http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1045749--siddiqui-the-people-behind-the-prayer-protest#article

Siddiqui: The people behind the prayer protest


The group demanding an end to Muslim Friday prayers at a Toronto school is militantly anti-Sikh and anti-Muslim.

Canadian Hindu Advocacy’s director Ron Banerjee has said: “In its entire history, Islam, the Islamic civilization has invented and contributed less to human advancement than a pack of donkeys.”

He wants to “fight the Islamization of our society” and, lately, of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). He’s demanding that Valley Park Middle School in Flemingdon Park stop giving space to Muslim students in the cafeteria after lunch on Fridays.

He does not live in the area but claims to have “received many complaints from terrified Hindu students and parents (who) felt that the TDSB was so thoroughly infected with Islamist sympathies that they would suffer consequences for speaking up.”

He does not say how many parents complained. Nor does he identify them. When I asked him that by email, and also inquired how many members his organization has and who funds it, he did not respond.

“Frankly, I don’t believe what he says,” principal Nick Stefanoff says. “I’ve not had a single complaint from any non-Muslim parents. We have dozens of Hindu students and we have a great relationship with them and their parents. When the Indian cricket team played Sri Lanka in the World Cup final (in April in Mumbai), Hindu and Muslim kids came to the school at 4 a.m. to watch it together. They had a great time.”

He says that several of Banerjee’s assertions are wrong — that other kids are denied access to the cafeteria (the prayer is held after lunch when the place is vacant); that prayer is interfering with classes (all classes start on time); and that “secular education” is compromised (class content is decidedly not affected).

“I think he just makes it all up,” says Stefanoff. “He never asked me a thing. Why doesn’t he come and talk to me?”

Banerjee has speculated that the praying students may be subject to “inflammatory preaching” against Hindus. There’s no such evidence. And he himself has been quoted as conceding that “there’s no evidence that this has occurred.”

Yet he plans to picket the school just when the Muslims begin praying in the new school year. “Let’s see how much praying they can do with our loudspeakers. . . . If our loudness disrupts their prayers, so be it.”

Banerjee’s views echo those of extremist Hindus in India, a minority there. For example, he thinks India’s ruling secular Congress Party, “which depends heavily on Muslim votes,” is “a curse” on that country. Congress led India’s struggle against British colonial rule and has been elected more times than any other party since 1947.

Joining Banerjee’s crusade are the fundamentalist Christian Heritage Party, the Jewish Defence League (JDL) and the Canadian Muslim Congress. The latter is notorious in the Muslim community for attacking fellow-Muslims and being the darling of Islamophobes and right-wing media.

In January, when the JDL made common cause with a racist British group, the English Defence League, Banerjee was at their Toronto rally, which was opposed by the Canadian Jewish Congress. Bernie Farber, then CEO, said: “When extremists come together, we all too often get a combustible reaction. . . . Using the tactics of hooligans, whether from the right or the left, is appalling.”

Banerjee is also in bed with a handful of Canadians who are fans of Dutch anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders. When they held a rally for him in Toronto last year, Banerjee spoke in glowing terms about Wilders.

Regarding Sikhs, Banerjee applauded the separatist Parti Québécois for championing the banning of kirpans from the Quebec National Assembly. He said kirpans “can be used as deadly weapons and there have been documented cases of Canadian Sikhs injuring others using kirpans.” He, of course, did not mention that there are infinitely more documented cases of people injuring others with knives, sticks and guns.

Banerjee describes his group as the voice of “real Hindus.” Other times he claims it to be “the leading” voice for Canadian Hindus. This annoys the large and well-respected Canadian Hindu organizations, whom he keeps attacking:

“Canadian Hindu temples and groups have proven themselves unable or unwilling to protect Hindu lives, rights or property. The Canadian Hindu Advocacy was formed to address this, and our national advocacy shall continue to provide real leadership to our oppressed community, which is by far the most victimized in Canada.”

One of the comments for the article says it best.

'This is the second article for this issue by Siddiqui in a week. What he fails to realize is that most people do not have anything against islam or even praying at public schools.
What we are against is having a imam coming in and leading the prayer. This should not happen in our public schools. No imams, no priest, no religious figures what's so ever.
Siddiqui is just another example of the growing islamist influence we got at the star. The Star should be ashamed of its self for putting an article like this on its news paper.
In Canada we have the right to protest what ever we see unfit. This is the Canada we grew up in and this is the Canada we will keep fighting for. It is not up to Siddiqui or the star to tell us what is right or wrong.'

After reading this article, i made a website donation of 100$ to the Canadian Hindu Advocacy for doing the right thing. Kudos to Mr. Banarjee.

Kind regards

Rajagopal.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Rajagopal

Siddiqui is just another example of the growing islamist influence we got at the star. The Star should be ashamed of its self for putting an article like this on its news paper.
In Canada we have the right to protest what ever we see unfit. This is the Canada we grew up in and this is the Canada we will keep fighting for. It is not up to Siddiqui or the star to tell us what is right or wrong.'

