The national president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jam’at of Canada, Malik practises and promotes the group’s motto "Love for All, Hatred for None."
Source/Credit: The Guardian | Canada
By Jim Day | October 10, 2014
No religion teaches cruelty or injustice, says Lal Khan Malik
Lal Khan Malik is a thoughtful, loving Muslim.
He is peaceful.
A student of the Holy Qur’an, he is always keen to present the peaceful message of Islam and dispel the myths about its teachings. A strong advocate of social services, he recently was presented the Lifetime of Service Recognition award for his 20 years of work with the Ontario Non Profit Housing Association.
He is a passionate proponent of inter-faith dialogue and has spoken at many conferences throughout Canada.
Yet, quite incredulously, some Canadians are prepared to lump such a principled, inclusive individual — as well as millions of other peaceful-minded Muslims — with the likes of the brutal group known variously as ISIL and ISIS that has beheaded hundreds of local captives and imposed its harsh interpretation of Islamic law on areas under its control in Syria and Iraq.
During a countrywide campaign of outreach, going door-to-door distributing flyers on the concept of peace earlier this month, Malik and other Muslims came under unwarranted, hostile verbal attacks.
They were called murderers and terrorists.
They were labeled the most despised people of the world.
They were told to go back to where they came from.
Seeing ISIL’s savage actions spurring the same negative influence on public perception towards Muslims as did Al-Qaeda’s deadly 9-11 attacks in the United States cuts Malik to the quick.
“It’s a great sense of sorrow and dismay how people are misled by miscommunication and misconception,’’ he says.
“And we feel miserable when somebody feels about us that we are so bad — we are as bad as the killers and the murderers. We feel very bad about it.’’
ISIL, says Malik, has hijacked his religion, which is a religion of peace. No religion, he adds, teaches cruelty or injustice.
ISIL is using the name of Islam to misguide the world and to recruit suicide bombers to their cause.
“To say that what they are doing is on the basis of teaching of Islam, they are liars, they are cheaters,’’ says Malik.
“They are using Islam only as a smokescreen. They want to deceive the world. They want to deceive their own people.’’
Still, Malik does not support the U.S.-led bombing campaign against ISIL — a campaign Conservative MPs Tuesday voted in favour of Canada joining.
Malik says as a religious man, he finds both repugnant and unacceptable the act of bombing that is most likely to claim innocent lives.
“Even if one innocent person is killed because hundreds of terrorists are to be targeted, I find it difficult to digest,’’ he says.
“That one innocent person — how would we justify him being killed?’’
Rather, Malik would like to see a long-term, more effective strategy than bombing to curb ISIS. Stopping sources of funding and countering the group’s recruitment campaign by better educating the Muslim community are both worthy efforts, he notes.
“Just bombing will give them (ISIL) more arsenal for recruiting more people,’’ he says.
“They will say ‘look, this is what we said: that the west is bent upon demolishing Islam.’’’
jday@theguardian.pe.ca
Twitter.com/PEIGuardian
Read original post here: Canada: ISIL has hijacked our religion, Muslim leader says
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