During a conference in Edmonton (1980), Ismail Faruqi stressed that Muslim immigrants in North America have two duties: calling all non-Muslims to Islam and transforming the North American reality so that it conforms to Islamic standards.

Version française ICI

In 1980, the symposium Dimensions of Islam in North America was held at the University of Alberta (Edmonton). Ismail Faruqi spoke at the event. His lecture was entitled Islamic Ideals in North America. It focused on the mission that he envisioned for Muslim immigrants. According to Faruqi, Muslims immigrants have two duties:

1. Calling non-Muslims to Islam;
2. Transforming the North American reality so that it conforms to Islamic standards.

According to Faruqi, peoples already living in the West must be “turn(ed) away from their past evil.” He concluded by saying that “Nothing would be greater than these (…) peoples of the West marching forward under the banner of Allahu Akbar!” Faruqi’s goal was nothing less than the Islamization of North America.

In 1977, Faruqi, Youssef Qaradawi and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders met in Lugano (Switzerland) to establish the basis of what would become the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) four years later. Since then, the IIIT has become the main Muslim Brotherhood research institute in the West. Based in Herndon (Pennsylvania), IIIT provides Islamist operatives in North America and elsewhere the theoretical resources to implement sharia in their non-Muslim environment and transform the institutions where they live in accordance with Islamic standards.

When Faruqi mentions that Muslim immigrants should consider their new country as their own Medina, he alludes to the fact that, according to Muslim historians, at the beginning of Islam, Muhammad and his supporters had to migrate from Mecca to Medina before being able to substantially increase their influence and conquer territories. Nowadays, asking a Muslim to consider his new country like a Medina is a metaphor for asking him to Islamize the area where he lives and its surroundings.

In these circumstances, when Western government agencies rely on Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations and subsidize them to “integrate” Muslim immigrants, they accomplish exactly the opposite. They encourage the ghettoisation of new immigrants and the Islamization of their own countries.

In his book Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase (chapter 4), Youssef Qaradawi, who set up the IIIT with Faruqi, specifically enjoins his supporters to develop “Muslim ghettos” in the West. In 1995, Qaradawi pleaded for the conquest of the West by Muslims.

Ismail Faruqi nurtured Muslim immigrants’ resentment toward their North American environment and discouraged them from using their abilities to improve their personal situation

Two documents exist about the 1980 symposium Dimensions of Islam in North America that was held in Edmonton:

1. The proceedings of the event;
2. The book The Muslim Community in North America published in 1983. This book contains an edited version of the speeches that were given at the symposium, appendixes about the Muslim organizations that were operating in North America in 1980, a glossary, etc. A large portion of the book is available on Google Books.

A portion of Faruqi’s speech that is in the proceedings has not been reproduced in the book. In this portion, Faruqi claims that recent Muslim immigrants have no future in North America except than by joining his offensive for the Islamization of the continent. He stated what follows:

When a large proportion of leaders in a community behave like Faruqi and do everything they can to convince new immigrants that their efforts won’t be rewarded in their new country, that instead of trying to make their place in the sun, they should join the fight to “turn away” their new country from its past and Islamize it, it should not come as a surprise that new immigrants belonging to this community experience high rates of unemployment and integration problems.

The more prevalent such a conception is among a specific category of immigrants, the more prevalent such a conception is among those supposed to help these new immigrants “integrate” their new environment and the more difficult it will be for them to find jobs, to keep them and to rely on their own abilities to improve their personal situation.

The portion of Faruqi’s speech that is only available in the proceedings is archived on Point de Bascule.

A symposium funded by Saddam Hussein’s regime that was oblivious to the Shiite presence in North America

Although the Edmonton symposium was entitled Dimensions of Islam in North America, the Shiite reality was not discussed. Abdulaziz A. Sachedina, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, made the observation in a 1994 text (note 2) about the presence of Shia Islam in North America.

This situation can probably be explained in part by the fact that the Iraqi Embassy in Canada financially supported the symposium at a time when Saddam Hussein was preparing the war against Iran. Very likely Saddam Hussein’s regime was hoping to count on the Muslim intellectuals gathered in Edmonton to drum up support for its cause in the coming war. The Iraqi support for the conference is mentioned in the preface of the book The Muslim Community in North America.

List of speakers at the 1980 symposium

Here is the list of speakers at the symposium as it appears in the book The Muslim Community in North America (p. xi). Short profiles of three speakers follow the list.

