In a follow up to a story that this blog published last week about an Imam in the American state of New Jersey who called for a genocide against the Jews, we hear that the Imam in question Sheikh Aymen Elkasaby is to be sent for ‘retraining’. The mind boggles at this one. How on earth do you effectively retrain someone from being a ‘kill the Jews’ frother, into not being a genocidal nutjob?
Is there a recognised and psychologically effective treatment for publicly calling for the murder of an entire people or is this ‘retraining’ all so much smoke and mirrors.
Having read the article excerpted below from the Algemeiner newspaper I get the impression that the mosque that hired Elkasaby and the local ‘interfaith’ establishment who are helping with the retraining are going to do very little to genuinely affect the Imam’s views. It is also likely that this Imam is being pushed out of the public eye with this ‘retraining’ for a few months until the fuss about his call for mass murder dies down a bit. What do you think? Something smells particularly bad about how this case is being handled about which I shall explain later.
Algemeiner said:
A New Jersey imam who delivered two violently anti-Semitic sermons over the last month is to be sent for “retraining,” the president of the Islamic center where he serves announced on Thursday.
Ahmed Shedeed said that Sheikh Aymen Elkasaby, imam of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, would be meeting with “interfaith scholars” who would “consult with and retrain him,” following sermons in which Elkasaby called for the murder of Jews and attacked the west for having made Muslims the “tail-end of all nations.”
“This is like sending someone to rehab,” Shedeed, the Islamic Center’s president, told The Algemeiner when asked whether Elkasaby would be dismissed from the imam’s position.
“The scholars will help him to learn to deal with these issues,” Shedeed said — adding that Elkasaby had spoken “in the heat of the moment” following US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on December 6. Shedeed also emphasized that Elkasaby was a graduate of the renowned Al-Azhar University in Cairo, which he described as “one of the major universities in the Muslim world facing terrorism and violence.”
I see it as a difficult task to retrain someone whose hateful views of Jews and probably other groups as well are embedded in the core of their spiritual beliefs. The holder of such beliefs needs to actively want to change because they see such views as morally wrong and I don’t think that this is the case with this Imam. It’s more likely to be the case that the Imam hasn’t said anything that is controversial in the Islamic context, but they, the mosque, are mightily pissed off to be caught out promoting these hateful, but often generally accepted, bits of Islam.
I’m also suspicious about how genuine this retraining is going to be. There are indications that the mosque is trying to divert attention away from the behaviour of the Imam by using the ruse of ‘retraining’ or ‘rehab’. There are tactics being used by this mosque to try to ‘decontaminate’ this Imam that I and others have seen being used elsewhere, including in the UK. The first indication that this ‘retraining’ is suspicious or bogus is the fact that the Imam will be “meeting with “interfaith scholars” who would “consult with and retrain him.” I doubt very much whether these meetings will amount to much. They will probably consist of little more than the local interfaith bigwigs who are themselves often naïve individuals and equally often left-leaning politically telling the Imam how ‘offended’ they are by his words and the Imam feigning repentance. We saw this phenomenon in a very high profile way back in 2011 when the extremism linked East London Mosque put on a sermon by one of their Imam’s which was filled with Jew hatred. The local interfaith Establishment along with a powerful left wing community group and some misguided liberal/left Rabbis went through the same motions of meetings, half hearted condemnations of the Imam’s Jew hatred and excuse making for the Imam by religious and political figures. I must say that the similarity between the New Jersey situation and the East London Mosque one is remarkable. With the East London Mosque scandal the mosque kept up the pretence of not being extreme and of being ‘shocked’ by the Imam’s words just as long as it took for the story to fade from public consciousness. I suspect the same tactic is being employed here in the New Jersey case.
Another indication that this ‘retraining’ and ‘rehab’ is so much bullshit is the fact that the Imam is not being sacked. If the boot was on the other foot and it was a Christian or a Jewish cleric saying stuff about Islam that was even a fraction as bad as this Imam has said about Jews then they would be sacked with immediate effect. I reckon the mosque has no problem about this Imam or his views but wants to smooth things over with the useful idiots of the local interfaith and diversity establishment. I smell taqiyya here, lots of it.
Like the high profile East London Mosque scandal we also have the excuse of ‘heat of the moment’ being trotted out. Sorry I don’t buy that one at all. I saw the ‘heat of the moment’ excuse trotted out by the East London Mosque when a cleric was caught out pumping out Jew hate over the issue of Israelis defending themselves against Hamas missile attacks. Like this case there was the flurry of meetings with interfaith wallahs and a promise to reform (something the East London Mosque has patently failed to do). Finally we have the appeal to the authority of the seat of learning that endorsed this Imam, Al-Azhar University. This is also a diversionary tactic. The Memri organisation for example revealed that Al-Azhar cannot even bring itself to condemn ISIS as although ISIS are terrorists they are not, according to Al-Azhar Islamic heretics. The New Jersey mosque is using as cover for this Jew hating Imam an organisation that cannot condemn the parts of the Islamic ideology that promote or encourage violence, the parts which ISIS use as their lodestone.
I’m afraid that I’ve seen so many instances of Muslim organisations trying to divert attention away from those who inadvertently expose the hateful heart of Islam to non Muslims that I’m not going to take what this New Jersey mosque says on trust. There are too many clues in this piece from the Algemeiner to show that this mosque isn’t serious about dealing with its Jew hatred problem but they are deadly serious about trying to hide it, minimise it and pretend that they are doing something about it.
