Pakistani scholar Farhat Hashmi entered Canada in October 2004 on a visitor's visa, has twice been denied permission to work, and was ordered to leave the country in September 2005.  Yet she is still here.  In the meantime, she has founded al-Huda Islamic Centre of Canada, a girls' school in Mississauga where she teaches a strict Islamist interpretation of the Koran.

Moderate Muslims believe her lessons encourage extremist views among her students in Mississauga — the same Toronto suburb where many of the 17 men arrested last month on terrorism-related charges grew up and allegedly developed into radicals. Some of those young men's militant views are reputed to have been influenced by their ideologically inclined wives.

A charismatic figure who cloaks her face and body in orthodox garb, Hashmi amassed considerable wealth in the 1990s by establishing a chain of religious schools across Pakistan. Focusing her instruction on young Westernized women from monied families who had hitherto preferred a pair of jeans to the hijab, Hashmi became famous converting them to a stricter form of Islam. Stories abound of young Muslim party girls changing their ways after just a few lectures, donning the black veils that Hashmi is said to make available for purchase at her schools, along with her lectures in print, audio and DVD formats. "Her network of schools in Pakistan caters exclusively to the upper class," says Tarek Fatah, of the Muslim Canadian Congress. "And that is where she is turning women into mothers who are then converting their sons into extremists."

Ms Hashmi encourages her girls to allow their husbands to marry more than once.  She has also taught that an earthquake in Kashmir was divine punishment for "immoral activities".  Hmmmm.  Islamists seem to have a penchant for attributing natural disasters to God's vengeance against certain degenerates and reprobates.

The basis of Ms Hashmi's work permit application was an offer of employment from the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which still wants her to stay to teach Muslim girls.

Mohammad Ashraf, secretary general of ISNA Canada and the man who signed Hashmi's letter of employment, defended her. "We need people like her — men and women who really teach what the Koran says," he told Maclean's. "These people who are criticizing her, they are just going around the bush because they don't practise Islam themselves."

Wajid Khan, Liberal MP for Mississauga-Streetsville, wants her gone pronto.  He doesn’t understand why the immigration bureaucracy hasn't acted on the eviction letter delivered nine months ago.  He's not the only one.