Antisemitism in Canada -- a National Crisis

2025 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents

"Antisemitic conspiracy theories were disseminated with such frequency in 2025 that it is easier to summarize the totality of the accusations made against Jewish Canadians by simply stating that they were made the scapegoats for all the world's problems."

Antisemitism has become so ubiquitous in our society that the word Jew is now commonly used as a slur to disparage and malign non-Jews. In contemporary Canada, Jewishness itself has become derogatory."

Richard Robertson, Director of Research and Advocacy, B'nai Brith Canada  

The annual audit produced by B'nai Brith Canada through its League for Human Rights documents 6,800 antisemitism incidents across Canada. That would be the equivalent of 18.6 documented incidents occurring each and every day. Needless to say that number would report only those incidents brought to the attention of authorities, or in this instance, B'nai Brith. Not everyone experiencing the scourge of an antisemitic attack will report a verbal assault in person or online. It has become too commonplace, and Jewish resilience shrugs and carries on.

 

The number that was recorded and released in the audit represents the highest volume since the League began its audit production in 1982. Before October 7, 2023's Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel, antisemitism was confined to the underground, when civil society would not countenance it. By 2025, however the incidence of antisemitic slurs had increased by 145.6 percent since 2022. Antisemitism, noted the report, had become so widespread that it appears to grow on its own momentum, no longer linked to events such as the war in Iran.

 

Members of Montreal's Jewish community gathered on April 22, 2026, to celebrate the 76th anniversary of the Israeli state's founding. (Olivia O'Malley/CTV News)

 

"We need to protect Canadians from the dangers that are rapidly increasing and emerging from digital spaces. Whether they are being fuelled by foreign-based entities or by foreign corporations, that shouldn't matter."

"Canada must regulate its online realm and must protect Canadians from the dangers presently existing within it."

Richard Robertson, B'nai Brith Canada 

Pro-Palestinian supporters set up across the street from the Israel Independence Day celebration on April 22, 2026. (Olivia O'Malley/CTV News)

 

The level of documented antisemitic incidents declined somewhat in both Quebec and Alberta in 2025. However, Ontario. the Prairies, Atlantic Canada and British Columbia saw significant increases in the number of antisemitic incidents. Most incidents occurred online, representing 92 percent of those reported, and appears to be part of a continuing trend. Year over year, the prevalence of online incidents of antisemitism have crept ever upward.

 

Listing recommendations for each level of government, the report called for a federal Royal Commission to be struck on antisemitism. Government at the federal level should establish a national antisemitism emergency task force -- should view violent antisemitic attacks as domestic terrorism and -- deploy added national security resources in the protection of Jewish institutions. 

 

As for the provinces and territories, the report recommends the immediate funding of security protection for Jewish institutions and the establishment of a special prosecution unit tasked specifically to address hate crimes The report recommended that municipalities ban events that incite hate and intimidation, exercise zero tolerance for intimidation expressed in public spaces, and for the prioritization of protecting Jewish neighbourhoods and institutions.

 

More than fifty Toronto police officers receive a morning briefing Sunday April 5 at Sheppard Plaza in North York before ensuring any anti-Israel or pro-Israel protesters remain out of residential neighbourhood streets. (Photo by Ellin Bessner/The CJN)

 

"What we need in Canada is a multi-level approach to fighting antisemitism. This is a national crisis. We need task forces."

"We need consolidated efforts to provide ... the immediate relief that is required, such as security infrastructure, funding and policing."

"But we also need legislative change. And this is something that no government in this country can do alone."

Richard Robertson, B'nai Brith 

The report contains a section on "the demonization of Zionism". What the report does not do is make a record of the apparent lack of interest expressed by various levels of government throughout the country at the viral and all-too-obvious 'protests' against Israel's actions in taking military steps to defend itself from the never-ending perniciously violent actions of Palestinians -- organized terror groups, and ordinary Palestinian civilians as well who have been incited by their governments in the West Bank and Gaza to value martyrdom in the cause of obliterating the Jewish State from the Middle East.

