Muslim cleric who advocates wife-beating, stoning, hatred for non-Muslims speaks at St. John’s University

This hate-filled savage can speak at a university with no problem, but when one of my colleagues or I am invited to speak at any college or university in the country, there is a huge uproar. Protests. Petitions. Denunciations. “Safe spaces.” This speaks to how deeply corrupt our academic establishment is today. Universities are not institutions of higher learning. They’re centers of hard-left indoctrination.

“Hardline Islamic Cleric to start U.S. Speaking Tour,” by Sam Westrop, Rabwah Times, April 6, 2018 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

On April 6, Muhammad ibn Adam Al-Kawthari, a British cleric from the Deobandi movement, a hardline South Asian Islamic sect, will commence a three-day speaking tour, speaking at five mosques in New York and New Jersey, as well as at St Johns University in Queens. His most widely-advertised lecture, at the Quba Institute in New York on April 7, is titled ‘Women’s Rights in Marriage.’ The hosts call on their audience to come along and “stand up against domestic violence.” But, with a dark irony so often a feature of Islamist events in the West, the cleric invited to give the talk on the dangers of domestic violence has previously justified domestic abuse.

Kawthari has written that a husband may hit his wife if she is “slanderous or violates Islamic rulings,” as long as it is a last resort and “a light blow that leaves no mark.” In addition, he has declared that women should not leave the home, may not refuse their husbands’ demands for sex, and should be stoned to death if they commit adultery.

Such views were likely inculcated at Darul Uloom al Arabiya al Islamiya, a seminary in the city of Bury in England where Kawthari studied. It is perhaps the most prominent Deobandi institution outside of South Asia. In 2016, The Times reported that the Darul Uloom “preaches contempt for non-Muslims and warns of the ‘repulsive qualities’ of Christian and Jewish women.”

After graduating from the Darul Uloom, Kawthari studied further under Taqi Usmani, one of the world’s leading Deobandi clerics. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Usmani issued a fatwa proclaiming that “jihad” was “obligatory” against Western troops in Afghanistan. This teaching evidently appealed to Kawthari, who has ruled that jihad in places such as Chechnya and Kashmir is compulsory for Muslims.

Kawthari’s other fatwas and lectures are similarly extreme. He advocates chopping off thieves’ hands, and warns Muslims against befriending Jews and Christians, citing religious texts that command: “Do not commence by greeting the Christians and Jews with Salam. If you meet one of them on a pathway, force them to walk on the side.” In 2014, the East London Mosque – considered by mainstream British journalists to be one of the most radical mosques in Europe – even banned Kawthari from speaking at its events….