Radical Islam at the University of Toronto
Photo Credit: Gazoni
The ties between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Students' Association (MSA), found on hundreds of campuses across Canada and the USA, are well documented. At the University of Toronto, Canada's largest university, the MSA has a formidable presence and a membership of over 1,500 students, faculty and staff. They present themselves on campus as a legitimate faith group that seeks to serve students. However, their radical Islamic ideology is more than evident.
The latest edition of The Muslim Voice, published by the University of Toronto's MSA, contained an article extolling Ingrid Mattson as a “contemporary role model”. The article states that Mattson was vice-president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) from 2001 to 2006, became president in 2007, and continues to work on its executive council. The article conveniently leaves out the fact that ISNA was named an unindicted co-conspirator on charges of aiding Hamas at a 2007 trial in Dallas. In the trial, a Muslim Brotherhood document listed ISNA as a “friend”. According to Islam scholar Daniel Pipes, ISNA is a “key component of the [Saudi-sponsored] Wahhabi lobby”. Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch describes Mattson as “a traditionalist on Shariah law and the legitimacy of Shariah authorities” and “a leader in Muslim efforts to censor the right to free speech in America and especially in the United States government.” Furthermore, Mattson's favourite English-language Koranic commentary is by an author who wrote that “Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam.”
The same article published by the University of Toronto's MSA also extols Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the secretary-general of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The article portrays Ihsanoglu as somebody who wants to bring cultures together to promote peace, especially between the Middle East and the West. In reality, Ihsanoglu and the OIC have campaigned over a decade for international blasphemy laws to criminalize any speech critical of Islam – including accurate criticisms of Islamic terrorism, persecution, and human rights violations. According to Ihsanoglu, criticism of Islam is an “abuse of freedom” and “no one has the right to insult another for their beliefs”. He has even gone so far as to compare cartoons of Mohammed to the 9/11 terror attacks and advocated punishing cartoonist Lars Vilks.
These radical beliefs are not isolated to one writer for the MSA's magazine. Aisha Raja, president of the University of Toronto's MSA, tweeted in 2012 that “jihad is dignified”. Another executive on the MSA praised criminal group Anonymous as “awesome” for hacking then-Israeli VP Silvan Shalom's twitter account. She also approvingly tweeted a quote from her professor, reading, “We have to build such a movement that will resist the oppression but that will also make those that supported the Israelis ashamed.”
The direction that the University of Toronto's MSA has gone under this executive team is no surprise. They recently organized, in collaboration with CAIR, a panel discussing terrorist Omar Khadr. Omar Khadr is an unrepentant Al-Qaeda terrorist convicted of murdering an American medic, but the panellists at the event painted him as a victimized child soldier. The University of Toronto also recently hosted Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Albanna. While the University of Toronto considers him a “renown Islamic thinker and social innovator”, Tarek Fatah calls Ramadan “the darling of the world Islamist establishment” who is “committed to the goals of the worldwide Islamic jihad as laid out by his mentor, Sheik Qaradawi, and his father, the Trotsky of world Islamism, Said Ramadan.”