 

A lack of interest in the face of threats against Canadian Jews, the constant vilification of Jewish Canadian institutions by Muslim groups for their support of Israel, the clear civil disruptions that offend Canadian law, a tolerance for hate manifested by repeated statements of globalizing the Intifada, of a 'Final Solution' as coded, but not too-subtle messages of violence against Jews that most municipal, provincial and the federal government tolerate, while decrying antisemitism and linking it to the evil of 'Islamophobia'; a meaningless sop when it is abundantly clear that Islamists within Canadian society are the fount of the avalanche of antisemitic rhetoric and venom of today.  

"It is not OK to subject a minority in this country to unprecedented levels of hate because of the actions of a foreign government."

"The numbers speak for themselves. This is a national crisis, and we have not seen a response sufficient to the moment."

"We need a whole-of government approach. We need the same response to tackling antisemitism that we've seen from our federal government when it comes to other crises in this country."

Richard Robertson, B'nai Brith 

Aleph Bet Judaica, seen after a rock was thrown at its window on Sunday, Apr. 26, 2026. (Courtesy Photographer)

 

Canada: The Serpent in Our Midst

"It is disturbing that the Muslim Association of Canada would host speakers who hold and express such noxious views. The announced speakers have spoken out against women, the LGBT community, and Jews."

"I believe that people should be allowed to express even abhorrent ideas. But our government should not fund those bad ideas. ... And [it] should bother all other Canadians, Muslims and non-Muslims alike [that they do]."

Human rights activist Kaveh Shahrooz, former policy adviser to Global Affairs

 

"[The Muslim Association of Canada's lineup of speakers is problematic, given several of those speakers' proselytizing] misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ+, antisemitic, and often violent beliefs that stand in stark contrast to cherished Canadian values."

"We believe that most Muslim Canadians reject these ideologies, but considering some of the speakers the organizers have invited to speak to our neighbours in Canada's Muslim community, we are concerned that this is something the leadership at the MAC might be trying to change."

Gail Adelson-Marcovitz, national chair, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

"This is not a surprise that they are also using their convention as a platform to bring in people to preach these kinds of hate lectures and providing a platform for them to spread these kinds of things in Canada."

"But what are they going to add to Canadian values? By bringing these questionable people, what is their main intention here?"

Reza Banal, Human-rights activist for justice for victims of Khomeinist regime

Anti-Semitism on full display Sunday in Toronto during a pro-Palestinian protest on Yonge St. Photo by Brian Lilley /Toronto Sun

On June 2nd, the day after Canada Day, a group of people assembled with 'Palestinian' flags in Thornhill just north of Toronto, along a strip mall whose proprietors were mostly Jewish, in a suburb of Canada's largest, most populous city where a large contingent of Jews live. Just north of Thornhill, lies another suburb, Richmond Hill, which has become a stronghold of Muslim-Canadians, mostly immigrants from abroad. It's a short drive from one to the other, about 15 minutes. The assembled crowd of Muslims began shouting about liberating 'Palestine' and calling out slanderous imprecations against Jews until the York Regional Police arrived to take charge of the situation.

 

This is a reflection of today's Canada, where Jews have lived for generations and where now that the country has taken in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees along with others from the world of Islam escaping obscene intolerance from their own governments along with threats to their lives, have joined other Muslims who emigrated from their home countries over the years to become Canadian citizens. Among them are those whose message the Muslim Association of Canada associated with the Muslim Brotherhood conveys, are taken seriously.

 

A national three-day conference was mounted in Toronto from the first to the third of July hosted by the Muslim Association of Canada. This is a faith group for whom the government of Justin Trudeau has seen fit to fund in federal 'anti-hate'  youth engagement and security programs for the past three years, with millions of dollars. Both Jewish advocacy groups and Muslim human rights activists feel outraged with the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's decision to fund the Muslim Association of Canada.

