Ottawa Muslims Association has been in the local news due to a number of issues related to Muslim community in Ottawa, Canada. It is always very painful to see such kind of behaviour on part of the people who have been entrusted with huge responssiblity of keeping the Muslim community united. The issue of Immam of Ottawa Mosque has created so much rift between the officials of the Ottawa Muslims Association that a large majority of the officials has decided to resign.

I do beleive that their resignation is not going to make things better, it is only going to provide more material to other communities to laugh at Muslims.  I would like to emphasise here that individual personalities are not important for the well being of the community, it is combined effort of all the individual Muslims that can create harmony and strength in community.  Finger pointing never works, only deeds generate good results.

Here is the letter from the trustees who resigned and was circulated to community members. 

Friday, May 8th, 2009.
Dear Brothers and Sisters:

AOA; as the Chairman of the OMA Council of Trustees, I would like to thank you for providing us the privilege of serving our community. Since our election over a year ago, we have been carrying out the duties of trustees as mandated by the OMA Constitution and OMA Trust Deed.

Today, I would like to share with you our utter disappointment and our inability to morally and constitutionally discharge our duties as trustees without causing serious divisions in the community.

As you know, the Imam issue has caused serious divisions in our community. To resolve these differences, the Board of Directors had passed a resolution to address the Imam issue on June 7, 2009 in a Special general Body meeting. This information was posted on the OMA website, communicated to the general membership and it was announced in the Citizen, a local newspaper. Further, it was made known that the issue of the Imam would not be on the Annual General Meeting Agenda but would be dealt with specifically at the June 7th, 2009 Special General Meeting. 

To our dismay, at the annual general meeting of April 26, 2009, the President allowed motions regarding the Imam issue from the floor and some decisions were made in this regard. We had advised the President at several occasions before the annual general meeting that the discussion of the Imam issue at the annual general meeting would be in clear violation of the OMA Constitution, since this information was not shared with all members in the notice of annual general meeting. Unfortunately, we were unable to convince the President.

This deliberate violation of the OMA constitution has created serious differences between the President and the majority of the trustees which would adversely affect the functioning of the Association. To uphold the integrity of the OMA Constitution and in the greater interest of the community, five trustees have decided to resign to lodge a formal protest against the deliberate violation of OMA Constitution by the President. These trustees who have decided to resign include: Fazl Khan (Chairman of Trust), Ghassan Akrouche (Secretary of Trust), Muazzam Orakzai (Treasurer of Trust), Sarwar Gilani and Zahur Hussain. After these five resignations, the remaining three elected trustees do not constitute a quorum and therefore they alone would not be able to function as a Council. Under such circumstances, the Trust Deed requires that election should be held to replace the five resigning trustees. Therefore, I am asking the President to make arrangements for election of five new trustees as soon as possible.

With the resignation of these Trustees and the previous resignations of the Chairman of the Joint Committee and the Treasure of the Board, the Joint Committee will have lost 5 of its 7 memberships; and as such it too would not be able function as the Joint Committee.

The OMA executive has lost confidence in the OMA Board. It would be in the interest of the community to ask the President to call for general elections of the Board of Directors to seek a new mandate from the general membership.

I am sorry that we were not able to complete the mandate given to us by the general membership. However, we ask for your forgiveness as this was the only viable option open to us to uphold the integrity of the OMA Constitution and to minimize further divisions in our community.

Once again, we are grateful to you for your support and guidance and hope that you would understand our position.

Wassalam:
Fazl Khan
Sarwar Gilani
Ghassan Akrouche
Muazzam Orakzai
Zahur Hussain