The federal Liberal leader, who had been in Toronto to campaign alongside Adam Vaughanin in the Trinity-Spadina by-election, made an appearance at the conference on his way to the airport.
Source/Credit: Mississauga News
By David Paterson | June 23, 2014
MISSISSAUGA — Everything about the annual Ahmadiyya muslim convention, which draws some 20,000 Muslims to Mississauga each year, is on a grand scale.
The event, which took place last weekend, takes over every hall of the sprawling International Centre and includes separate rooms — and separate entrances — for men and women. An army of volunteers wearing black-and-white shoulder scarves scan visitors' barcoded badges and process them through airline-style security. Inside, there are exhibition spaces, food halls, even a studio for Ahmadiyya's TV channel to broadcast from.
In the main room thousands of men sit in lines facing a stage flanked by enormous video screens. Most of them sit on mats on the floor and arrange themselves in neat rectangles, surrounded by piles of the shoes they have taken off. The women sit in another room, where they follow the proceedings by video link.
The convention is a venue for spiritual renewal featuring presentations on matters such as the practice of Islam, readings from the Qur'an and prayer.
It's not hard to see why the political classes are drawn to make an appearance here. And they come in numbers. The VIP guest list runs to three pages and includes the names of 11 MPs, five MPPs, seven mayors, 17 councillors and the chief Canadian diplomats of India and Pakistan. It's little wonder that one organizer confided he struggled to remember the names of all the important people he was expecting.
One name, however, that did stand out was that of Justin Trudeau. The federal Liberal leader, who had been in Toronto to campaign alongside Adam Vaughanin in the Trinity-Spadina by-election, made an appearance at the conference on his way to the airport. After a quick meet-and-greet and a TV interview, Trudeau addressed the vast audience to praise the sect's motto "Love for all; hatred for none."
"That is the challenge we have before us not just here in Canada but around the world where conflict, where resource depletion, where extreme weather events and climate change, where overpopulation are always going to lead to stresses and conflict and a tendency to point fingers and lay blame on others," he said.
Conflict is something the sect knows well. It has been banned in Pakistan because its belief that the second coming of Jesus occurred in 19th-century India ran foul of the country's blasphemy laws. A month ago Canadian cardiologist Mehdi Ali Qamar, an Ahmadiyya member, was shot to death in Pakistan.
Maulana Mubarak Ahmad Nazir, the keynote speaker at the convention on Saturday (June 21) called for the sect's members to respond peacefully. "If one doctor is slaughtered, if one doctor is murdered, our community will produce hundreds of other doctors," he said.
And that is a distinct possibility. The sect, after all, is growing strongly, with around 15,000 members in the GTA. Spokesperson Kashif Ahmad said that its annual convention, which is now in its 38th year in Canada, has grown to the point where even the International Centre is starting to feel crowded. It is starting to consider alternative venues, which could mean a move away from Mississauga. The sect owns 300 acres of land near Brantford and building a new facility there to house the convention in the future is a possibility.
Read original post here: Canada: Trudeau heads list of politicians keen to be seen at Mississauga muslim convention
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