Canadian school concerned about links to California shooter
TORONTO — The Canadian branch of an Islamic foundation distanced itself Monday from the woman who carried out last week’s mass shooting in California, following reports she had attended one of the group’s schools in Pakistan.
The Al Huda Institute Canada in Mississauga, Ont., condemned the attack by Tashfeen Malik and her husband, which left 14 people dead and 21 wounded, and expressed concerns about a possible backlash against the foundation, which has been criticized for teaching a particularly conservative strain of Islam.
“Religious conservatism is one thing. You have people who are conservative in all faiths,” said Imran Haq, the institute’s operations manager. “Extremism is something completely separate and there is absolutely no strain of that here.”
The FBI revealed Monday that Malik and her American-born husband, Syed Farook, who were killed in a shootout with police hours after they opened fire on a gathering of Farook’s colleagues in San Bernardino, had been radicalized and had taken part in target practice, once within days of the attack.
“We believe both were radicalized and had been for some time,” said David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles office. But he said investigators are still trying to establish when, where and by whom they were influenced.
The women-only Al Huda Institute was founded in 2005 by Farhat Hashmi, a Pakistani scholar who lived in Canada at one point but hasn’t resided in the country “for many years,” Haq said.
It is among a number of branches across Pakistan, the U.S. and the U.K. that teach ideology and principles she has promoted. Malik attended a branch in the Pakistani central city of Multan, where she also attended university.
The region where the school is located is home to thousands of extremist seminaries, with hundreds of them linked to al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban.
While Hashmi has been criticized for being very conservative, her schools, however, have no known links to extremists.
The Canadian branch of the Al Huda network defended its teachings, which it said did not preach extremism.
“We don’t have a very strong formal link with Al Huda Pakistan,” Haq said.
“We are a religious operation within Canada and we are very much a part of that fabric and we feel like that, except that when you see stuff like this, in light of recent events, we start to get a little worried.”
Haq said the non-profit institute is looking at increasing security around its campus as its students and staff has expressed concerns about potential hostility towards Muslims.