Chair of Islamic Relief Canada: “Yazidis are devil worshipers”

The founder of Islamic Relief Canada (IRC) and current Chair of the board of directors, Hany Al Banna, has come under fire for his recent comments calling the Yazidi people “devil worshipers”.  

Al Banna is also the founder of Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) which has been declared a terrorist organization by two of our allies the UAE and Israel, and treated with suspicion by others countries, including Pakistan.

Nadia Murad, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Yazidi activist, was very upset to see the comments, and subsequent inaction from the international community stating:

It is disturbing to hear that the founder of IRW is using hateful and persecutory rhetoric against the Yazidi people.  

We have suffered the discriminatory words of so many over the years, but to hear this hate coming from the leader of an international humanitarian organization is just unacceptable. 

This type of rhetoric is what fuelled the targeted violence that led to the genocide of my people, it is imperative that politicians and global leaders condemn this behaviour immediately.

Marad herself was captured by ISIS and used as a sex slave for 3 months before escaping, only to find out that most of her village had been wiped out. 

Her story is common among the Yazidi peoples, who have faced multiple genocides over the years from different Islamist militants for being “devil worshipers”.

IRW has come under a lot of scrutiny recently for multiple scandals within their senior staff for support of Terrorists, antisemitism and the Muslim Brotherhood.  However, them and their Canadian branch IRC still continue to receive millions of dollars of support from the Canadian taxpayer.