Speech to the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow and the Progressive Muslim Institute of Canada
A very proud moment.
The 26th of November 2020 marked the six-year anniversary of the rally I attended against jihad terror and Islamic supremacism organized by the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow and the Progressive Muslim Institute of Canada. What follows is the unabridged text of the address I was privileged to write and deliver there, of which I remain intensely and enduringly proud. In both of the photographs above is one of the organizers of the rally, the estimable Professor Salim Mansur of the University of Western Ontario.
"My friends,
It's an honour to be here among you today. We're living in challenging times, in what Dr. Martin Luther King called “powerful days.” And it's only right that we call him to mind because that's the legacy we're continuing in—the long struggle against tyranny and injustice, so that we can be in harmony with the arc of the moral universe which bends towards justice. When the United States of America was violating its own sacred teaching, that all human beings are created equal, he held a lamp up in the darkness. And that's what we're doing today, holding up the light, against the darkness of extremism and terrorism and supremacism in the name of Islam, so that Islam can take its honoured place among the family of religions and nations. All around us we see the poison spreading— Daesh, Al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, all the groups who are devoted to conquering and subjugating women and LGBTQ+ people and non-Muslims, so that they “feel themselves subdued”, and imposing the rule of sharí’ah, and destroying universal human rights. And we're here to say, no! Not on our watch! You will not do this! No to terrorism! No to armed jihad!
And still when we do this, they call us Islamophobe. They call me neocon, they call you munafiq, hypocrite. And we say no! They are the hypocrites! They are the munafiqun! It is they who bring disrepute upon Islam! Islamophobia means hatred or fear of Muslims. And there is real Islamophobia out there. White racists have committed murders of Muslims in England and Germany, and there have been pogroms by Hindu fascists in India and Jewish fascists in Israel, and there is horrible persecution of Muslims in Myanmar and China and Sri Lanka, and we declare that we will always call it out and stand against it. But what we are doing is not Islamophobia! This is not hatred! This is about awareness and frustration—awareness of the social and theological problem of Islamic extremism, and frustration that so little is being done about it! And most of all it's about love!
It's about love for the Yezidis and Assyrians and Kurds who are being slaughtered and harassed in Iraq and Syria! Love for the Coptic Christians who are brutalized by the Ikhwan in Egypt! Love for Asia Bibi, and the Pakistani Christians and Hindus who are victimized by the sick medieval blasphemy law! Love for the freedom of conscience, and for Pastor Saeed Abedini and Meriam Ibrahim and all the innocent people who are under death sentences because they choose in conscience not to be Muslim! Love for the innocent Nigerian children sold into slavery by Boko Haram, and the Jews sold into slavery in the Yemen! Love for the Buddhist teachers and tea-sellers and liberal imams who are murdered by the jihadists in Thailand! Love for the Bahá'ís whose homes and shops are burned and who are denied the rights of citizenship in Indonesia and Egypt and Morocco and Iran! Love for the few remaining Sikhs who are threatened in Afghanistan! Love for the Christians who have fecal matter thrown at them by the Islamic Defenders’ Front, in the fields where they're forced to pray after their churches have been destroyed in Indonesia! Love for the preachers who were killed for distributing the Bible in Turkey, and the Tamils and Chinese who are subject to institutionalized discrimination in Malaysia! Love for Aqsa Parvez and for all the girls who have been murdered in the name of a false honour and shame culture which is both religious and cultural and which is given a helping hand by by the sharí’ah! Love for all the citizens of Israel, Jewish and Arab and African, who have the right to live in a liberal democracy, and shouldn't have to be conquered and Islamized and forced to live under the hell, the theocracy of Hamas! Love for the principles of liberal democracy and universal human rights which are threatened by the sharí’ah! Love for the freedom of speech and thought, to criticize Islam, to advocate atheism or liberalism or Christianity or secularism or whatever, to draw whatever cartoon or write whatever book you wish! Love for the Muslims who have always stood against this madness, the Ahmadis and the Nizari Khoja Ismailis and the Bektashis and the Turkish Alevis and the African Sufis who are hated and hunted and told you're not good enough, you're not orthodox enough, you're not Muslim enough! Love for Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, and Farag Foda, and Tashbih Sayyed, and Hazrat Inayat Khan, and Bawa Muhaiyyaddeen who bravely rebuked the Ayatollah Khomeini, and queer Muslims, and Muslim feminists, and all the Muslim 'ulama and scholars and thinkers who have ever been murdered or ridiculed for standing up and saying no, Islam is a religion of joy! Allah subhana wa ta'ala is the God of love! Allah and Muhammad alaihi salaam are not cruel, are not evil! They are not children! When we stand up and criticize these things, we do not offend them! We honour them!
And we know that all this evil is done in the name of the religion, of the deen of Islam. We know that Daesh and Al-Qaeda believe they are waging jihad fi sabeel Allah, for the sake of Allah, and are referencing the seerah, the life of Muhammad, and Islamic history, and quoting the Qur'an and saheeh ahadeeth. We know that the shari'ah allows institutionalized discrimination against non-Muslims, and installs privilege for straight Muslim men over Muslim women and queer Muslims and non-Muslims, and for Arab Muslims over non-Arab Muslims too. They have governments and police forces on their side. They quote the ahadeeth. They quote from the life of Muhammad. Well, like Professor Salim Mansur has said, the Devil can quote scripture. And we can quote scripture right back! And when we read the Qur'an, we read Surah 4, Surah an-Nisa, ayah 135, and it says: “Stand out firmly for justice, even if it be against those closest to you!” And that's what we're doing, right here and right now!
My friends, I am here before you as a Bahá'í and as a Jew. Bahá'u'lláh calls on us to be upholders and defenders of the victims of oppression. The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber tells us to project the “I” into the “Thou” and defend those who need our help. Muhammad alaihi salaam says he came to be a mercy to the world. My friends, let us do the work of the Holy Spirit, and be God's mercy in the world, and stand up for the victims of the global jihad, and stand up for a good and true Islam, and say “No to Islamic extremism! No to armed jihad!” And let us never give up! Thank you so much!"