Imam who faces death threats says IS recruiting in Canada

|Thursday, September 04 2014

(Photo: REUTERS / Mark Blinch)Ovais Iqbal, a friend of Sufi cleric and leader of the Minhaj-ul-Quran Muhammad Tahirul Qadri, holds a copy of "Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings", written by Qadri, inside the Mississauga Muslim Community Centre in Mississauga, January 18, 2013. The cleric has held several lectures at the Community Centre, located just west Toronto, Ontario and recently returned to Pakistan after living in Canada for several years to lead a call for reforms that has made him an instant hit among Pakistanis disillusioned with the State.

A Canadian Imam says the Islamic State, also known as the ISIS or ISIL, is recruiting new members in Canada.

Syed Soharwardy, founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada and Muslims Against Terrorism said the violent group is "recruiting under our noses in universities and mosques," Agence France-Presse reported August 23.

He called on Canadian and Western authorities to intensify the fight against the terrorists.

"The atrocity that is being carried out by ISIS is quite horrible. It's quite inhumane. It's terrorism, and in Canada they have successfully recruited more than 100 people to go and fight for them in Iraq and Syria," Soharwardy said.

Soharwardy later revealed that a Canadian Muslim from Ottawa fighting for the Islamic State sent him a death threat on Facebook.

"He was condemning me for condemning ISIS, and he was saying that 'You are a deviant Imam and your version of Islam is not the right version.′′ Soharwardy said.

The Calagary-based imam said that he is used to such threats saying that he get death threats from everybody. He added that he had a death threat posted on a website last month.

Soharwardy also began a 48-hour hunger strike evening to protest the beheading of American journalist James Foley and to make people aware of the IS.

"I want to create awareness about the nature of their work — they are using Islam, they are quoting the Qur'an, they look like Muslims, they pray like Muslims but they are not Muslim," he said.

"They are deviant people, and they are doing exactly everything which goes against Islam."

The imam also desires that Canadians bcomee aware that his group condemns the Islamic State as strongly along with other Canadians because of the image they bring to the Muslim faith.

"They are creating a negative image of all Muslim communities - and they are betraying us."

Canada's 2011 national cenus found there were 1,053,945 Muslims in the country or about 3.2 per cent of the population, making them the second largest religion after Christianity and the nation's fastest growing religion.