 

This is a group that has charitable status in Canada. Yet it has always been and lately more so, a reactionary politicized Islamist group. One that claims outrage that the Canada Revenue Agency has singled it out for an audit. It claims bias in the CRA bureaucracy of systemic Islamophobia. Despite the Revenue Agency investigation, the federal government still continues funding the operation of the CRA. Prime Minister Trudeau in fact spoke at an Islamophobia summit a year ago, criticizing the CRA, saying that "Institutions should support people, not target them".

 

The ongoing Canada Revenue Agency's audit has revealed a link between the association and foreign entities, leading the association to launch a Charter of Rights complaint against the CRA, hoping to succeed in having the audit closed. Links between it and the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot Hamas, have been amply revealed. Of the speakers for the three-day conference, one, Syrian Mohammed Rateb Al Nabulsi, defends the death penalty as punishment for homosexuality; being gay "involves a filthy place, and does not generate offspring". He approves Muslim states that stipulate the death penalty for gays.

 

Another featured speaker, Muhammad al-Shinqiti, speaking of the death of Arab-Israeli police officer Amir Khoury who was defending the Jewish community of Bnei Brak in Northern Israel from a terrorist attack and who was mourned by that community at his funeral, spoke of Khoury as a Christian Arab as a "traitor". Shinqiti wrote: "Nothing destroys nations more than treason from within", and this man is meant to address Canadian Muslims, the implication being that they cannot be Canadians and faithful to Islam at the same time.

 

A co-founder of the Muslim Association of Canada, another featured speaker, Jamal Badawi, billed as an activist, author and preacher, expounds on defence of suicide bombings as acts of heroism. He also speaks of the permissiveness of Islam in wife-beating. All of which speaks revealingly not of human-rights-defence on the part of the Muslim Assocation of Canada, but deliberate divisiveness between members of the Islamic faith and other citizens of Canada. 

 

And to have the federal government funding this group and their odious messaging is beyond belief. 

The lineup of speakers for an upcoming convention of the Muslim Association of Canada is disturbing owing to several speakers’ habits of proselytizing “misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ+, antisemitic, and often violent beliefs that stand in stark contrast to cherished Canadian values," says Gail Adelson-Marcovitz, national chair of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. Photo by Getty Images/iStock

"[The Muslim Association of Canada describes itself as a] wholly Canadian organization that operates only in Canada [with ] no organizational link or affiliation with other organizations [but it also explicitly identifies with the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide."

"[The Muslim Association of Canada claims it] strives to practise Islam as embodied in the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet and as understood in its contemporary comprehensive and balanced context by the late Imam Hassan Albanna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood." 

Terry Glavin, journalist, author

British Free-Ranging Terrorists Covering Parliament

"A 25-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder and is currently in custody."

"We have recovered a knife from the scene and are not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident." 

"Senior National Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism Policing, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon formally declared the incident as terrorism."

"The early investigation has revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism."

"[Police are] currently carrying out searches at two addresses in the London area and these are ongoing [but] it is believed that [the suspect] acted alone, and we are not seeking anyone else in connection with the incident at this time."

British Police statement

"Attacking our elected representatives is an attack on democracy itself. There is no excuse, no justification. It is as cowardly as it gets."

"This brings everything back. The pain, the loss, but also how much love the public gave us following the loss of Jo [MP Helen Joanne Cox, shot and stabbed to death in Yorkshire, 2016]."

"I hope we can do the same for David now."

Brendan Cox

"This is an incident that will send shock waves across the parliamentary community and the whole country."

"We will need to discuss and examine MPs' security."

Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker of the British House of Commons

A photograph of Conservative British lawmaker David Amess, who was fatally stabbed, is pictured prior to a service at Saint Peter's Catholic Parish of Eastwood in Leigh-on-Sea in southeast England on October 15, 2021 (Tolga Akmen / AFP)

First elected to Parliament in 1983, British Member of Parliament David Amess, 69, was knighted for his public service in 2015 by Queen Elizabeth in recognition of his years of service to his community. He was stabbed to death by a 25-year-old British national, a Muslim of Somali background who had waited outside the Methodist church where Sir Amess was holding one of his regular meetings with constituents.

