Huron college has accepted a $2-million endowment for a new Chair in Islamic Studies within the College’s historically Anglican Faculty of Theology. As you can read here, the money is tainted by its jihadist association:
About half the money is to come via fundraising facilitated by the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC), and the other, matching half from the Virginia-based International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). A cofounder of the latter group was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007-2008 trial of Sami al-Arian, an Islamist academic linked to jihadism.
Ingrid Mattson has been installed as the “inaugural Chair of the new Islamic Studies program.” Unfortunately, she comes with a rather less than impeccable pedigree:
She has been disturbingly equivocal about Wahhabism, the repressive and backward strain of Sunni Islam that is the state creed in Saudi Arabia. In 2001, for instance, she told a CNN chat forum: “This is not a sect. It is the name of a reform movement that began 200 years ago to rid Islamic societies of cultural practices and rigid interpretation that had acquired over the centuries. It really was analogous to the European protestant reformation. Because the Wahhabi scholars became integrated into the Saudi state, there has been some difficulty keeping that particular interpretation of religion from being enforced too broadly on the population as a whole. However, the Saudi scholars who are Wahhabi have denounced terrorism.”
She has stated publicly that the best English-language Koranic commentary for Muslim youth is by Maulana Abul A’la Maududi, an Islamist author who wrote that “Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam.”
In commenting on the subject of “injustice,” she lambastes the Taliban and the Israeli government in the same breath, because in both cases, people stood by as the two regimes perpetrated “oppression” – an odious juxtaposition, in my view.
In his enthusiasm for interfaith dialogue garnished with a smattering of recreational jihad, Anglican Primate Fred Hiltz has endorsed Mattson’s appointment:
“In establishing the “London and Windsor Community Chair in Islamic Studies”, Huron College is on the cutting edge of interfaith dialogue. With delight I endorse the appointment of Dr. Ingrid Mattson as the first occupant of that chair. She is a highly respected scholar and widely published. She is well known for her leadership in nurturing Muslim-Christian relations. The College and Community will be blessed by Dr. Mattson’s academic qualifications, and her capacity to engage people in dialogue, mutual learning and public witness to the values we hold in common as people of faith.”
The Most Reverend Fred Hiltz
Archbishop and Primate
The Anglican Church of Canada
h/t to the person who kindly emailed me on this.
