Controversial Mosque & Zafar Bangash

From The National Post: "Town hall targets Newmarket, Ontario mosque" (Tom Blackwell, February 26, 2007)

"A mosque planned for the Toronto-area suburb of Newmarket was labelled a potential "house of terror" yesterday at a meeting partly spearheaded by the Jewish Defence League...

"Meir Weinstein, the militant league's Canadian head, helped put on the "town hall" session to raise questions about the Newmarket mosque's connections with Zafar Bangash (pictured). The controversial imam has promoted sharia law and vigorously defended Iran's fundamentalist regime and Lebanon's Hezbollah terrorist movement.

"The event marked another step in the recent resurgence of the Jewish Defence League (JDL) in Canada...The event was titled "House of Worship or House of Terror," and featured as its main speakers Mr. Weinstein, Ron Banerjee of the Hindu Conference of Canada and John Thompson, a terrorism expert with the Mackenzie Institute think-tank. No Muslim speakers were invited. Mr. Thompson, who did not comment directly on the Newmarket mosque, said most Muslim-Canadians are upstanding citizens but that radical imams such as Mr. Bangash have managed to gain influence over some young, second-generation members of the community.

"Mr. Bangash was the founder of Crescent International, a magazine now published on the Internet, which lauds Iran's fundamentalist government, has reprinted verbatim communiques from Palestinian terrorists and has praised the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden. An issue in 1998 said Canada was a "fully paid- up member of the Anglo-Saxon mafia, which is responsible for most of the recorded genocides of the world."

"Mr. Weinstein said it was the imam's defence of Iranian-backed Hezbollah, classified by the Canadian government as a terrorist organization, during its war with Israel last summer that prompted him to resurrect the JDL, founded in the U.S. by far-right-wing Rabbi Meir Kahane (pictured)...
Full article.

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