The English – Urdu weekly newspaper “Community Times Canada” reported on the intra-Islam seminar “Islam is Under Attack, Can Muslims Unite?” that was organized by Baabulllm Education Society of British Columbia and was held on July 07, 2018 at the Conference Centre of the Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey campus.
The following are excerpts from the article that was published on July 27, 2018:
“Dr. Mohammad Akbar in his opening remarks highlighted the importance of the topic… Dr. Akbar asked, why we want to slit each other’s throats in the name of those great personalities of Islam who did not fight with each other, even if it were for the sake of the religion. In fact, for the sake of argument, if they were not friends with each other, at least they considered each other as respected acquaintances. If there were a disagreement among these great personalities on some issues, they agreed to disagree in most civilized, respectful and polite manner. Why can’t we, Muslims, educated and sensible human being follow our great heroes in this regard and try to live in harmony and create an environment of tolerance and at least agree to disagree in a decent manner…
“Dr. Syed Nasir Zaidi in his thought provoking talk highlighted number of areas where more work is needed to be done to bring the Muslims together… The plight of the Muslims all over the world and the bad name, the tarnished image that we have earned for our religion speaks for itself. Islam has never been threatened from outside as much as it is threatened and damaged from within itself… According to Dr. Zaidi most of the issues that create rift among various sects of Islam, in fact these various sects of Islam themselves are a creation of vested inters, mostly governments in so-called Islamic countries. Muslims as nation need to understand and recognize this root cause of disputes among different sects of Islam. He mentioned that the first thing that we have to do is to stop using abusive language against each other and try to behave in more civilized manner…
“Prof. Badiuddin Soharwardi [Syed Soharwardy] in his keynote address… said that the main problem with our religion these days are the self-styled Alims [Muslim scholars] and muftis [Muslim legal experts] that have very little understanding of the teaching of Islam and Quran and yet they impose themselves as the leaders and the only true preachers of Islam. They are not even capable of doing the right translation of the verses of Quran… Mr. Soharwardi recommended that when we find any speaker from the pulpit is saying, divisive things or insulting great personalities of Islam we should immediately stand up and stop him. If this practice is exercised couple of times these types of Ilims (sic, Alims – scholars) will either disappear or start behaving in a better way. Prof. Soharwadi recommended that the first thing that need to be done is to stop awarding Kufr [heresy] and Shirk [practicing idolatry or polytheism] fatwas to each other. This type of behaviour flares up sentiments and the outcome is evident, that Muslims are slitting each other’s throats. It is an irony that more Muslims are killed by Muslim[s] than by non-Muslims, he concluded.”