A Swedish news source is reporting that a controversial imam who has made anti-Semitic and anti-homosexual remarks has been invited to speak before a Swedish Muslim youth organization. According to the report:
“An organisation for young Muslims in Sweden has outraged the country’s largest gay rights group by inviting an imam in favour of executing homosexuals to speak at its April conference. US-born preacher Sheikh Abdullah Hakim Quick, who has described Jews as “filthy” and advocates the execution of homosexuals, is scheduled to speak at the Sveriges Unga Muslimer (‘Sweden’s Young Muslims’) conference this Easter weekend. The Muslim group has claimed it was unaware of Hakim Quick’s extreme views when the booking was made but said it would not remove him from the roster as this would disrupt the conference schedule. “That’s no excuse, it just shows a complete lack of responsibility,” said Sören Juvas, chairperson of Swedish gay rights group RFSL. Juvas expressed fury that the hateful preacher was to receive a platform in Sweden on which to air his extreme views. “I was previously under the impression that this organisation respected principles of equal rights for everybody but now it seems they couldn’t care less about the values they claim to stand for,” he told The Local. “If the roles were reversed and we had found out that one of our speakers was Islamophobic then we would have immediately retracted the invitation.” Mohammed Kharraki, vice chairperson of Sveriges Unga Muslimer, did not return The Local’s calls on Wednesday. In a statement released on its website on Wednesday afternoon, however, the organisation defended its decision to allow Hakim Quick to speak and claimed it was the victim of a smear campaign launched by Liberal Party politician Philip Wendahl. Wendahl called last week, in an article published by opinion website Newsmill, for the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs (Ungdomsstyrelsen) to withhold 1.5 million kronor ($200,000) in funding earmarked for Sweden’s largest Muslim youth group in 2010. Dismissing Wendahl as a politician with an alleged anti-Muslim agenda, the group said its guest speaker had been widely misrepresented. “When we made contact with the speaker himself he claimed not to possess these opinions and said he was the victim of hate propaganda from anti-Muslim forces,” said Sveriges Unga Muslimer. But a 2004 decision by the Broadcasting Standards Authority of New Zealand tells a different story. Responding to a complaint from a viewer, the authority issued a reprimand to an Auckland television station for broadcasting hateful comments made by Hakim Quick in a lecture shown on the Voice of Islam programme. The Broadcasting Standards Authority noted that Hakim Quick blamed the spread of AIDS on the “filthy practices” of homosexuals, whom he described as “sick” and “not natural”. He added that homosexuals were dropping dead from AIDS and “they want to take us all down with them”. He further stated that the Islamic position on homosexuality was “death”. “Muslims are going to have to take a stand [against homosexuals]and it’s not enough to call names,” said the imam. “
According to his bio:
Dr Abdullah Hakim Quick is a historian, social activist and religious leader of African and Native American descent. He has travelled to over 58 countries doing research and delivering lectures to various communities. His qualification in Islamic Studies comes from a BA from the Islamic University of Madinah, Saudi Arabia and his history background is shaped by an MA and PhD from the History Department of the University of Toronto, Canada…. For over ten years, Dr Quick was Director of the Islamic Social Services and Resources Association, one of Canada’s first recognized Islamic social service agencies. There he counseled hundreds people from all walks of life and various religions and developed one of Canada’s first Muslim food banks. He has often spoken out against “gay bashing” and vigilantism. He has participated in interviews as an expert on African History and Islamic issues with major Canadian, Caribbean and South African media organizations, such as CBC TV, City TV, CFRB, Channel 47 (Canada) and the SABC, 702 Cape Talk, Voice of the Cape, Radio 786, Channel Islam, Radio Ansar (Durban, South Africa). He has a number of scholarly presentations and publications but his recent focus has been on documentary films such as Timbuktu, the Empire of Knowledge, Untold Ethiopia and Reflections from the Western Sunrise (Quick Answers) that all aired on national television in South Africa. Presently, Dr Abdullah is the Director of the Discover Islam Centre of Cape Town , South Africa and a special advisor to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs of the Kingdom of Bahrain.”
Dr. Quick has various ties to the global Muslim Brotherhood including serving as a trustee of IBERR, a little known organization headquartered in South Africa and founded by Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) that distributes Islamic educational material around the world. Although its website has recently been redone and contains very little information about the organization, earlier websites indicated that IBERR members included some prominent names from the global Muslim Brotherhood. In addition to Yusuf Islam, these include:
- Abdalla Idris Ali (Islamic Society of North America)
- Abdul Hamid Abu Sulaiman (International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)
- Ibrahim Hewitt (INTERPAL, Muslim Council of Britain)
- Fathi Malkawi (IIIT)
The older website described the origins of IBERR as follows:
It is the natural outcome of the deliberations of a core group of Muslim educationalists committed to implementing the aims and objectives of the First World Conference on Islamic Education held in Makkah in 1977.