preach here is peace. We want him to talk about how we can live and coexist with non-Muslim communities,” said Rageh, the imam of Abu Huraira Centre. “I would not invite anybody who has problem with this message.”
Naik’s views on nonmuslim communities, especially those unfortunate enough to live in so called ‘ muslim states ‘ is not reassuring.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jYUL7eBdHg&feature=player_embedded#!
Watch and weep. The evidence out there against Naik is overwhelming. The organisers of his talks who preach ignorance of his less palatable views are either lying or so inured to basic concepts of decency and fairness that it is all hopeless to start with.
PeaceTV has built up the career of another poisonous individual Hussein Yee , a chinese convert from Malaysia. Yee has the ears of influential political leaders in Malaysia and some of you know what a cesspit of religious fundamentalism that country has become in recent years. I really dont fucking care about terrorism. That’s nothing compared to the constant drip of intolerance, hatred, bigotry, supremacist thinking and manufactured outrage that these jokers infect their followers with – there are a million small mundane consequences to this preaching which build up to divide people and countries.
I am not sure that banning the preacher is the answer but I’d certainly think we should shine a very bright light on these individuals and their fellow travellers and expose them for what they are. Not shy away from the issue like the BBC or the guardian.
Banning is one thing, and not inviting is another.
But either way, he’s not just a bigot. “Death to homosexuals” is not just hatred of homosexuals.
A very bright light has indeed been shone on Naik and the conference organizers in Toronto. He was leading the local newscasts. Not only does bright light expose the vileness of his ideas, but it leaves his supporters without the excuse that his ideas are being suppressed because they threaten people in power. Interesting they let Naik in and not George Galloway, though.
Ah good about the bright light and the newscasts.
Exactly, about terrorism, mirax – it’s pathetic how common it is for people to say “X is not a terrorist therefore X is just fine” – no matter how woman-hating, jew-hating, gay-hating, infidel-hating etc X may be. It’s beyond pathetic.
@mirax
“his political opinions arent that different from that of the average british lefty.”
Absolute bollocks of the first order. What the fuck are you on about?
If he actually says any such things in Toronto, he may very well run afoul of Canadian hate-speech laws.
“They make a desert and call it peace”
These laws are applied very selectively. Zakir Naik will not be waiting for any tap on the shoulder in our fair city of Toronto.
The soft bigotry of low expectations applies here.
Guilty post colonial westerners are not allowed to criticize any aspect of Islam and our Human Rights Commissions (13 of them) are assiduous in not hurting the tender sensibilities of our Muslim brethren no matter what sort of bile (usually anti-semitic and homophobic with some good old fashioned misogyny thrown in for flavour) is spewed forth.Our HRCs prefer the easier targets of already marginalized eccentrics living in moms basement and publishing some bizarre manifesto with a circulation approaching zero, who lack the resources to defend themselves from our kafka-esque HRC kangaroo courts. They leave the well funded Muslim extremists strictly alone.
Short of incitement to violence and slander, I think Zakir Naik should be able to say what he wants, where he wants and when he wants. Commitment to free speech implies that one defends the right to express the most odious views, it’s easy to protect opinions that you already agree with.
From what I’ve read about Zakir Naik, he crosses the incitement to violence line on a regular basis, but we already have perfectly good non hate speech legislation to address that, it just needs to be applied uniformly no matter what your invisible sky fairy is called.
I dunno, Steve — the gay community in Toronto is pretty well organized (we have perhaps the largest Pride Week in the world). I have a hard time imagining Naik being able to get away with very public inflammatory statements, and I’m rather surprised that the local Islamic community would want that kind of public spotlight (whatever their private religious feelings may be).
How to co-exist with people who are not exactly like us? Tricky. I guess it is only reasonable to get advice from someone with a list of people who are so different they should be killed.
If there is anyone left, we can probably work something out.
And that’s the way it should work.
Fight bad ideas with good ones.
Make sure his evil message gets as much exposure as possible. Imagine if CBC Newsworld showed a 30 second clip of Zakir Naik advocating death for gays or support for bin Laden on prime time TV.
Make the moderate Muslims ashamed to be associated with this viewpoint and get them to publicly distance themselves from it.
Apply all the tools of public discourse; satire, humour, irony, censure, marginalization.
Anti-hate legislation did not get the the gay community the rights they enjoy today and it will not preserve what has been worked so hard for from the likes of Zakir Naik and his ilk.
In fact, what got the gay community to where they are now is the ability to express an unpopular opinion and that is what will continue to preserve and enhance their rights.
The idea that blacks should not be slaves, blacks should enjoy the same rights as whites, women should have the vote, jews should be able to join the local country club were all unpopular opinions at one point in time,
Kind of pushing on an open door, aren’t you? That’s what we’re doing! :- )
(Hey Tulse, you live in Toronto too? Hiya!)
Hi back atcha, Glendon!
Yep, we’re in T.O., just trying to endure the G20.
Me too. Still at work at Spadina & Richmond. Ghost town now, but the marchers are on the move near College & Yonge.
(Sorry Ophelia! I’ll stop with the message-boarding!)