REF : “Canadians’ Strategy to Combat ISIS Ideology & Jihadi Recruitment in Canada” 22 Nov 14

The Board of directors of MFT decided not to take part in the above conference since two of the panelists invited are Islamists known for promoting Sharia law in Canada, and misguiding our youth towards radicalization. Any engagement with Islamists is counter-productive, and it would also be a violation of MFT’s charter.  

We are in complete agreement with what the Right Hon. Prime Minister Stephen Harper pointed out, that the “greatest threat to Canada is Islamicism.”

MFT lauds the governments efforts to degrade and defeat the ISIS. Accordingly, MFT organized a rally held at Queens Park on 21 September 2014, and it was attended by community leaders of all faiths and members of parliament.

 

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We at MFT offer our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the four Israelis killed and others injured following the frenzied attack at a Jerusalem synagogue by two Palestinian men.

We are as horrified as Israelis and Jews around the world at the barbaric and senseless killing spree inside a house of worship, the Bnei Torah synagogue in Jerusalem, where men had congregated in offering their morning prayers.

Words fail us in expressing our sadness as Islamist and Palestinian terrorism tears asunder the fragile fabric of peace in the holy land, and turn the sacred grounds of Jerusalem into the killing fields for terrorists.

As Israelis mourn the deaths of those fallen in this latest round of evil let loose among them, we join them in the prayers for the dead and stand together with them in their resolve not to compromise with or surrender to those who wish them evil and terrorize them.

We pray may the Lord bless the innocent dead and protect the living; and may the Lord shield the land of Israel and her people today and evermore from the evil of the wicked.

MFT PRESS RELEASE…  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE      October 22, 2014

The death of the Canadian Forces soldier, the 53-year old Patrice Vincent, is shocking. We join with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the members of his government in offering our condolences to the family and friends of warrant officer Patrice Vincent who succumbed to the injuries received in the hit-and-run attack on him and another soldier accompanying him at the shopping mall outside of Montreal where this event occurred. We pray for the recovery of the injured soldier whose name has not yet been released to the media.
Martin Rouleau, a 25-year old resident of St. Jean-sur-Richilieu, who carried out this pre-meditated hit-and-run attack resulting in the death of Patrice Vincent, was a recent convert to Islam. Rouleau was known to the security and intelligence agencies and had become, in their words, radicalized.”
We in Muslims Facing Tomorrow (MFT), and our friends and partners among Canadian Muslims who are anti-Islamist, while shocked over the murder of a Canadian soldier are not surprised that an Islamist terrorist strike has occurred on Canadian soil. Let us be clear this murder of a Canadian soldier was an act of jihad, or holy war, declared by al Qaeda prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 against the West (Canada was mentioned in that al Qaeda list of enemies). This declaration of jihad has now been repeated by ISIS/ISIL/IS calling upon their members of the fifth column within western democracies to engage in terrorist acts and terrify people.
We are not mistaken by the threats that ISIS and/or al Qaeda, and similar Islamist organizations, pose to Canadians. These organizations have publicized their intent to harm us, and their active members and supporters are in our midst. Martin Rouleau was not simply “radicalized” by some unknown ideology. Rouleau was radicalized by the ideology of political Islam or Islamism that preaches jihad as incumbent on Muslims, that is dedicated to the political objective of establishing Shariah-based state(s) in Muslim majority countries and Shariah-accommodation in western democracies, and devoted to the idea of Caliphate now declared established in areas under control by IS in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. We are deeply concerned and fearful for our country’s security and threats to Canadians from Islamists in our midst.
– 30 –
Contact: Sohail Raza: phone 416-505-1613

PRESS RELEASE…. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE… October 6, 2014

MFT Supports the Prime Minister and the Government on Defeating ISIL

We in Muslims Facing Tomorrow (MFT), with our Canadian Muslim and non-Muslim friends and partners, welcome and greatly support Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government’s motion, to “join our allies and partners…in launching air strikes against ISIL”, for debate in the parliament.

ISIL, or ISIS or IS, should have been crushed right at the outset of its appearance in Syria and Iraq. ISIL’s barbarity was in display at its origin. ISIL deliberately engages in barbaric acts to terrify and subdue any and all opposition in its path. The weakness on the part of states in the Fertile Crescent has provided ISIL with time and space to become expansive and control territory, acquire weaponry, recruit extremist Muslims supportive of its ideology from around the world, and pose a clear and present danger across the Middle East.

