The Ben Mulroney Show - Defining symbols of hate -- a conversation with an Imam you need to hear

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

GUEST:   Imam Mohamad Tawhidi, Governing Member of the Global Imams Council Link to document: https://imams.org/sot/ If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply. See dealer for details. Hey, uh, seriously, can I get one? Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. If we as a society, as a Canadian society, have any hope of moving past the violence and tribalism and the screaming at each other and that we have been experiencing over the past few years, then we have to start having constructive conversations. And we have to start listening to each other. And we have to start learning from each other. what we do is we give space to someone to speak and we don't listen. We just put our everything on pause until we then can say what we wanted to say and nothing gets accomplished.

So I'm very happy about this next conversation. We're being joined by one of the governing members of the Global Imams Council, which is comprised of over 1,500 Muslim faith leaders and scholars. And the Global Imam's Council has released a publication called Symbols of Terror that is a guidebook for law enforcement government as well as the public to help us understand better symbols of hate. What constitutes a symbol of hate? What do all of these things mean? When we see them, what should we think?

What is something that should be a red flag for us? And what is something that is simply an expression of faith or belief or solidarity? These are all very important distinctions. And I'm very happy to have one of the people involved with that, with us, Imam Mohammed Tauhidi. Imam, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. I do appreciate your time. Good morning. Thank you for having me, sir. So, yes, please tell me what was the impetus for this guidebook? And how did you put it

together? In the beginning, we saw extremist organization flooding the streets in Toronto, mainly, and Quebec, Montreal. And this was emphasized as a necessary mainly after October 7, 2023, we saw that not only the supporters of Hamas as a terrorist organization designated by the Canadian government were coming out with their flags. We saw supporters of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah and every other terrorist organization designated globally their flags being flown across Canada. And so during our meetings with law enforcement, we realized that it was important that we were to distinguish between the good flags and the bad flags. I'm a Shi' a Muslim. I have members who are killed by ISIS. When I am sad and when we grief, we raise black flags. But those are flags of sadness.

So how do Canadian law enforcement officials distinguish between the sad black flags and the ISIS black flags? So primarily it's to protect the vulnerable Muslim community from being drawn behind these flags in these processions, as well as equipping Canadian law enforcement with the right tools to identify and make arrests and, and, seek legal justice for those who use the, for the victims of harassment by those who wave these flags. Yeah, and, you know, with a large enough data set, Imam, there, with a large enough population, you're going to have good actors and you're going to have bad actors. And some of those bad actors, it's through ignorance. You know, a lot of people don't know the flag they're holding.

And so a tool like this, I'm sure, is vital. Have you been getting, what has been the reception? from law enforcement? What has been the reception from members of your own community to the Global Imam's Council putting out this guidebook? This was released yesterday.

The public response has been phenomenal in terms of outreach. The thank you emails have been excellent and as well as some communication because it was only released yesterday afternoon.

It hasn't been 24 hours yet, but we already have meetings with police officers happening next week. And I believe this guidebook will play a major role in the current BC9, the Combating Hate Act, which directly addresses the flags associated with listed terrorist groups when it is done willfully to promote hatred. Now, underline the word willfully. We do not believe that someone is ignorant enough to raise the flag of Hamas or the flag of ISIS and say, I don't know what flag I'm raising.

Because those flags are only raised in processions where chance accompany the flag. When someone says death to the Jews or death to Canada or death to America, right? That group always has certain flags by default. These are the standard flags you will see at these processions. So we do not accept that someone doesn't know what's like they're raising. Interesting. But what do you do, sir, with a generation raised on TikTok who when polled just a few months ago said, you know what, that Osama bin Laden had some pretty good ideas.

And young people taking to their social media accounts saying things like, you know what, 9-11, the West had that coming. And this is coming from, you know, people who look like me, not who look like you. What do we do with that level of either ignorance or stupidity when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, we would not call that ignorance. I would call that a response to a Muslim brotherhood global narrative is that Hamas has unfortunately succeeded in. Osama bin Laden was a clear member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which gave us ISIS and gave us al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda was born out of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology, and the same with Hamas and ISIS. The young Westerners, Canadians, Americans, you name it, who are on TikTok sympathizing with Osama Bin Laden, are doing so because channels like Al Jazeera plus tell them that the West is bad, that you need to hate your country, that you need to hate democracy, democracy is bad. This narrative allows the young vulnerable Canadian to then sympathize.

with Osama bin Laden. Why? Because it's accompanied with not just memes which have their own study on their impact. It's accompanied with fake data and fake statistics and fake claims and fake quotes. And therefore, this young Canadian who's on TikTok, their attention span is 15 to 20 seconds. Immediately, if they're frustrated by something on the street,

they will translate it through what they're viewing on their phone. So it's a brainwashing system that the Muslim Brotherhood has succeeded in Canada for over 60 years. I'm speaking with Imam Mohamed Tauhidi. He's a governing member of the Global Imams Council. They have put out a guidebook to symbols of terror. You can find it at emmoms.org slash sot. imams.org slash sot. Imam, I just want to go on the record and say, I hope that you're able to come back again.

I very much want to have this dialogue. I think there's a lot of people view the world in a binary way, and my vociferous defense of Jewish Torontonians and Israel after October 7th, for some reason must mean that I am looking to demean or take down the Palestinian people could not be further from the truth. And so I very much want to have positive dialogue moving forward. I do want to ask you, though, sir, about what I think is an uncomfortable trend of public prayer happening in close proximity to other people's places of worship. You know, in Montreal specifically, we saw, you know, hundreds of Muslims in prayer, which I think is sacrosanct, but happening in the shadow of a basilica in Montreal.

all. It feels to me like something like that is done either to make people uncomfortable or it's not done for the sake of prayer in and of itself. What are your thoughts on public prayer? This is in fact my field because I specialize in Islamic law. When it comes to Islamic law, prayer can only be accepted by God if the person praying, and I'm speaking about the obligatory five daily prayers that you see, they need to perform an act called wibu, which is to wash. We call it

ablution. Yes. That cannot be performed by water that does not belong to you. A Muslim needs to own that water. And then prayer cannot be established on land that a Muslim does not own. All prayers taking

place in public against the will of the Canadian majority or even Canadian law, if a procession requires permits, and the majority of these people, including mainly the Cuts March, which happens in the last Friday of every Ramadan, they do not seek permission because that is what the police tell us. The police say, we don't have the authority to crack down on them because, and I'm speaking legally, legally, because they don't apply, they don't notify the police, they just show up. And this is a problem. So,

There is a clear understanding here that they do not have permission from the police, from the city council, from law enforcement to establish prayers on the street. The police are not inviting them to pray and block the roads. Imam, we're going to have to leave it there. Imam Mohamed Tauhidi, thank you very much. It's imams.org slash sot. And please consider an open invitation to come back anytime. We appreciate your time. A kidnap child whispers dark secrets from his past in a language he no longer understands.

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