He was the keynote speaker at a 2007 Marxist conference in Toronto, prompting Bangash critic Tarek Fatah of the liberal Muslim Canadian Congress to comment, "For atheists, considered worthy of the death penalty by Islamists, to team up with their ultimate opponents in attacking Canadian civic society, demonstrates the fundamental bankruptcy of these two political ideologies." Bangash justified his collaboration with secular leftists saying "The issues of justice, inequality and poverty are common themes we can work together on. They are concerns of conscience."