ISIL’s threat, however, is not limited to the region. ISIL’s success in deploying extremist Muslims recruited from among immigrant Muslim communities in Europe and North America threatens western democracies, including Canada.

We are disappointed with both of the opposition parties unwilling to support the government’s motion. At a time when great seriousness is required to deal with the threat ISIL represents to the people of the Middle East and beyond, we Canadian Muslims are deeply troubled by the lack of sincerity of the opposition parties. Their willingness to play partisan politics with these developments is both divisive to the Muslim community and dangerous for the people of the region, and of the world.

We anti-Islamist Muslims, opposed to violence in the name of Islam and opposed to any allowance made to accommodate Sharia-based or Sharia-friendly legislation in the West, know the terrible and savage nature of ISIL and similar Islamist organizations from the inside given our own experiences. ISIL is evil, and if this evil is not contained and eliminated it will destroy and devastate a whole region, even reaching beyond the Middle East, before it is done with. History provides enough lesson of what happens when evil is not dealt with quickly and in the appropriate way.

This is why we agree with Prime Minister Stephen Harper when he states if ISIL is left “unchecked, this terrorist threat can only grow and grow quickly.”

We support Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government unconditionally in the stated mission to degrade and contain ISIL as put forth in the motion before the House.

June 30, 2014

The Council For Muslims Facing Tomorrow, is deeply saddened by the news of the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach.
We send condolences to the families of the murdered youth and share the grief of our Jewish and Israeli brothers and sisters around the world. We are outraged as we condemn the perpetrators of these heinous crimes.

Please Join Us!

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

The National Day of Service Concert

“Paying it Forward”

Presented by The ACTV Foundation
(The Alliance of Canadian Terror Victims)

September 11, 2013 @ 8:00pm
The Bluma Appel Theatre
The St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts
27 Front Street East, Toronto 

Canadians performing for Canadians.

The Inaugural National Day of Service Concert will be an inspiring event featuring a variety of top Canadian talent, including Robert Pilon, Liona Boyd, Matt Dusk, Holly Carr, Dr. Draw, Bollywood, Cirque, choirs of over 140 voices and surprise celebrity guest appearances celebrating our national pride, remembrance and service while promoting selfless acts emulating the concept of “PAYING IT FORWARD”. It will be a night to remember, one that will set the standard for years to come! Through the performance we will commemorate the resilience of Canadians, the fortitude of those who have been victims and the support and love provided them by their communities.

We will come together to thank and recognize our own Canadian citizens in the line of service.

The concert will be a celebration of our Canadian values through music and words and will include marquee talent from across the country, embracing all cultures, races, languages and religions.

Supported by The Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow 

Tickets available online (special price for service providers) www.stlc.com/1677.html

TORONTO – A recent attack in Algeria has shed light on the growing problem of homegrown terrorists in Canada and a Western University professor says he wants to ratchet up the intensity on the issue.

“If people do not stand up to discuss this, we will not be able to shine the spotlight,” said Salim Mansur, an associate professor of political science at the university in London, Ont. “We have to ask difficult questions.”

Mansur was part of a panel organized by The Council of Muslims Facing Tomorrow and the Muslim Canadian Congress to urge the government to take notice of the political radicalization of young Canadian Muslims.

The panel was formed partially in response to the revelation that four young men from London, Ont. took part in the attack on the Tigantourine gas facility Algeria. Approximately 40 hostages were killed in the four-day standoff in January between Algerian special forces and the al-Qaida-led group.

There are close to one million Muslims in Canada, and according to Muslim Canadian Congress secretary general Tahir Gora, they are being taught in mosques and other Islamic centres that western society is sinful.

That attitude needs to stop immediately, he said, adding some Muslim youth groups are affiliated with al-Qaida and work towards radicalizing youth.

“This is quite disturbing for us and we want Islamic centres to denounce this and those Islamic centres who are behind (the attacks) need to stop,” Gora said. “We want the Canadian government to take strong measures in terms of stopping this.”

The four young Canadian men who were involved in the recent attack near In Amenas are just a small part of a much larger problem, Mansur said. They did not wind up in the Algeria by chance — they were trained in Canada and carried out their jihad deep in the Sahara desert, he said.

“The families might not have been aware of it but … the story that has played out is that nobody of any responsibility in London know these kids,” Mansur said. “How did this happen? Somebody knows and are not speaking, somebody has been facilitating it, there has to be a network.”

