Imam urges Muslims to fight Zionists
VANCOUVER• The imam of a Vancouver mosque is under fire for calling on Muslims to send “money, weapons and expertise” to Palestinians to fight “Zionists” in Israel.
B’nai B’rith Canada, a Jewish organization, on Tuesday released videos in which imam Tarek Ramadan is seen referring to Israelis as “an impure gang” and Zionists as the “worst of mankind.”
Recorded this summer, the video shows Ramadan calling on his congregation to “fight, by any means necessary” against Zionists in a jihad, or holy struggle. “We are not going to be shy or wishy-washy about it.”
The video of Ramadan’s English- language talk was obtained by an international organization called the Middle East Media Research Institute, which often exposes hate speech.
B’nai B’rith is calling on Ramadan to be dismissed and has filed a complaint with the Vancouver Police Department.
It also wants an inquiry held into the actions of the Muslim Association of Canada, which operates the mosque and which B’nai B’rith says shared the “offensive” sermon on its YouTube channel.
In his sermon, Ramadan says that the famous Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which is patrolled by Israeli security officials, “should only be in the custody of the Muslims. It should not be in the custody of the Christians, the Jews or anybody else.” Zionists, Ramadan said, have “no holiness, no respect for anybody.”
Rama dan was in the news in early 2016 after a driver pepper- sprayed refugees standing outside his mosque. At the time he said Canadians don’t have “to be afraid of Muslims.”
The Muslim Association of Canada mosque is not a member of the B.C. Muslim Association, the main umbrella group for roughly 40,000 Sunni Muslims on the West Coast of Canada.
In a statement Wednesday, B’nai B’rith’s chief executive officer, Michael Mostyn, said, “This is an extremely serious development, especially in light of similar incidents at other mosques in Vancouver and across Canada.”
Ramadan’s controversial remarks follow a report in September about Canadian Revenue Agency allegations that a Port Coquitlam mosque, called Masjid Al-Hidayah and Islamic Cultural Centre, was “controlled or influenced” by a Qatari foundation that helped finance Hamas, which the Canadian government has declared a terrorist organization.