Rajagopal.

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See how this guy brings ani-sikh in the same line with anti-muslim .

and he only picks on Banerjee and mentions others in passing .

This shows that siddique is a bigot

school is not a place to teach segregration between boys and girls ( especially in canada ) .

See the below Excerpt from the Daily Mail newspaper what Muslims are taught in United Kingdom (U.K).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356361/Shame-Britains-Muslim-schools-Secret-filming-shows-pupils-beaten.html

Can somebody send Toronto Star readers the link ?







Shame of Britain's Muslim schools: Secret filming shows pupils being beaten and 'taught Hindus drink cow p***'


Undercover footage shows pupils being taught religious apartheid
Muslims who adopt Western ways will be 'tortured in afterlife'
Unprovoked beatings captured on camera in Yorkshire madrassa
Boy threatened with bench by senior student left in charge of class

It is an assembly hall of the sort found in any ordinary school. Boys aged 11 and upwards sit cross-legged on the floor in straight rows. They face the front of the room and listen carefully. But this is no ordinary assembly. Holding the children’s attention is a man in Islamic dress wearing a skullcap and stroking his long dark beard as he talks.

‘You’re not like the non-Muslims out there,’ the teacher says, gesturing towards the window. ‘All that evil you see in the streets, people not wearing the hijab properly, people smoking . . . you should hate it, you should hate walking down that street.’

He refers to the ‘non-Muslims’ as the ‘Kuffar’, an often derogatory term that means disbeliever or infidel.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356361/Shame-Britains-Muslim-schools-Secret-filming-shows-pupils-beaten.html#ixzz1WZIo4PEV


Welcome to one of Britain’s most influential Islamic faith schools, one of at least 2,000 such schools in Britain, some full-time, others part-time. They represent a growing, parallel education system.

The school is the Darul Uloom Islamic High School in Birmingham, an oversubscribed independent secondary school. Darul Ulooms are world-renowned Islamic institutions and their aim is to produce the next generation of Muslim leaders. In fact, these schools have been described as the ‘Etons of Islam’

This school is required by its inspectors to teach tolerance and respect for other faiths. But the Channel 4 current affairs programme Dispatches filmed secretly inside it – and instead discovered that Muslim children are being taught religious apartheid and social segregation.

We recorded a number of speakers giving deeply disturbing talks about Jews, Christians and atheists.

We found children as young as 11 learning that Hindus have ‘no intellect’ and that they ‘drink cow p***’.

And we came across pupils being told that the ‘disbelievers’ are ‘the worst creatures’ and that Muslims who adopt supposedly non-Muslim ways, such as shaving, dancing, listening to music and – in the case of women – removing their headscarves, would be tortured with a forked iron rod in the afterlife.

In 2009 this school was praised by Government-approved inspection teams for its interfaith teachings. The report said that ‘pupils learn about the beliefs and practices of other faiths and are taught to show respect to other world religions’.

It seems that the inspectors were unaware of the teaching methods revealed by our undercover reporter, Osman. He was taken on as a volunteer at the Darul Uloom school in Birmingham in April 2009 and was allowed to sit in on some lessons – but not their Islamic classes.
Warning: Reporter Tazeen Ahmad says Muslim schools need closer scrutiny

Warning: Reporter Tazeen Ahmad says Muslim schools need closer scrutiny

So, in July last year, he went into one of the rooms where we’d heard they taught Islamic studies and left a secret camera to record the lessons.

Filming intermittently over a period of four months, the camera recorded children being taught a hardline, intolerant and highly anti-social version of Islam.

During the same period our reporter also attended the Markazi Jamia mosque in Keighley, West Yorkshire, after hearing of serious allegations that children were being hit at its madrassa.

Madrassas in the UK are part-time after-school or weekend classes, often held in mosques, where children are taught to read the Koran. In Keighley it is not what they are being taught that is the problem, but how.

Again, Osman went into the mosque and left the camera in the room where classes took place.

The film shows children as young as six sitting on the floor of a large room in the mosque, one of the biggest in the country. The boys are hunched over wooden benches, rocking backwards and forwards as they rote-learn the Koran in Arabic. A man with a long white beard dressed in a traditional shalwar kameez – tunic and trousers – sits at the head of the class.

Periodically he gets up and walks behind the boys. As he passes, the children appear to cower and watch him nervously. It soon becomes clear why.

He unexpectedly raises his hand and slaps a young boy hard on the head. Moments later he strikes another. And then he kicks a third child.

In just two days of filming in December 2010, the camera recorded the teacher hitting children as young as six or seven at least ten times, in less than three hours of lessons.

From what we could see, every ¬single blow was pretty much unprovoked. We soon realised that the beatings were routine. The behaviour of the boys, the way they flinched and backed away when he approached, indicated that they were long-accustomed to being hit and kicked as they studied.

In another incident an older boy, left in charge of a class while a teacher is out at prayer, picks up a bench and threatens to hit a younger boy with it.