Those facilitating the development and deployment of the young radicals are right in our own backyard across the country, he said.

“The argument that no one is responsible for what these young people did — as if these young people were misguided, set off one Saturday and ended up in Algeria (is wrong),” he said. “These young boys, and other young boys and young women, legions of them in our city, our colleges, our schools, they go to the mosque and that is where the framework of jihad operation (is built).

“When some kids internalize those languages and want to play out the very thing that is a regular part of their homes and in the mosque, why should we be surprised?”

PRESS RELEASE                               For Immediate Release

11 April 2013

 THE LONDON CONNECTION:

KEEP HOMEGROWN ISLAMIST TERRORISM OUT OF CANADA

The Council of Muslims Facing Tomorrow and the Muslim Canadian Congress urge the Canadian Government to take strict notice of the political radicalization of young Canadians of Muslim origin in our cities, and the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood/Jamaat-i-Islami agenda through mosques and organizations associated with the global movement of the Brotherhood and the Jamaat in Canada. We have been through this before and apparently we have learned insufficiently from our experience. We are all vulnerable to the global jihad of the Islamists, and its fingerprints undeniably can be found in our country’s backyards.

What:             Panel consisting of Raheel Raza, Salim Mansur, Tahir Gora & Sanam Malik will discuss the international and local context of the global jihad, and Canada’s           increasing vulnerability.

When:             Saturday April 13, 2013

Time:              5:30pm

Venue:            Room 1 (one), North York Central Library (2^nd floor across from Library)                                       5120 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON M2N 5N9

–        30      –

PRESS RELEASE                    For immediate release            

Toronto – January 15, 2013                     

 HIJACKING A TRAGEDY TO PROMOTE HATE

The Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow strongly condemns the ongoing sectarian strife and systematic slaughter of religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan. The latest outrage is the targeted massacre of some 93 Shias belonging to the Hazara ethnic group in Quetta, Pakistan, by individuals linked to the Sunni-jihadi militias such as Lashkar e Jhangvi and Sipahi e Sahaba. These notorious Sunni militias are criminal terrorist organizations secretly funded by the intelligence wing of the Pakistani military and at their bidding spreading fear that undermines civilian authorities and threatens electoral politics in a country with a terribly long and tortured history of military rule.

While most reports of the killings in Quetta last week describe the dead as victims of “sectarian violence,” the fact is those involved in committing the massacre of the Hazara Shias are known to intelligence agencies of the Pakistani army, and these agencies consistently turn a blind eye to the violence perpetuated by Sunni-jihadi groups such as Lashkar e Jhangvi or Sipahi e Sahaba.

It is quite obvious that the Pakistani military and its Sunni-jihadi allies have learned nothing from the past, of how top-down machinations of religious-sectarian and ethnic divisions in 1970-71 precipitated the military organized genocide of Bengalis, civil war and eventual dismemberment of the country. Those who refuse to learn from the past and deny history, they are then condemned to keep repeating the horrors of their own making.

At home in Canada, Muslims in general are deeply concerned and worried about such crimes as occurred in Quetta. They have organized protest rallies to express their concerns in public. But sadly, and to the horror of most Canadian Muslims, there are Muslims in the community who shamelessly and without any conscience seek to exploit such tragedies, as the one in Quetta, to advance their own subversive agenda in this country.

Muslims Facing Tomorrow was shocked to see one protest rally organized for January 14 evening in front of the Pakistani Consulate in Toronto is blaming the persecution of Shia Muslims in Pakistan on a “Zionist Plot” (see attached poster).

“It is deeply painful to see how such medieval conspiracy theories persist inside the Muslim community,” said Raheel Raza, President for Muslims Facing Tomorrow. “At a time when the Muslim community faces serious internal issues,” Raza stated, “it is shameful we continue to find some Muslims who place blames on others for Muslim failings. Painful as it is, the time is long past to keep denying we Muslims and no one else are the authors of our own misfortune. Fantasizing over such ridiculous idea that there is a ‘Zionist Plot’ serves only to deepen our self-inflicted misery, to avoid learning any lesson from our past history, and in refusing to be responsible for our present deny any hope for our future.”

Quote from press release with the poster “A coalition of various Shia and Sunni mosques and community organizations in Toronto and Ottawa are organizing protest rallies and candlelight vigils at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, January 14 to express their extreme anguish and sorrow at the on-going genocide of Pakistani citizens by a small group of foreign funded terrorists.”

