More filth being allowed in by our Government - when will Turnbull realize the damage he is doing to his re-election
Anti-moderate Muslim at ‘peace meet’
A US convert preacher who says he is sickened by Muslims who show affection for “disbelievers” and views moderate Muslims as a threat to Islam has been invited to speak at an Australian Islamic “peace conference”.
Yusha Evans — who has links with radical Australian preachers Junaid Thorne and Musa Cerantonio — will headline the Islamic Research and Educational Academy’s third biennial conference at the Melbourne Convention Centre on the weekend.
Mr Evans has told his 350,000 Facebook followers “one thing that sickens my heart is watching Muslims have love and affection for disbelief and disbelievers”.
The self-styled preacher visited Australia in 2014, speaking alongside radical Muslim “spiritual healer” Abu Hamza and meeting Mr Thorne, who described him as a “dear friend and brother”.
On another visit in 2010, Mr Evans addressed a meeting chaired by alleged radical preacher Mr Cerantonio, who is in prison awaiting trial on charges relating to an alleged attempt to travel by boat from Queensland to Indonesia with five other Muslim men in a bid to join Islamic State.
In a YouTube clip, Mr Evans describes himself as a member of the ultra-conservative Salafist movement of Sunni Islam, with which terror groups Islamic State, Boko Haram, al-Qa’ida and Jabhat al-Nusra identify.
In a Facebook post, he calls moderate Muslims a threat to the
ummah or Muslim community. “One of the biggest threats to the success of this Ummah is not from it’s (sic) outside enemies but from within from the so-called ‘moderate Muslims’ who want to make Islam conform to their feelings and opinions rather than conforming themselves to the Quran and Sunnah.”
Mr Evans did not respond to a request for comment.
Australian National Imams Council president Sheik Shady Alsuleiman will also appear at the conference, with more than 4000 people expected to attend.
Sheik Alsuleiman caused controversy by attending Malcolm Turnbull’s
Iftar dinner at Kirribilli House last year following revelations he had suggested AIDS was Allah’s punishment for homosexuality and women who had sex outside marriage should be “hung by their breasts in hell”.
The peace conference organisers last month published a poster with the faces of female speakers blacked out, prompting psychologist Monique Toohey to withdraw from the event.
IREA president Waseem Razvi claimed the women’s faces were concealed to shield them from “right-wing extremists”.
Mr Razvi defended inviting Mr Evans as a former Christian minister who had converted to Islam and was therefore suited to IREA’s interfaith approach.
He said Mr Evans’s comments about disbelievers and moderates should be seen in “context”.
“I strongly believe that what Yusha was trying to say there, or probably said, regarding moderates is somebody who is watering down Islam and that includes people like those who are involved in extremism and terrorism like al-Qaeda and Daesh who would not adhere or abide by the fundamental principle teachings of Islam not to kill an innocent, so you would call them watering down and being moderate in that sense.”
