MP hosted event for Christian group whose president says Muslims want to ‘convert all Canadians’
By Zane Schwartz
National Post | April 10, 2017
Liberal MP Ruby Sahota hosted an event last spring with a group whose president recently accused Muslims of wanting to convert all Canadians to their faith and rule the country.
During the United Christian Federation’s Last Supper on the Hill event on Parliament Hill last Easter, Brampton MP Sahota thanked the organization for its “dedication to protecting minority rights around the world.”
The Toronto-based UCF has received less public attention than other controversial groups it sometimes works alongside, such as Canadian Hindu Advocacy and Rise Canada. On March 29, Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch attended an event where Ron Banerjee, a director with Canadian Hindu Advocacy and an adviser with Rise Canada, spoke.
A video of the event shows Banerjee pointing to UCF president Pervez Masih in the crowd and saying the federation is one of several groups working on “fighting Islamization, this Shariah creep.”
In the video, Leitch is seen shaking Banerjee’s hand and answering his questions. Leitch spokesman Michael Diamond has said Leitch did not know Banerjee would be at the event and that “this guy and his opinions are repugnant and do not reflect her own views.”
In an interview on March 31, 2017, Masih told the National Post, “Muslim people, now they are saying we will convert all Canadians, non-Muslim to Muslim, and we will rule in this country.”
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Abbas Kassam, a board member of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said Masih’s comments are “fear mongering” and MPs should do their research before holding events with such groups.
“The Muslim community is not the first community to go through this in Canada. We’ve seen it with the Jewish community in the past. We’ve seen it with the Japanese-Canadian community. It’s just the new flavour of the month for fear mongering,” he said.