Teaching Islamic Values to Muslim Youth in Canada

"They [Jews] have no problem in lining the pockets of the politicians. They don't need the politicians to believe in their causes. They just need to line their pockets so the politicians will ... advocate for them. And that's what I need you to think about."

"The Zionist lobby does this amazingly well."

Navaid Aziz, director, religious and social services, Islamic Information Society of Calgary 

 

"[Your friends] will either help [you] in life or encourage [you] to go down a path that is wrong and bad for [you] and there will be a point in time where our friends need to stop us from committing haram [sins and help [you] turn to Allah instead]."

"Your friends should be people who, when you look at them they remind you of Allah."

"Sometimes you find a brother who says, 'This is my girlfriend;. OK, that's weird, right. But we live in a society where yes, young brothers and sisters are going to school, going to university, and they have friends, and those friends get a lot closer to them and they become boyfriend and girlfriend, and that we know in Islam is not permissible, right?"

"I encourage youth, and adults as well, to respect the institutions of marriage and its sanctity."

Daod Butt, director of community outreach and education, Islamic Community Centre, Milton, Ontario 

 

"[Rules in western societies come from human legislators instead of Allah. Muslim youth have been] brainwashed [ by the western paradigm]."

"The reason why some individuals start thinking this way [to stand with the LGBT community is] because they have already been brainwashed by this western paradigm, and they are  trying to compare it with the Islamic paradigm, which they have no idea what it is."

"We should not go and join them [and should instead ] de-secularize."

Yasir Nadeem al Wajidi, founder, president, private K12 Islamic school, Illinois  

Segregated seating at the LIT Convention, Laval, QC, July 26, 2026. Photo by Postmedia

 

On July 26 in Quebec, the Montreal suburb of Laval hosted an Islamic convention titled "LIT", at the Embassy Plaza. At the website for the conference it was stated the convention's target audience was youth between the ages of 15 to 30. The purpose of 'Montreal's largest Islamic convention', was to "unify the Muslims", it further explained. That unification was scaffolded on lectures directing Muslim youth to detach themselves from mainstream non-Muslim society in every conceivable way. From understanding that Western societal mores and values were not those of Islam. 

 

The Qibla Foundation was the title sponsor of this event. A grant of over $20,000 was recently given it from the federal government. The event hall was duly reflective of Islamic values to the point of initial delivery when women and men were segregated in their seating accommodation -- with women on one side and their male counterparts on the other -- a curtain discreetly separating them physically. 

 

Speeches were delivered by eleven Islamic worthies for the one-day conference. Three in particular came right to the point. Navaid Aziz began his address by noting how pleased he was to see Halal food featured and available everywhere, although Quebec's laicite laws were "very, very disheartening". That regrettably, despite the robust and growing number of Muslims in the province, Muslims in Quebec "are still unable to protect" themselves. 

 

Sharia Portfolio document which was made available to attendees at the LIT convention in Laval, QC, on July, 26, 2026. Postmedia

 

Political aspirations among Muslim youth are commendable, noted Mr. Aziz but "there's a ceiling that Muslims will reach in the political sphere" which would inevitably lead to a situation where "eventually you will have to compromise on your beliefs". Muslims, he went on, should seek to amass wealth to enable the process of influencing politics; in that sense emulating the "Zionist lobby". A "circular economy", he went on, where Muslims patronize their own community is paramount to create wealth.

 

After all, he commented, for every dollar that Jews spend, 92 to 97 cents remain within the Jewish community. "At a time of rising Islamophobia, Canadian Muslims, like all Canadians, should consider buying Canadian first, and should also support businesses owned by disenfranchised communities", he later clarified when questioned by a skeptical journalist. When asked to explain his assertion about Jewish spending confined to Jewish-owned businesses, there was a flat response.

 

As for the speech delivered by Mr. Butt, the audience was warned that lifestyles and habits of their closest friends would invariably transfer to them; the solution to which would be to confine friendships to members of their own faith. Pressed by that same journalist (Terry Newman, National Post), his response was more equivocal: "I urge Canadians and especially young people to reflect on their friends, and whether their friends, both Muslim and non-Muslim, help them improve as ethical beings or are bad company that take them away from being the highest versions of themselves."

 

Speaker Yasir Nadeem al Wajidi argued that if  youth were struggling to change the framework in a country to an Islamic one, they would be viewed as terrorists, rather than political activists. Western man-made laws, it was emphasized to the Muslim youth attending the convention, are immoral. They would do best to operate in economic and social spheres that would minimize interactions with others among Canadian society, should they become interested in amassing wealth to exert political influence. 

 

Barakah.com promotional material available at LIT convention in Laval, QC, on July 26, 2026.