The assailant had been waiting outside the church and began stabbing Sir Amess until he was dead. Police quickly arrived on the scene and paramedics attempted to save him, but to no avail. The attacker made no attempt to leave the scene, simply waited there for his arrest which promptly followed. The murderous assault has left British parliamentarians in a state of shock. The much-respected and popular MP dedicated to serving his constituents was hardly someone who might think of impending danger.

He regularly scheduled meetings with voters on the first and third Friday of each month, and was at the Belfairs Methodist church in Leigh-on-Sea Essex, east of London, his constituency. His murder was a terrorist act by an Islamist practising jihad as a dutiful Muslim. Six years earlier, Labour Party MP Joanne Cox was murdered in another terrorist atrocity committed by a Nazi idealogue.

British MP David Amess in parliament in 2015 (video screenshot)

The married father of five was among the longest serving British lawmakers. Another notch in the belt of terrorists of whatever stripe. "Heartbreaking to hear of the death of Sir David Amess. A decent man and respected parliamentarian, killed in his own community while carrying out his public duties. A tragic day for our democracy", wrote former Prime Minister Therese May.

"David was a man who believed passionately in this country and in its future and we have lost today a fine public servant and a much loved friend and colleague."

Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Conservative MP David Amess with his pugs, Lily and Boat at the Westminster Dog of the Year competition at Victoria Tower Gardens in London on Oct. 10, 2013 (Geoff Caddick/PA via AP)

Lod As Template? What Is It About Living in Israel, a Jewish State, That Its Arab Citizens Don't Understand?

"They say they wanted to come to a quiet place, not where there is this kind of background noise, and where they have to be afraid."

"Things here now are a mess, and they say they didn’t pick up and move to Lod to live in a mess. If you ask me, it is sad – sad that a Jewish family has to leave this city, eight minutes from the airport, because they are afraid."

"You never know, one day someone is your friend, you buy your groceries at his store, you have friendly relations, and today you just don’t know. My mechanic is connected to the family of the Arab who was killed on the first night of the rioting – Hasuna – I called him up to ask if we were still okay. He said to bring my jeep by."

"We live here together. Why are you going to boycott an Arab store? Then next month you will go back and buy there. So what have you accomplished – that will only widen the rift."

"If you ask me what needs to be done, I think the police have to take more initiative, provide people with a sense of security – Jews and Arabs. It can’t be that Arabs can build here illegally and nothing happens, or they fire off firecrackers whenever they want, testing the response, and nothing happens. That creates a perception that they are in charge."

"[The police do not enforce the law because they simply don’t want to ruffle feathers], they want quiet]."

"I asked people what happened, and they replied, ‘You touched al-Aqsa.’ The fanatics live in paranoia. They believe the Jews, the Garin Torani, are coming to kick them out, that they are from the Shabak [Shin Bet]. They are paranoid that we want to kick them out and destroy al-Aqsa. Go convince them otherwise. Most of the people don’t have a problem, but the fanatics and the religious incite things."

Assaf Weiss, young religious Jew who moved into Lod 15 years ago

Coexistence crisis in Lod.   (photo credit: MIRIAM ALSTER/FLASH90)

"They [Jewish thugs from the far-right Lehava and La Familia] walked with sticks and looked for cars, Arab cars. Then they bashed the windows in."

"Jews live in my building, I have no problem with them. The problem is the settlers [catch-phrase used to refer to those associated with the pre-army academy, or the Garin Torani]."

"If you look deeply, the Jews cannot live here without the Arabs, and the Arabs cannot live here without the Jews. We need each other. I don’t want to live in an Arab state. I’m used to it here, used to the laws. In the Arabs states the law is not straight."

"[Lod Mayor Yair] Revivo says he also does for Arabs. But what does he do? Only demolish homes. He only gives to the Jewish neighborhoods."

"They want to bring in settlers, and the settlers are racists. And so are those they brought in two weeks ago who caused all the problems."