YVONNE Y. HADDAD

In 1980, she was a Professor at Hartford Seminary. Today she is at the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. In 2005, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal made a $20 million donation to the Center that bears his name. The Center is directed by long-time Muslim Brotherhood supporter John Esposito.

In 2008, GMBDR reported that the IIIT, the Muslim Brotherhood organization founded by Faruqi, financially supported conferences in which Yvonne Haddad took part.

Investigative Project on Terrorism points out that Haddad, Esposito and other intellectuals associated with them “help justify the false notion of moderate Islamic fundamentalism by affirming the duplicitous public statements of savvy fundamentalists, rather than looking at the internal materials disseminated by these leaders, which is the real test of their views.”

EARLE H. WAUGH

Waugh is a Professor at the University of Alberta as he was when the symposium was held in 1980. In a 2006 video featuring Khalid Tarabain, Waleed Najmeddine and other Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities leaders, he enthusiastically welcomed the establishment of an ECMC-sponsored Chair in Islamic Studies at U of A. Many Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations that belong to the Inter-Masajid Shura (IMS) also belong to ECMC. Contrary to IMS though, there are non-Sunni Muslims associated with ECMC.

Referring to the waves of Islamist violence that we have been witnessing for years, Earle Waugh claimed in the 2006 video that the establishment of a Chair in Islamic Studies in Edmonton had to contribute to “overcome the situation that Muslims find themselves in where a tiny minority has hijacked the whole religion.”

If ECMC’s mission was about stopping Islamic extremism, its leaders would have chosen somebody else than Ibrahim Abu-Rabi as the first holder of its Chair in Islamic Studies. Until his death in 2011, Abu-Rabi was closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2007, GMBDR reported that Abu-Rabi went to Britain to give a course that was advertised by the Muslim Council of Britain, the local Muslim Brotherhood organization.

As far as Abu-Rabi was concerned, the Iranian revolution was the model that should inspire Muslims. In 2008, he stated that “the only successful Islamic revolution thus far has been waged by Khomeini”.

In a 1991 text (p. 90), Earle H. Waugh himself described the Iranian regime as “wilful and violent.”

In his book about the Intellectual origins of Islamic resurgence in the modern Arab world, Ibrahim Ab-Rabi examines the Muslim Brotherhood founder’s theoretical contribution. He states that Hassan al-Banna should be remembered for his efforts to bring the mosque “from a static place of worship to a center of Islamic revolution.” (pp. 76-77)

Not much there to reassure Edmontonians that ECMC is engaged in a different path that this so-called “tiny minority” of extremists who would have “hijacked” the religion, contrary to what Earle Waugh is asserting.

MUHAMMAD ABDUL RAUF

In his speech delivered in Edmonton in 1980, Muhammad Abdul-Rauf did not openly enjoined Muslim immigrants to Islamize their new countries as Faruqi did but he nonetheless reminded the participants that “Islam has a long tradition of expansion outside its original territory.” (p. 272)

According to Discover the Networks, “Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf (1917-2004), was an Egyptian contemporary of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was a professor at Al-Azhar University until 1948; in 1965 he moved to New York, where he purchased – with $1.3 million in funding from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya – a plot of Manhattan real estate to serve as a site for a large Islamic Cultural Center (ICC). Muhammad Abdul Rauf is the father of Feisal Abdul Rauf.”

Unusually straightforward definitions of jihad, taqiya and other Islamic concepts

In the glossary of Islamic terms that was added to the book The Muslim Community in North America in1983, the word Jihad is defined in a straightforward way as a “war against all who are not Muslim.” Definitions like this one can hardly be found in official documents today. In 2012, even police organizations like the RCMP are making all kinds of efforts to avoid using the Islamists’ own terminology.

Four examples of straightforward definitions complementing texts by Faruqi, Haddad and Abdul Rauf:

The manual of sharia Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller) that is approved by IIIT (founded by Ismail Faruqi) explains in details when it is lawful for Muslims to lie.

Canoe.ca (July 11, 2012): Mounties instructed to avoid ‘inflammatory’ Islamist terms

Further reading

Point de Bascule (February 10, 2012): Ismail Faruqi: Muslim Leader in Montreal (1958-1967) and Founder of the Main Muslim Brotherhood Research Institute in the West (1981)

Point de Bascule (August 3, 2011): Tariq Ramadan openly calls for Muslim colonization of the U.S.