What Starts With the Jews Never Ends With the Jews

"The multiplication of prayers in the street is a serious and sensitive issue in Quebec."

"Last December our government expressed its malaise in the face of this phenomenon, which is more and more present in Montreal." 

"The premier of Quebec gave me a mandate to reinforce laicity and I have the firm intention of fulfilling this mandate with diligence."

This fall we will table legislation to reinforce laicity in Quebec including the banning of prayers in the streets."

Quebec Minister Responsible for Laicity Jean-Francois Roberge 

Screenshot of an Instagram post taken July 29, 2025

 

In his statements firmly rejecting mass prayers in the streets of Montreal, Minister Roberge, while stating unequivocally that such prayers must stop, fails to mention that it is Muslims who have taken to these mass public prayers, highly unusual and certainly controversial in Canada. Street prayers may be common in Islamic countries or Muslim-majority countries, but not in Western democratic countries to which Muslims have gravitated. And it is the more recent Muslims that have entered the West with their assertiveness of entitlements bolstered by the sheer numbers of their presence that agitate for Sharia law, and in its lack offensively take on the mantle of 'free expression' to assemble for mass public prayers.

 

Minister Roberge's statement while omitting 'Muslims' spoke only of a "proliferation of street prayers", offensive in their public display to Quebec's secular public persona in its government and institutions. These group prayer sessions are deliberate moves to demonstrate the power of their numbers in Canada. Imposing upon the non-Muslim population a forced theatrical display insensitive to others while delivering their message of superior numbers within the country in comparison to Canadian Jews.

Protesters gather in front of Notre-Dame Basilica in Old Montreal on July 20, 2025 in response to Muslim prayer gatherings that happened outside the basilica on Sundays. Photo by Dave Sidaway/Postmedia/File

 

The prayers are a feature of the ongoing anti-Israel demonstrations ubiquitous in the streets of Canada since the October 7 Palestinian terrorist Hamas attack in southern Israel. A 278-page report by a committee tasked to recommend strategies in the continuing entrenchment of Quebec's laicity commitment (defined as protecting public institutions from religious influence) which produced recommendations to be followed precipitated Quebec's decision to ban public prayers.

 

New rules on wearing religious symbols in daycares, bans on face coverings in publicly funded junior colleges and proposed new protections to protect universities from being compelled to install prayer rooms were among the 50 recommendations produced by the report. While mentioning street prayers, the report recommends that sanctions should be left to municipal governments.

 

A regular gathering of public prayers outside Montreal's Notre-Dame Catholic Basilica has been of especial irritation in its conspicuous aura of contempt for Christianity. When such gatherings take place outside synagogues in Quebec they don't gain quite the same notice by the public. But there is that old Jewish comment, pithy in its observation that 'what begins with the Jews never ends with the Jews'. While Jews may be the initial target, persecution often extends to others within the orbit of the persecutors.

 

The anti-Israel group Montreal4Palestine has organized Sunday protests outside the Basilica, complete with an open-air demonstration of the Islamic afternoon prayer.  

Quebec RCMP are looking into whether Imam Adil Charkaoui committed a hate crime when he called for the extermination of 'Zionist aggressors'

 

One protest in December outside the cathedral had been advertised with the title: "One solution. Intifada revolution". Since the summer, counter-demonstrations of Quebec nationalists have met the Muslim protests at the Notre Dame cathedral. "Enough, it's enough. For the respect of our heritage and our coexistence; we will peacefully rally", a poster circulated by counter-protest organizers read. One of the anti-public worship organizers is an Iranian-born Quebec laicity activist, Mandana Javan.

 

"The streets of Montreal are not open-air mosques", Javan declared outside the basilica at a July counter-protest, calling on the provincial government to adopt a law banning "organized Islamist prayers in public spaces". Quebec Premier Francois Legault singled out public prayers as a particular target: "To see people praying in the street, in public parks, this not something we want in Quebec. When you want to pray, you go in a church or a mosque, not in a public place".

 

The Montreal-area borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville pledged last summer to ban outdoor religious events when locals expressed their outrage at Muslims kneeling in prayer at a public park. Now, the surge in anti-Israel demonstrations has increased public prayer frequency and placed them squarely in the public's sight. The prayer performances represent arrogant Muslim defiance of Quebec's secularism, in aggressively acting out disdain for laws that are man-made as opposed to the divinely-inspired laws of Sharia.

 

Imam Adil Charkaoui  Section 318 of Canada’s Criminal Code says “every person who advocates or promotes genocide is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years.”

 

In November of 2023, a month after the savage atrocities wrought by Hamas in Israel, Montreal Imam Adil Charkaoui angered Quebec politicians for leading hundreds of demonstrators in prayers in Arabic to destroy "Zionist aggressors". "Allah, count every one of them, and kill them all, and do not exempt even one of them", he incited a crowd massed on a blockaded Montreal street.

 

While the Canadian Muslim Forum defended street prayers as "a manifestation of freedom of expression that has been exercised for so long by various communities", they have an ally in Quebec's Catholic leaders, where Bishop Martin Laliberte, president of the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Quebec condemned the proposed street prayer ban, stating they were "deeply concerned about the erasure of people and believing communities from Quebec's public space".  

 

Screenshot of an X post taken July 29, 2025