| Zafar Bangash | |
|---|---|
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Bangash in 2009
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| Born | 1950 |
| Occupation | Imam |
Zafar Bangash (Urdu: ظفر بنگش) is a noted Islamic movement journalist and commentator in Toronto, Canada. Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT), and president of the Islamic Society of York Region, a suburb of Toronto. He is Imam at the Islamic Society of York Region's Mosque and community centre in Richmond Hill, Ontario. He is a former editor of Crescent International newsmagazine, and a Trustee and formerly assistant director of the Muslim Institute, London, where he worked with Dr Kalim Siddiqui (1931–1996), the founder of the Muslim Institute and Leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain. Bangash is also co-founder of the Muslim Unity Group.
He is best known for his commentaries current affairs while editor of Crescent International. Though he stepped down as editor since joining the ICIT, he continues as a columnist and contributor to Crescent.
In 2007, as a spokesperson for the Muslim Unity Group in Toronto, Bangash appeared with other Muslim leaders at a Toronto press conference calling for the Ontario government and Toronto District School Board to address the problem of increased harassment of Muslims and racial minorities since 9-11.
He was the keynote speaker at a 2007 Marxist conference in Toronto prompting Bangash critic Tarek Fatah of the liberal Muslim Canadian Congress to comment "For atheists, considered worthy of the death penalty by Islamists, to team up with their ultimate opponents in attacking Canadian civic society, demonstrates the fundamental bankruptcy of these two political ideologies." Bangash justified his collaboration with secular leftists saying "The issues of justice, inequality and poverty are common themes we can work together on. They are concerns of conscience."