(JTA) — A Jewish group is concerned about a lecture series by a Hamas supporter at a Toronto university.
Azzam Tamimi, a British Palestinian, is headlining the series "From Caliphs to Kings: The Fall and Rise of Islam" at Ryerson University from July 24-27.
"We have asked the university and its security services to take immediate steps to ensure that this program be closely monitored so that it does not contravene Canada’s hate laws and that full security measures be put in place," B’nai Brith Canada said in a statement Thursday.
Tamimi is a Hamas backer and has said that Israel should never have been established. He has also pushed Hamas to purge its constitution of anti-Semitic references.
"All that nonsense about ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ and conspiracy theories — all that rubbish will be out," he told the Jerusalem Post in 2006. "It should have never been there in the first place."
The program is hosted by the Al-Fauz Institute of Islamic Thought, based in neighboring Mississauga.
