Barbary Kay, National Post
Dec 22, 2024
If they can proudly embrace religious pluralism, so can others
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel unleashed a whirlwind that, 15 months on, has yet to subside. Israel is strong. Her encircling enemies are defeated, crippled or vulnerable. The Middle East is in flux. But the Abraham Accords on normalizing relations with Israel, which Hamas and Iran’s other proxies had hoped to sabotage with their terror attack and beyond, have not yielded to the chaos. On the contrary, the likelihood is that they will expand under Donald Trump’s renewed patronage.
Thanks to Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ), president of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Abu Dhabi, the U.A.E. was the first Arab nation to take the bold step of signing the 2020 accords, followed by Bahrain and Morocco, and in probability, Saudi Arabia.
Pivotal as a sign of MBZ’s good faith was a courageous commitment to combatting antisemitism, notably by adding Holocaust studies to its school curriculum. In November 2022, to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht, 91-year-old writer and Holocaust survivor Eve Kugler was invited by the U.A.E. to give personal testimony of her family’s experience before a mixed, respectful Dubai audience of Jews and Muslims, including Muslim children.
There is something miraculous in this breakthrough, which I did not expect to see in my lifetime. It therefore seems to me unhelpful to insist, as many students of Islam do, that there is no such thing as “Islamism” and only inherently intolerant Islam. The U.A.E.’s healthy standpoint belies this simplistic dogma.
Canada is now a stakeholder in the success of the Abraham Accords.
The Global Imams Council (GIC), which describes itself as the “first and largest international NGO of Islamic religious leaders from all Islamic denominations,” is what might be called the spiritual avatar of the Abraham Accords. In 2017, then a start-up group of 60 Islamic leaders and imams of different Islamic faiths from France, Belgium, Britain and Tunisia, the GIC toured Europe, denouncing Islamic terrorism and paying homage to its victims at numerous attack sites.
The GIC currently has over 1,500 members, imams and scholars of more than 80 nationalities, who are active in 800 communities worldwide. In April 2023, the GIC held the first Islamic Leadership Meeting in Canada. Earlier this month, they launched their western headquarters in Scarborough, Toronto, and hosted an interfaith symposium in Ottawa focused on the Abraham Accords and its global implications for peace.
The GIC is an active partner in Secure Canada, formerly the Canadian Coalition Against Terror, founded by families of Canadian 9/11 victims. This worthy group has achieved notable successes, such as the Ontario government’s implementation of Secure Canada’s marquee legislation, the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, and most recently in abetting the government’s designation of the Houthis as a terror group.
Two days after the October 7 pogrom, the GIC issued a public statement of condemnation from their world headquarters in Najaf, Iraq, expressing condolences to the victims and urging the international community to “unite against these acts of terror and to work tirelessly towards a future where peace, justice and respect for all human life are the foundations of our shared existence.”
Beyond combatting antisemitism, some of the GIC’s other focus areas include advocating for democracy in the Middle East, advancing the human rights of women and campaigning against Christian persecution in the Middle East. I emphasize their focus on antisemitism because the GIC itself does. They are the first council of imams in history to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism.
The U.A.E. is demonstrating that an Islamic society can, under enlightened leadership, co-exist in harmony and equality with its Abrahamic siblings. If these Muslim religious leaders — the first to provide women with administrative roles — can proudly embrace religious pluralism and rejection of antisemitism as defining features of their national identity, then so can others.
Non-Muslims can observe and comment, but only Muslims have the power to choose their own role models and their own political path. With encouragement, the GIC will grow in numbers and influence. They must be given platforms in the universities. Media other than the National Post and Jewish publications must pay respect and unbiased interest in covering their activities. Most importantly, our post-Justin Trudeau national leaders should, when choosing which individuals and advocacy groups to support, seek guidance from the GIC in separating those with insalubrious affiliations from those who are committed to a democratic brand of Islam.
Ironically, it is safer today for observant Jews to live their faith openly, with no need for guards at their synagogues, in the United Arab Emirates than it is in Toronto or Montreal. Who’d have thunk it?