November 11, 2012

In Remembrance,  And Lest We Forget…

At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month people across Canada pause in remembrance to honour the sacrifices of those brave patriots who volunteered for battle to preserve freedom and secure democracy. Many never returned, and many lie in unmarked graves in continents and seas far away from their native homes.

Twice within a generation they sallied forth to battle in the cause of freedom, and twice they succeeded in shielding freedom’s fragile light from being snuffed out by the forces of darkness so that those yet to be born would not be denied freedom as their birthright. And since those wars fought in the last century by the Allied nations with Canada among them, other brave Canadians, men and women, have gone forth to distant places to keep peace where conflicts have raged, to protect the weak and the innocent afflicted by wars or tormented by despots, and some never returned. Lest we forget, we honour them on this day of remembrance wearing poppies signifying blood they shed so that others may live in freedom and with dignity.

And lest we forget, they marched together in company and regiments of brave soldiers from the Allied nations, and though as Christians and Jews, Hindus and Muslims, Sikhs and Parsis, they came from different faith traditions yet they bonded together in the common cause of freedom. They were soldiers facing tomorrow, youthful in age and full of promise; neither did they waver in their duty, nor did they doubt the cause in whose defence they responded knowing full well what sacrifices lay ahead. And as the poet Laurence Binyon wrote in remembering them, “They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted, They fell with their faces to the foe.”

In remembering them, and lest we forget, Muslims Facing Tomorrow respectfully draw inspiration from those soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, in the desert of North Africa, in the jungles of Burma who faced tomorrow with courage and selflessness knowing full well their cause will not be defeated if others coming after them remain equally devoted to protecting freedom as God’s most precious gift to the living.

Raheel Raza
President
Muslims Facing Tomorrow

September 24, 2012

Contact: Raheel Raza

416-505-6052                                                                                                                          info@muslimsfacingtomorrow.com

ANNOUNCING LAUNCH OF MUSLIMS FACING TOMORROW

Between the ugly, thunderous & violent roar of the radical extremists and the wishy washy whimper of the majority, lies THE SILENT VOICE.

www.muslimsfacingtomorrow.com

Our Mission: We are an organization for all Muslims to be an integral part of Canada’s liberal democracy and participate in it as equal proud Canadians.
Our Goal: To empower Canadian Muslims to celebrate Canada’s cultural diversity  and keep Canada safe.                                                                                                                                 Our Activities: We support and organize open and free intellectual discourse; offer religious, historical and practical education; and maintain dialogue with other faiths.

When:             Sunday September 30, 2012

LAUNCH:     5 to 8 pm (for exclusive interviews call 416-505-1613)

Venue:            Auditorium of North York Central Library (2^nd floor across from Library)

5120 Yonge Street, Toronto , ON M2N 5N9

Keynote Speaker:

M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D. is the Founder and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD).  A devout Muslim, Dr. Jasser founded AIFD in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States as an effort to provide an American Muslim voice advocating for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state.  Dr. Jasser is the author of The Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith(Simon & Schuster, June 2012). He is featured in four documentaries America at Risk,Islam v Islamists, A Question of Honor and The Third Jihad.    www.aifdemocracy.org

September 10, 2012

The Honourable John Baird

Minister for Foreign Affairs

Ottawa

Sir:

The Council of Muslims Facing Tomorrow supports your decision to close down Canada’s diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

As Canadian Muslims we are encouraged that our government in Ottawa has taken the right measure in countering the multiple threats emanating out of Tehran.

We come from across the Muslim world and consider ourselves fortunate to be Canadians. We treasure the freedom we found here, and we are grateful for the benefits we enjoy as citizens of a vibrant democracy.

We have watched with great concern and dismay since long before 9/11 the deterioration of Muslim societies under the influence and power of Islamists – those who have twisted Islam as a faith-tradition into a political ideology with a totalitarian mind-set and program.

The Islamic Republic of Iran in the control of Islamist clergy since 1979 is not alone among member states of the Organization of Islamic Co-operation in persecuting dissident Muslims, in oppressing religious minorities, in engaging in acts of terrorism abroad, and in threatening regional and international peace. But Iran stands as the most vocal and belligerent OIC member in opposing the values Canada represents, and we as Canadian Muslims embrace.

We know a significantly large number of Iranians oppose the regime in Tehran. We are concerned about their well-being, and we trust you will keep alert to their concerns and maintain support for them in the difficult days ahead.

Raheel Raza,

President