At an April 1996 conference at an unknown location, Pakistani-born Canadian Imam Zafar Bangash praised Imam Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie as the “first direct challenge to the West’s political hegemony” because, according to him, the publishing of The Satanic Verses was a carefully calculated attack against Islam that Muslims should not tolerate. He said that Muslims cannot coexist with the West because they violate all of Allah’s commandments. He gave the example of Western girls, who he said commit adultery and fornication at the age of 10 and 12 right in front of their brothers and fathers. He also criticized the West for being “proud of being homosexuals,” and said: “It is time for us to pick up the stones to stone these people to death for [this] abomination… Allah imposes [this responsibility] upon us.” In a different speech from the same event, Bangash told the audience not to be surprised by the behavior of the Jews in Israel because they are the same Jews that murdered the prophets of Allah. He said that there is something wrong with Muslims who treat the Jews as friends, and he assured the audience that the Jews, Christians, polytheists, and infidels will “spare no effort” to ruin Muslims because of the hatred that they harbor against them. During another conference at an unknown location that took place sometime in 2000, Bangash said that he was communicating with mujahideen who were fighting against the Russians in Chechnya and called on the audience to support them, saying: “Our responsibility is that we help them financially and extend help to them materially so that [they] will remain steadfast.” Imam Bangash is still active today and preaches at the Islamic Society of York Region in Ontario. He is the director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) and is on the editorial board of Toronto-based Crescent International alongside U.S.-based Imam Muhammad Al-Asi (see MEMRI TV Clips No. 6675 and No. 1264). Crescent International’s website says that it is an ICIT publication that promotes a “global Islamic movement perspective on current affairs based on the ideas of Dr. Kalim Siddiqui.”
