Raza along with the Muslim Canadian Congress petitioned the Canadian government about a decade ago to remove Hashmi from Canada, where she had resided for several years. "It's very, very stringent ideology," says Raheel Raza, president of the Toronto-based Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow, whose family member in Pakistan once devoutly followed Hashmi's teachings. Hashmi's schools teach a conservative Islam ideology that many, including many Muslims, find controversial.įor example, she encourages women to stop working, cover their bodies and faces, permit polygamous marriages and disassociate from non-Muslims, according to some who have studied Al-Huda. Īl-Huda founder Farhat Hashmi, pictured in a YouTube clip, encourages women to cover their bodies and faces.
Hashmi, a scholar with a doctorate degree in Islamic studies from the University of Glasgow, founded the Al-Huda International Welfare Foundation more than two decades ago in Pakistan to teach women about the Qur'an.
The school's founder, Pakistan-born Farhat Hashmi who lived in Canada for several years, has denied any links to extremist groups. A popular network of Islamic religious schools for women, which espouses a conservative ideology, is facing questions about its teachings after revelations that Tashfeen Malik, one of the San Bernardino shooters, and at least four other women who attempted to join ISIS studied there.