It sometimes seems that barely a month goes by in which Zafar Bangash, the imam at the Islamic Society of York Region, isn’t embroiled in controversy.

The most recent example: Crescent Magazine (Bangash is on the periodical’s editorial board) recently ran an article by notorious Holocaust denier Kevin Barrett, who has claimed that the definition of “Holocaust” as drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “seems to have been crafted with one overriding objective: to demonize anyone who opposes the Zionist genocide of Colonized Palestine.”

We wanted to interview Bangash about this and other outrageous statements (such as his claim there was a “Zionist connection” to the terrorist attacks against two New Zealand mosques.) However, when I tracked him down, he was in no mood to spew rhetoric.