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Pacifist prophet

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Against the backdrop of the conflagration in the Middle East and the arrests of 17 Muslims on terrorism-related charges, a tiny group of fundamentalist Muslims held a surprising conference here recently.

The keynote address is given by Abu Kadeejah, a lecturer at the Salafi Institute in Birmingham, UK, who, with his long, flowing beard and traditional Muslim dress, would get red-flagged at any airport in the Western world.

After all, he and Osama Bin Laden share the same roots in the Salafi tradition, a form of very early orthodox Islam from which sprang Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi state.

But instead of serving up anti-Western rhetoric, talk inside the tiny storefront mosque at Weston Road and Black Creek is all about the merits of pacifism.

In the current context, when Hamas and Hezbollah become more popular with every bomb Israel drops, the guest speaker does not flinch.

“Are suicide bombers martyrs? No, they’re sinners,” he tells the Friday-afternoon crowd of a few dozen mostly young Muslim men sitting on the carpeted floor of the Reign of Islamic Da’wah Centre (TROID).

“Why do we sit tolerating these fools who cause people to flee Islam?”

After years of media reports that Saudi money is funding the schools throughout the Muslim world that are turning out today’s jihadist terrorists, I’m more than a bit surprised that Kadeejah is going so hard against bin Laden. But go hard he does.

“Bin Laden is an enemy of Allah and an enemy of Islam,” he says over the din of rush-hour traffic just outside the door. “Taking your own life is forbidden in the Koran. Killing Muslims and non-Muslims is impermissible. Did Allah say, “Don’t kill yourself unless you’re in Palestine or the London tube’?”

Not only is violence not the Salafi way, he says, but it has also been an abject failure strategically, bearing no fruits except that Israel is stronger and the plight of the Palestinians grows more dire. “The absence of rights for the Palestinians is an indictment of the jihadist movement,” he says.

I find myself stunned into silence. Sure, I know he’s a very conservative orthodox Muslim. He’s a strong supporter of Saudi Arabia and as a Salafi would never demonstrate publicly against a government.

No doubt he and I have very different views on a number of issues: the role of women, gay rights, sharia law, to name a few.

But I’m thinking about how important it would be right now to hear leaders in the Orthodox or Hassidic Jewish community denounce the killing of civilians in Lebanon by Israeli bombers as an affront to the Hebrew God.

York University Islamic studies professor Amila Buturovic agrees that Kadeejah’s stance is remarkable. “It is hugely important to have Salafis speaking out with an anti-violence message. It is much easier for moderate Muslims to do this than for a Salafi who is considered to be purity.”

Salafis see themselves as followers of the most basic, original form of Islam practised by the Prophet Muhammad and the first two generations afterwards.

Followers of this Salafi strain are few here the mosque has a membership of about 200, but it is focused on spreading the word. It has sold about 25,000 copies of its 10 books and hundreds of lectures on CD and boasts that its website, troid.org, is the largest Islamic site on the Net.

One of the misunderstandings the mosque hopes to clear up is the relationship between the Salafi and Wahhabi tradition. Saudi Arabia’s ideological father, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of the Wahhabi movement, was himself a Salaf.

But, says Butorovic, “He added to Salafi tradition a more assertive, more aggressive posture toward those, both Muslim and non-Muslims, who didn’t accept the Wahhabi interpretation.’ Not all Salafis are Wahhabis. While there is a non-violent stream in the Salafi movement, as evidenced by Khadeejah, she says not all Salafis reject violent jihad.

In England, Khadeejah tells me, his brand of Salafism has about 3,000 followers and faces a fair amount of opposition in the Islamic community.

“We are competing to bring Muslim youth to moderation,” he says. His message to Muslims here is clear: “You have the capacity to speak out against the radicals.’

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