During the making of this Dispatches film I have often counted my blessings. I received my Islamic education at home. My mum would read the Koran with me and most of my knowledge of Islam came from within the family. Others have not been so lucky.

Osman was subjected to beatings at four separate madrassas in the East Midlands as a child. He says that for the nine years he spent going to after-school Koran classes, he was hit regularly, at least a couple of timesa week.

‘It destroyed my confidence,’ he says, ‘and the worst bit was never knowing when it was going to happen. I had a horrible teacher who would use his fists, a stick, a shoe, anything he could find. He’d just get angry and lash out.’

Osman’s young cousins go to the same madrassas he attended and told him the beatings were still continuing. This persuaded Osman to try to reveal the truth behind the private world of faith schools. Over a period of two years he bravely placed cameras in both schools and collected highly sensitive material for us. His experience of madrassas is not uncommon. But persuading people to go on camera about this has been difficult. One family who were willing to talk were too frightened to do so openly.

‘Salma’ and ‘Ayesha’ are a mother and daughter whose identities we are protecting. Ayesha is now sitting her A-levels but when she was seven she was beaten at her Koran classes. She says: ‘The teacher would sit there, tell me what to read, pronounce it to me – then if I said it wrong he would hit me on the hands with a ruler.’

Her younger brother, only five at the time, would be hit on his feet with a stick. They dreaded going to those classes but did not tell their mother. Salma eventually withdrew her children from attending madrassas for a completely different reason: she learned that they were being taught an intolerant version of Islam. ‘They were using terms like “Kaffir” just because somebody isn’t of the same religion,’ she says, ‘and I’m teaching my children to integrate and not be racist so I pulled my children out.’

Academic and theologian Dr Taj Hargey invited me to visit his part-time Islamic school in Oxford where children are taught in mixed-gender classes.

Here I witnessed a modern and refreshing method of teaching. Pupils were told to respect other faiths, ask questions about their religion and recite from the Koran in English as well as Arabic.

Dr Hargey told me he set up this school because of claims that Muslim parents had made to him about beatings in other madrassas. ‘It’s an outdated, archaic concept,’ he says, ‘and if we inflict this violence we will sow the seeds of violence in them.’

Sir Roger Singleton, former Government chief adviser on the safety of children, and Ann Cryer, former MP for Keighley, want the law to change to ban physical punishment in supplementary classes, as it does in full-time schools. ‘It just isn’t acceptable,’ says Cryer. ‘We wouldn’t allow this to happen to white kids

We approached the Darul Uloom Islamic High School in Birmingham with the findings of our film. It claimed that the senior student who gave the speech about Hindus was later reported by other students, and has been expelled, and that no teachers were present ‘during the incident’.

The school said that a speaker who made comments about Jews was ‘visiting’ and his views did not represent school policy. It denied that its religious instruction was hardline or extremist and said it did not tolerate hatred towards any faith group.

In a statement, the school said: ‘Our ethos is for students to be full and active participants of British society.’ It also said that it would study our evidence and take ‘disciplinary measures’ if required.

Regarding the Keighley madrassa, we were told that the Jamia Mosque committee was firm in its resolve to take whatever action was necessary to protect children being taught at the mosque and that it would give its full co-operation to any enquiries resulting from our film.

If the law on physical punishment does change, that would be one way to protect the very young that attend these classes. But these part-time and full-time Muslim schools also need closer scrutiny – the regulatory system needs to be tightened up.

However, we have a Government that, on the one hand, gives grand speeches about tackling the causes of extremism, as David Cameron did last week, while, on the other, encouraging local communities to set up their own schools – including faith schools. It’s time to stop these mixed messages.

And Muslims can no longer sweep this under the carpet – they need to face up to what is happening behind closed doors. Many warn that if we don’t all tackle this toxic mix of hatred and violence head on, we will reap the whirlwind in years to come.

Desis of Toronto constitute a disproportionatly large proportion of readership of the 'Toronto Star'. I dont blame the Toronto Star, a media business that will stick to what sells. It reflects more on the desis who shell out money to this newspaper.




That being said, Ron Bannerjee is a persona non grata in the desi community, nobody cares for this joker. Poor Haroon...no matter how much he tries to shift blame on other communities, he ends up a ranting and raving islamist in his articles.

MGuptaji our dost Haroon is also an Hindustani and he is from Hyderabad, India.


Many a journalist cannot have access to Indian PMO while our Haroon Saab was specially invited by Mad(m)Mohan Singh to give a special interview in his home in Delhi a few Republic Days before in India.

We have a hindu hating Haroon Hindustani while we have a hindu loving Fareed Zakaria from Mumbai also a Hindustani.

Did you see what they found in Qaddafis compound?.

Islam forbids liqour and it is illegal to have drinks in arabic countries as it haram.

They found all the branded products and costly scotch whisky like Black Label in their villas in Libya.

The leaders are the same if they are hindu, muslim, christian or Jewish.

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Sunny Leone a true Canadian DESI now back in India !.