"They [Jews] could offer me five million shekels, and I wouldn’t sell [to a Jew]. Besides, where would I go?"

"I have three apartments. A settler will come here and say he wants to pay double. I’ll sell and he will live next to my parents – a settler who was raised on hating Arabs. They don’t study Torah, only hating Arabs."

"I have no problems with Jews, I am only talking about the settlers who were living in the West Bank and Gaza, and who are now looking for a place to live where Arabs live. I’m not talking about regular Jews. On our first floor there is a religious Jew. But not a settler."

Sheik Yusuf Adam Bassam, Arab Lod resident

ARAB RESIDENTS and activists protest the death of Musa Hasuna, killed during Jewish-Arab clashes, outside Lod District Court on May 28. (AVSHALOM SASSONI/FLASH90)

"We have a problem when a group of Jews is coming not only to live, but to Judaize the urban space, coming into Arab neighborhoods or close to Arab neighborhoods."

"If you come to an Arab neighborhood and you find a very old building nobody is using, and they are passing it on to NGOs – very Zionist radical NGOs – who convert it to a synagogue or a center for young Jews. Judaizing the urban space means instead of making it available to young Arabs, offering it instead to Jewish people."

"What is happening in Sheikh Jarrah is really connected. It is the same policy of the evacuation of Arabs and replacing them with specific Jews, with settlers. It is the same policy that is happening in the old city of Jaffa, for example, in the historical Palestinian cities. This is frustrating the Arabs in those cities. 

It is pent-up anger that was waiting for a specific moment to explode. And these kinds of policies bring it to an explosion."

Thabet Abu Rass, co-executive director, Lod-based Abraham Initiatives NGO 

THE FUNERAL of Yigal Yehoshua, who succumbed to injuries sustained during rioting in Lod, on May 18. His family later donated one of his kidneys to a Palestinian woman. (AVSHALOM SASSONI/FLASH90)

 

"We decided to join the government in order to change the balance of political forces in the country."

"I say here clearly and frankly: when the very establishment of this government is based on our support ... we will be able to influence it and accomplish great things for our Arab society."

Mansour Abbas, leader, United Arab List party

In the frantic drive to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu, a left-wing and a right-wing Jewish Israeli party linked in their hatred of the current prime minister, if not in their ideologies, invited an Islamist party head to join their coalition to achieve enough momentum through a slender majority of seats in the Knesset to drive the prime minister from power. The tiny Islamist action brings just enough lead for a paper-thin majority, making the United Arab List the first Arab party to join the governing executive of the country.

Mr. Abbas; MK Abbas, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, has deigned to ignore the differences he cannot but hold as vitally important against a leader representing a major Jewish settlement group, an advocate of annexing most of the West Bank for the larger purpose in his opinion of advancing the cause of the 21percent minority Arab citizens of Israel. His hope, said MK Abbas is to improve conditions for Arab Israeli citizens mired in complaints of discrimination and neglect by government.

There is more than a bit of dissonance in this association, since Mr. Abbas's party is the political wing of the southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, established in 1971, its origins with the Muslim Brotherhood. As an Islamist party and as an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood the party, its members and its leader are fundamentally opposed to the State of Israel and diligently work toward its elimination. Their mandate is little different, in effect, from that of Hamas. 

The appeal for Mr. Abbas was the allocation of over 53 billion shekels to improve infrastructure and curb the violent crime that plagues Arab towns. In other words, a party dedicated to the violent overthrow of the Jewish state, seeks funding and dedication from that Jewish state to quell the violence and crime plaguing Israeli Arabs in their towns, brought to them courtesy of their Muslim Arab restive youth whom the Arab authorities in those towns appear incapable of controlling in their constant rampages.

Approval for his initiative in agreeing to join the coalition to oust the prime minister, came from the Islamic Movement's advisory Shura Council, a religious body from whom Mr. Abbas sought guidance, the very source of direction given to the party in past votes in the Knesset on LGBT rights and other like issues. There are Arab Israelis who are critical of Mr. Abbas's decision to join the coalition, querying his justification in being part of a government that imposes a 'military occupation' over West Bank and Gazan Palestinians including a Gaza blockade. 

