FIRST READING: Muslim Association speaker who has lunched with Hamas barred entry to Canada

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“Having lunch with the #Palestine Prime Minister Ismail Haneyya,” Altikriti wrote in a June 2012 post to Twitter, now X.

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Also scheduled to speak at this weekend’s MAC conference is Ebrahim Rasool, a politician with South Africa’s African National Congress who, according to a profile on Middle East Forum, hosted a Cape Town memorial for Haniyeh following his 2024 assassination by Israel

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Middle East Forum also included a September 2023 post by Rasool in which he shared an image of a signed scarf presented to him by Haniyeh.

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Jewish Onliner also alleged multiple speakers slated to appear at the convention “have held positions in, or have been publicly linked to, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s political ecosystem.”

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This year’s iteration of the Muslim Association of Canada’s annual conference is not the first time that the event has been accused of platforming extremist speakers.

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In August 2023, B’nai Brith called on the MAC to cancel a planned keynote from Sheikh Nashaat Ahmed, an Egyptian-born preacher whom they alleged to have issued social media posts referring to Jews as “descendants of pigs and apes.”

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In a reply, MAC called Ahmed the victim of a “smear campaign,” and explained that Muslim scholars sometimes “use the term ‘Jews’ interchangeably when discussing Israel.”

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“We wish to state unequivocally that MAC does not endorse or support supplications made against the Jewish people or any other group as a whole. However it is a well established Islamic theological position to invoke the help of God against oppressors,” it read.

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The Muslim Association of Canada is a registered non-profit that operates Islamic schools and Islamic centres in 13 Canadian cities.

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Last June, Carney attended an Ottawa event hosted by the Muslim Association of Canada where he declared in a speech that “Muslim values are Canadian values.”

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It is also a regular recipient of federal grant money. The largest grant of $349,210 was given to the organization by Canadian Heritage in 2021 for the purposes of funding an “Anti-Racism Action Program.”

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IN OTHER NEWS

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Just a few days after Alberta separatists submitted the necessary signatures to hold a secession referendum, a judge declared on Wednesday that they can’t.

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And, like a lot of contentious legal decisions these days, the ruling was premised on the idea that a secession referendum violated Aboriginal rights.

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Court of King’s Bench Justice Shaina Leonard ruled that the petition shouldn’t even have been issued in the first place, as it violated the Crown’s “duty to consult” with Alberta First Nations.

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If you’re wondering why Quebec held two secession referenda without ever running up against a similar legal decision, the most good-faith answer is that Quebec mostly isn’t treatied land.

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Alberta, by contrast, was only created as a province after federal negotiators had extinguished the region’s Indigenous land claims via numbered treaties with the Crown. So the argument is that a secession referendum violates the terms of treaties that predate Alberta’s creation as a political entity.

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Nevertheless, it’s still a pretty novel idea that First Nations should be able to exercise unilateral control over whether a province can even hold a vote on separation

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