An Anglican church with a resident imam

From here:

Anglican ImamCALGARY – A unique Imam in Residence program is being launched at St. Martin’s Anglican Church in October in conjunction with the Al Madinah Calgary Islamic Assembly.

“This type of program does help us understand each others’ beliefs and traditions. There’s more misunderstanding and misinformation (out there),” says Imam Syed Soharwardy, with the Muslims Against Terrorism group and with the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, who is the Imam in Residence for the program.

“We are bringing congregations together. It’s not just the imam and pastor talking. It is the grassroots congregation coming together to have food together, to be together. It’s a very good thing that even children participate, families participate, women participate. It removes the barriers between people.”

The Imam in Residence program takes place October 17-19.

[…..]

“It was just a really enriching experience to see what we had in common and to learn things about each other – to have a chance for us in a very intentional setting to sit down and really learn about other faiths,” says Brubaker Garrison.

The program includes:

Friday, October 17th, 1:15 p.m. – Services at Genesis Centre of Community Wellness (gymnasium) with conversation afterward.
Saturday, October 18th, 10:00 a.m. – “Qur’an and Its Different Interpretations” & 1:00 p.m. – “Islamic Sharia and Muslims in the Western World: Issues, Limitations, and Enforcement” at Knox Presbyterian Church
Sunday, October 19th, 10:00 a.m. – Worship at St. Martin’s with the sermon offer by Imam Soharwardy

It’s hard to overlook the fact that the “learning” is all one-sided: Rev. Brubaker Garrison and her congregation seem to be hearing a lot about the Koran and Sharia law but the imam isn’t being told much at all about Jesus, his divinity, atoning death upon the cross, resurrection and the fact that he is the only way to God the Father. If Brubaker Garrison actually believed that herself, she would probably be less eager to encourage her congregation to absorb the finer points of Sharia law.

Syed Soharwardy, whose sensibilities were outraged by the Western Standard ‘s publishing of the  Mohammed cartoons, filed a human rights complaint against Ezra Levant. As a result, Ezra, unlike Rev. Brubaker Garrison, doesn’t get along too well with the imam:

Calgary Imam says his comparing the plight of Canadian Muslims to pre-Holocaust Jews was “misinterpreted”

Imam Syed Soharwardy is the twerp who filed a complaint to the Alberta human rights commission against Ezra Levant for publishing the notorious Danish cartoons. Two years later he tried to withdraw the complaint, claiming that he had been misunderstood.

Here we go again. He is now protesting that he was misunderstood when he compared the requirement of Muslim women to have unveiled faces during the citizenship ceremony to the persecution of Jews in pre-Holocaust Germany. He has taken pains to clarify his true meaning, but it turns out that he still thinks much the same, although he may have had the timing wrong:

A local Muslim imam who compared the plight of pre-Holocaust Jews to Muslims’ situation in Canada said he only regrets he was misinterpreted.

[….]

“I have regret in the interpretation, on how people understand … what I don’t regret is the truth I believe.” Other Calgary imams and Jewish leaders have criticized Soharwardy for being insensitive for mentioning the Holocaust to discuss Islamophobia. Though he hadn’t told reporters in previous days, Soharwardy said he meant to compare the rising hostility facing Muslims in Canada to the genesis of anti-semitism decades before the Second World War Holocaust. “It could be 50 years before, 100 years before but if the trend continues, we will have a major hard time for Muslims in North America,”

To confirm his less than tenuous grip on reality, Syed implores us not to make Canada like “Afghanistan or Pakistan” where, he seems to have forgotten, it is Christians who are not just persecuted by Muslims, but routinely murdered by them. Does he really believe that being able see each other’s face is a harbinger of a similar persecution of Muslins in Canada?