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On January 5, 2019, Canadian cleric Younus Kathrada uploaded to the Muslim Youth of Victoria Facebook page a video in which he responded to the media backlash that followed a MEMERI TV video documenting a recent sermon of his in which he said that saying “Merry Christmas” is worse than murder and adultery (see MEMRI TV Clip No. 6906) . Sheikh Kathrada said that he never has and never will encourage violence, and he criticized an opinion article written for Postmedia by Licia Corbella, whom he referred to as "this moron, this imbecile, this sad excuse for a human being.” Sheikh Kathrada further said that he stands by his statement that Muslims should be offended when people worship Jesus or refer to him as the son of God, but that this does not necessitate violence. He further criticized the media for wanting to make Muslims look like savages and said that since a proper Islamic state – which he said does not exist today – would punish murder, adultery, and other severe crimes by things such as death and amputation, his remarks cannot be taken to mean that he encourages these behaviors. He concluded by saying: “I’m not your lap dog and I’m not your puppet. So good luck next time.”
Following are excerpts:
Younus Katharda: Because it seems that some reporters and media outlets have nothing better to do than spread lies and inaccurate reports, I feel that it is important to clarify things, but on our terms.
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Tonight's session, is neither a retraction nor an apology. If I had done something wrong, by all means, I would apologize and I would retract what I said.
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I have never and I still do not, and I never will, tell people to just go out and kill people willy nilly and so on and so forth. Of course… Do you know why I said that? I said that because after I made the comments that I did, I anticipated that there may be some unintelligent people out there, not my audience, but unintelligent people who may come across this sermon and they may accuse me of saying certain things that I did not say. So I thank God that he inspired me to say those words. But of course, they are not enough for this moron, this imbecile, this sad excuse for a human being.
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On the video it says that I also said: "Do you know that you and I must be offended when people say that they worship Jesus or when they say that Jesus is the son of God." Guess what, I stand 100 percent behind these words. I said those words and I stand behind them, 100 percent.
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I can be offended, it cannot then necessitate me being violent. When I tell you that you should be offended by something it doesn't mean that you should go and act violently towards other people and do crazy things.
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This is a Christian holiday and it is based on what Islam deems to be blasphemy.
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Don't tell me that we can be okay with saying "merry Christmas" you prove to me how it can be okay. Out of politeness, okay, so go and congratulate the fornicators then. You won't do it unless you are one of them or you happen to have that mentality where you think it is okay, there is nothing wrong with it. Or a rapist… Extreme examples? Well, they are not extreme, they are real examples.
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What I was saying is that some of our pious predecessors said this.
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For goodness sakes, we live with non-Muslims, we have neighbors who are wonderful, when we see them we greet them. If we knew that they had a child for example, we would congratulate them. If we knew that they graduated from university we would congratulate them. I don't know where these people in the media are coming from. They want to make us look like savages.
If you are now saying, "Oh, I am just saying this to be polite", that in itself is a mistake and it is wrong and is a sin. Because you are being hypocritical and it is you are showing support to something you are offended by.
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If a non-Muslim were say to me, Eid Mubarak, or happy holiday or Ramadhan, or whatever, if they were to say that to me… With all due respect, I know where you are coming from, you want to be polite, but you are not a principled individual. You don't believe in what my holiday is about, my holiday is about Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar, there is no God but Allah, Allah Akbar.
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Just going around congratulating people when you don't even know what they are doing. They may be doing something pretty nasty and pretty horrible. Right? And for us? This is a horrible thing.
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In a proper Islamic state, by the way no proper Islamic state exists today, not that I am aware of…
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In a proper Islamic state, for those, crimes, there are severe punishments.
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There is the death penalty, there is amputation, right? There are different penalties for different crimes, so yes, we consider them all to be very serious and severe crimes. But morally speaking, and from a religious perspective, insulting God, insulting Allah, attributing a son to him, attributing partners to him is even worse, it is even worse. It is even worse. What is so difficult to understand in that? It is not mean that we encourage people to commit all those other crimes.
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I am not your lap dog and I am not your puppet, so good luck next time.
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