comment by Jerry Gordon

So, if Canada was dumb enough to admit Islamist extremist Ahmad of the JEI to this Toronto Canadian ISNA conference, will our government do the same when the American wing of the ISNA holds their sessions later this summer? Let’s hope our DHS ICE folks aren’t that stupid. Or will the ACLU jump in and defend Ahmad’s appearance at the US ISNA meetings as ‘free speech’? Stay tuned.

The jihadist was once caught trying to link up with al-Qaeda, but he had no trouble lecturing in Toronto.

by Patrick Poole, Pajamas Media, June 21, 2008

Qazi Hussein Ahmad has been [1] banned from more than 25 countries across Europe and the Middle East for the activities of the Pakistani Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) organization that he heads. Terrorism analysts around the world have [2] noted JEI’s close ties to al-Qaeda, and Qazi has publicly [3] defended Osama bin Laden, [4] admitting to meeting with him on several occasions and [5] claiming that no definitive proof exists of bin Laden’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks. In an [6] October 2002 interview with Der Speigel Qazi went so far as to deny al-Qaeda’s existence altogether and defended his group’s support of the Taliban, saying that “they were just and honorable men, who brought peace to Afghanistan.”

With that kind of extremist rhetoric and close associations with known terrorist organizations currently at war with the United States, it is troubling that the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) had Qazi Hussein Ahmad as one of its [7] featured speakers at its [8] annual Canadian conference last month. The ISNA-Canada conference was run jointly with the Muslim Students Association and Muslim Youth of North America, and endorsed by the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Circle of North America, and the Muslim Association of Canada.

The [9] program for the ISNA conference lists Qazi Hussein Ahmad speaking at their seventh session on Saturday, May 24, on the topic of “Religious Extremism: Fact or Fiction.” This was not his first time at an ISNA conference, however, as he was featured at the group’s 1998 [10] 35th annual convention held in St. Louis, where Qazi was one of two speakers on the topic of “Human Dignity in the Muslim World: The Case of Pakistan and Algeria.”

Qazi’s appearance at the ISNA-Canada conference was denounced by the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, which [11] demanded that the government immediately review and reconsider his visa application, especially since Jamaat-e-Islami has been [12] designated a terrorist organization by the Canadian government. ISNA’s decision to include the JEI leader in their event was [13] strongly criticized by Calgary Herald columnist Rob Breakenridge, who used the occasion to question Canadians’ paradoxical “tolerant society.”

Just days before his appearance in Toronto at the ISNA-Canada conference, Qazi had been in Tehran as the keynote speaker at a three-day “Muslim Unity Conference” sponsored by the Iranian regime and presided over by former Iranian President Rafsanjani.

According to a [14] press release issued by JEI, Qazi called on the Muslim ummah to unite against America and oppose the war on terror, hailing Iran’s “spirit to fight to the death” against the U.S.:

Qazi condemned the American threats being hurled against Pakistan and Iran, and said the unity of the Iranian nation and their spirit to fight till death against the colonists has actually become a symbol of Iran’s security, sovereignty, and independence, which should serve as a guiding principle for the whole Muslim world. (Continue Reading this Article)