Farhat Hashmi, San Bernardino and why Donald Trump is hitting home with his anti-Muslim rhetoric

By Tarek Fatah For years Islamists have argued that there is no evidence to prove private Islamic schools — madrassas — are factories churning out radical jihadis willing to lay their lives for Islam, fighting the supposed ‘kaafirs’ (Christians, Jews, Hindus, atheists). In spite of the fact that most of the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al-Shabab and Al-Qaeda jihadis came from such institutions, Canadian Islamists and most of the media has dismissed this columnist’s warning as ‘fear-mongering’ and ‘Islamophobia’. But now Pakistani jihadi Tashfeen Malik, a student of just such a madrassa, has carried out the San Bernardino massacre.  Malik was a student at the world’s leading female Muslim madrassa , the Al-Huda Institute of Pakistan, that has a Canadian branch located at 5671 McAdam Road in Mississauga. The San Bernardino femme fatale attended the school’s campus in Multan, Pakistan, where for two years she attended the local Al-Huda school. The founder of this international network of Islamist schools is Farhat Hashmi, who is a Canadian resident, but apparently is no longer living in the country after she obtained Canadian residency. Who is Farhat Hashmi? I’ve met her just once, but have seen many of her victims, including some childhood friends who say they have lost their wives and at times daughters and sisters to the brainwashing that turns these Muslim women from educated working liberal mothers into stay-at-home moms who celebrate misogyny as Islamic women’s lib. One friend, a wealthy businessman, ended up losing a considerable part of the family wealth after his wife donated millions to the school’s worldwide network. On the one hand, Hashmi portrays herself as the epitome of piety and truthfulness, creating the new mother in Islam, but facts reveal another side to this high priestess of jihad. In July 2006, Nicholas Kohler wrote in MacLean’s Magazine citing federal court documents that Hashmi “remains here (in Canada) illegally some nine months after immigration officials demanded she leave the country”. Hashmi first arrived in Canada in October 2004 on a visitor’s visa. Then, with the help of a powerful network of Islamist organisations, she sought a work permit to teach her interpretation of Islam in the country. [caption id=“attachment_2539034” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File images of Donald Trump and Farhat Hashmi. IBNLive and screen grab from YouTube[/caption] But her application was denied. Nevertheless, she defied the law and established a school where she started lecturing to mostly young, middle-class Muslim Canadian women on how to segregate themselves from infidels by wearing a burkha and not working outside their homes. This included brainwashing women to allow their husband to marry multiple times so that Canada’s Muslim population could rise and give birth to those who will force Sharia Law in the country. The MacLean’s story revealed that in September 2005, a Canadian immigration official wrote to Hashmi saying, “We regret to inform you that we are unable to approve your request” for a work permit, and that “You are required to leave Canada immediately. Failure to depart Canada may result in enforcement action being initiated against you.” Nearly a decade later, Hashmi’s Islamic school thrives and there is no indication where Hashmi is hiding to avoid the glare caused by her jihadi terrorist pupil. Then in January 2011, The Toronto Star stated Hashmi was on the payroll of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) though, in fact, an audit revealed she was not on the rolls of ISNA. The audit quoted by the Star said putting Hashmi on the payroll was a cover to help her immigrate to Canada. “This is a serious violation of the (Canadian Revenue Agency) rules and immigration rules to hire someone just in the books to help get through immigration,” the auditor’s report said. For years Hashmi has taught upper middle class Muslim women to become mothers of jihadi sons and to shun the infidel neighbours. Now she has to her credit what Islamists consider a role model of Muslim women — a jihadi who died in the path of Allah by killing the kufar. Most of Hashmi’s students do not exhibit Islamic militancy. But even those who often turn to orthodoxy, rather than militancy, are clear and present danger to Canada. Here is one that will chill your spine. In October 2005, the academy-award winning Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy managed to spend a day inside the secretive Islamic school. Writing for the Globe and Mail, Chinoy recorded the words of one Muslim teen, 18-year old Sadaf Mahmood, who defended polygamy, arguing that Western society accords less respect to women, allowing men to have affairs without taking any responsibility. “There are more women than men in this world,” Mahmood said. “Who will take care of these women? It is better for a man to do things legally by taking a second wife, rather than having an affair.” With their faces blackened by the tarp of Chinese-made fashionable niqabs that permit shifting eyes heavily done up in stylish kajal, these new frontline troops of the Islamism jihad against the ‘kufaar’ aren’t necessarily being exploited by the men in their families. These western-born hijabis and niqabis find a new thrill in the jihad, denied to them by their parents during their prom dates they never attended. So it is not surprising that four 15-year old Toronto Muslim girls fly off to the Islamic State to have a romp with not just one, but as many ‘brothers’ as they can partying to their heart’s content. And after the death of these jihadi shaheeds, they go off to the next ‘brother’. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, the well-known London-based Muslim journalist, wrote in Time magazine in October 2006 that it is “time to speak out against this objectionable garment and face down the obscurantists who endlessly bait and intimidate the state by making demands that violate its fundamental principles. That they have brainwashed young women, born free, to seek self-subjugation breaks my heart. Trained creatures often choose to stay in their cages even when released. I don’t call that a choice. I would not propose that Muslim women should be stopped from wearing what they choose as they walk down the street, although, to be sure, there are practical problems with the niqab. I have seen Muslim women who had been appallingly beaten and forced to wear it to keep their wounds hidden. Veiled women cannot eat in restaurants, swim in the sea or smile at their babies in parks.” Like me the British-Muslim journalist supports the ban imposed by France on the hijab in public schools, noting that protests against the injunction soon died down and many Muslim French girls were happily released from a heritage that has no place in the modern world. Alibhai-Brown points out that few Britons realise the hijab is for Islamist puritans, “the first step on a path leading to the burqa, where even the eyes are gauzed over.” She went on to write, “I have interviewed young women who say they feel so wanton wearing only a headscarf that they will adopt the niqab. Now even 6-year-olds are put into hijabs.” She added, “Western culture – it is true – is wildly sexualised and lacking in restraint. But there are ways to avoid falling into that pit without withdrawing into the darkness of a niqab. The robe is a physical manifestation of the pernicious idea of women as carriers of original sin; it assumes that the sight of a cheek or a lock of hair turns Muslim men into predators. The niqab rejects human commonalities. The niqab rejects human commonalities. The women who wear it want to observe fellow citizens, but remain unseen, as if they were CCTV cameras.” Islamism is not Islam, but rather a use of Islam as a political tool. The burka, hijab and the Islamic madrasa are merely symbols of Islamism that preach segregation away from the Christian, Hindu and Jew as well as the atheist and agnostic. It has induced hatred against such countries as India, America and Israel where Muslims thrive, but not a word against China, where we Muslims dare not raise our heads for fear of state retribution. But while America is almost universally hated by us Muslims, China is adored. And while we Muslims all wish to migrate to live in America, not one of us has applied to settle down in China. No wonder Donald Trump keeps getting popular even as others hurl epithets at him.