 

Loyalty to Israel is not writ large on Palestinian sentiments.

"He should be commended for trying something new, but if there's another war with Gaza, and he's in government, there will be pressure on him to abandon ship", noted Moussa al-Zayadna, from the Bedouin town of Rahat in southern Israel. "He is a traitor. What will he do when they ask him to vote on launching a new war on Gaza? Will he accept it, being a part of the killing of Palestinians?", rhetorically queried Badri Karam in Gaza.

Joint List member Sami Abou Shehadeh, from whose party Mansour Abbas split to form his own party, claimed that the Islamist party led by Abbas "dramatically changed its historical political behaviour" joining with Bennett and other right-wing leaders, "a very big crime. Bennett was the head of the Yesha council (settler umbrella group). We're talking about dangerous people, and supporting them means that Mansour Abbas has chosen to stand with the extreme settler right against the interests of our people."

From left, Yair Lapid, Naftali Bennett and Mansour Abbas signing a coalition agreement. Credit...United Arab List Raam, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

"France Will Not Surrender Its Core Values"

"Very clearly, it is France which is under attack, [all of France offers its support to Catholics] so that their religion can be exercised freely in our country. So that every religion can be practiced. If we are attacked once again it is for the values which are ours: freedom, for the possibility on our soil to believe freely and not to give in to any spirit of terror."I say it with great clarity once again today: we won't surrender anything." French President Emmanuel Macron

The suspect was detained minutes after the attack at the basilica   EPA

October 2020: French teacher Samuel Paty is beheaded outside a school in a suburb of Paris

September 2020: Two people are stabbed and seriously hurt in Paris near the former offices of Charlie Hebdo, where Islamist militants carried out a deadly attack in 2015

October 2019: Radicalised police computer operator Mickaël Harpon is shot dead after stabbing to death three officers and a civilian worker at Paris police headquarters

July 2016: Two attackers kill a priest, Jacques Hamel, and seriously wound another hostage after storming a church in a suburb of Rouen in northern France

July 2016: A gunman drives a large lorry into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 86 people in an attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group

November 2015: Gunmen and suicide bombers launch multiple co-ordinated attacks on the Bataclan concert hall, a major stadium, restaurants and bars in Paris, leaving 130 people dead and hundreds wounded

January 2015: Two Islamist militant gunmen force their way into Charlie Hebdo's offices and shoot dead 12 people

That these attacks will continue to occur appears predictable and, it would also seem, unavoidable. A country that has long lost its sovereign right to declare what is lawful, seeing justice and legality overturned by the infiltration of extremists faithful to an ideology of fascist religious devotion that will not accept that in the Republic of France, blaspheme is as nothing averse, viewed as nothing less than freedom to express oneself as one will; nothing is sacred, no criticism, no vestige of pointed sarcasm or belittling of a religion is to be avoided in a purely secular society for which freedom of religion is guaranteed but what is not guaranteed is freedom from being mocked.

Another atrocity, this time committed by the illegal entry to France of a Tunisian ordered to return from Italy which he illegally accessed, to his country of birth. A Muslim majority country where Muslims can be assured no one would dare or even want to, mock the divine status of the Prophet Mohammad. Brahim Aioussaoi left Tunisia to travel to Lampedusa in September, an Italian island where he was informed he must leave Italy. Instead he made his way to Nice where he murdered three people, repeatedly screaming Allahu Akbar!

On Thursday morning another man brandishing a firearm in Avignon refused to surrender his weapon, ignored a warning shot by police and was shot and killed. In Saudi Arabia a man stabbed a guard standing sentry outside the French consulate in Jidda, wounding the guard before being arrested. This, one attack after another while France is still in mourning over the grisly death of French middle-school teacher Samuel Paty, beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee living in Paris. Who set out to murder the 47-year-old father of a six-year-old child to avenge the Prophet whose image in cartoons was used by Mr. Paty teaching a civics class. 

