The Montreal Interfaith Conference: An Appeal for Censorship

The Montreal Interfaith Conference: An Appeal for Censorship

Posted on September 1, 2011 by creeping

Censorship of non-Muslims that is. via PIONT DE BASCULE: The Montreal Interfaith Conference: An Appeal for Censorship.

On September 7, 2011, the Dalai Lama, Tariq Ramadan and other personalities are scheduled to speak at the Second Global Conference on World’s Religions after 9/11. The conference is organized in Montreal with the active cooperation of McGill University and the Université de Montréal.

Tariq Ramadan’s mentor, Youssef Qaradawi, states that “We only carry out dialogue with (Christians) in order to find common grounds that serve as a basis for further action.” In two texts, Qaradawi mentions four of these “further actions” that should justify engaging in interfaith dialogue (Priorities – GMBDR):

1. Improving the image of Islam;
2. Converting Christians;
3. Rallying Christians against Israel;
4. Discouraging Christian leaders from supporting fellow Christians involved in conflict with Muslims. Qaradawi mentioned specifically Sudan and the Philippines.

These objectives confirm that interfaith dialogue with Christians is just another front where Tariq Ramadan and the Muslim Brotherhood wage their ideological jihad. It should come as no surprise since scholars endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood consider that Christianity is a distorted version of a truth exclusively upheld by Islam, their “understanding of Islam” as Ramadan puts it.

Another objective pursued by the Muslim Brotherhood with its “interfaith activities” is to try to gain support from non-Muslims for the censorship of its critics. Various actors in the Muslim world have taken measures to censure those who criticize one aspect or another of their doctrine.

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It appears that the interfaith conference scheduled for September 7 in Montreal will just be another attempt to implement this censorship agenda. In its initial press release (May 11, 2011), the Montreal conference organizing committee mentioned that, next September, the following question will be submitted to the participants:

Should violating the sanctity of the scripture of any religion be considered tantamount to violating the sanctity of the scriptures of all religions? (GMBDR – Parliament of the World’s Religions)

Before the conference has taken place, the answer to this question is already available in a Declaration (article 12.4) endorsed by the Montreal conference organizing committee:

12.4 Everyone has the right not to have one’s religion denigrated in the media or the academia.

Since any criticism can be deemed denigrating, such position would lead to countless legal procedures against the critics of radical Islam if it were to be implemented by Canadian authorities.

Shortly after GMBDR posted the May 11 press release (including the above question) it was removed from the organizing committee’s website.

In Canada, Tariq Ramadan’s partners at the Muslim Brotherhood disseminate Syed Maududi and other authors’ books denigrating religions other than Islam. They advocate that Christianity is a distorted religion. They claim that kafirs (derogatory word for non-Muslims) will go to hell. In Edmonton, Issam Saleh and Walid Najmeddine, two Muslim Brotherhood operatives, have set up an Islamic Studies course (page Acknowledgements) for the Edmonton Public Schools. Yusuf Ali’s Qur’an is one of the books being used for the course. In this book, Jews are described as “apes and swine” (p. 1742). More examples of anti-Jewish stances found in the book are listed in a FrontPage article that was published after the Los Angeles school board decided to pull all its copies of Yusuf Ali’s Qur’an from the shelves of its libraries.

In his book Islam and Buddhism, Harun Yahya, another author endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood, concludes that Buddhists’ accomplishments are purposeless and that they are “destined for destruction” because their understanding of God and religion is incompatible with Islam. Harun Yahya accuses Buddhists of “associating” false gods with the real one.

Historically, the invocation of this so-called crime of “association” has been the pretext invoked by Muslim scholars to justify the destruction and the eradication of the Buddhist civilization from India, Afghanistan and many other parts of Asia.

In 2004, Tariq Ramadan and Harun Yahya were the main speakers at a conference that Ramadan called the “largest Islamic event in Australia” on his website. (Archives PdeB)

The Muslim Brotherhood wants it both ways. It persists on invoking the freedom of religion to justify its denigrating of non-Muslims, yet it pushes for the censorship of its critics by claiming some bogus right not to be offended.

Freedom of expression implies reciprocity. In a free society, there is no such right as the right not to be offended contrary to what Tariq Ramadan and the organizers of the Montreal conference would like us to believe.