A French policeman stands guard near the scene of the knife attack at the Notre Dame church in Nice, France, on Oct. 29, 2020. (Daniel Cole / AP)

Mr. Paty often used those cartoons, caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad originally published by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Where, in 2015 Islamist jihadists stormed the offices of the magazine to slaughter eleven of its staff, claiming it their right to avenge the blasphemous mocking of the Prophet. Others with no connection to the magazine or the caricatures, simply shopping at a kosher market in Paris were also targeted; theirs was the sin of being Jewish, for which the Prophet was also avenged.

Suddenly -- just as happened long after the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten published their cartoons a decade earlier, mocking the Prophet Mohammad, a time lag occurred between the event and the build-up of an purposefully incited reaction among Muslims worldwide, resulting in protests by mobs of enraged Muslims looting and destroying and boycotting Danish goods -- allegations began to surface in Paris around the class Mr. Paty taught. 

 

A French police officer stands next to a portrait of slain French teacher Samuel Paty in the city of Montpellier on 21 October 2020 (AFP)

 

Radical Islamists expressed outrage online on Facebook, Instagram and allied social media platforms, inciting to revenge the Prophet from unforgivable offence of lese-majeste. Officials with the education ministry were lobbied, police were called on to investigate the "Islamophobia" that teacher Paty was subjecting his Muslim students to, with insistence on disciplinary action. Mr. Paty responded by filing a libel case against one obnoxious parent of one of his students whose claims against him verged on malicious threats. 

Because of the growing threats he was receiving he began to alter his daily habit of walking through a wooded area from the school to his home which he shared with his six-year-old son, choosing instead to walk a direct course through public areas used by many pedestrians. His alertness failed to protect him from the fanatical violence of a stranger confronting him on a street near the school, beheading him, and mutilating his body. 

After which the murderer took pleasure in taking photographs of his handiwork, broadcasting photographs and videos on Twitter and Instagram, sending them to President Macron, boasting of having "avenged the Prophet". Until he was cornered by police, shot and killed when he threatened them. French police have thwarted 32 attacks by terrorist operators associated with al-Qaeda since 2017. Other atrocities have taken place irrespective of a state of constant vigilance.

Now, President Macron is considering enacting a new law banning home-schooling, in the recognition that evading the public school system and using home-schooling as a shield for radical Koranic schools represents one of the signal problems in France, channeling young Muslims into attitudes of hostility to the country they've been born to and grown up into -- without absorbing its values. Where the accusations levelled by such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan of French Islamophobia resonates.

Where Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan concurred with demands by his national assembly to recall the Pakistani ambassador to France, except that Pakistan currently has no ambassador in France. Instead Khan issued an open letter to the Muslim world leaders that they must "collectively counter the growing Islamophobia in non-Muslim states, especially Western states"; clearly 'Western states' have no business whatever reacting to the murderous violence Islamists foist upon them, for to do so is insulting to jihad.

 

France pays tribute to Samuel Paty (Photo: Pascal GUYOT / AFP via Getty Images)

 

President Macron's Pathetic Mea Culpa in Conflicted France

 President Emmanuel Macron Oct. 2, 2020. Ludovic Marin/AP

"Actions will be stepped up [against Islamist extremism]."

"This is not about making more statements. Our fellow citizens expect actions. These actions will be stepped up."

"We know what needs to be done."

"We ourselves have constructed our own separatism [by creating ghettos in the suburbs of major cities, particularly Paris]."

"We built a concentration of misery and difficulties, we concentrated populations according to origin and social milieu. We created neighbourhoods where the promise of the republic was never kept and where these most radical forms [of Islamism] became sources of hope." 

French President Emmanuel Macron

"Liberty, equality, fraternity — those words have no value here. They only have value in the centre of Paris."

"Liberty — you go out and the police stop you five or six times a day. Equality — when you try to find work, you don't have the same chance as someone in a rich district of Paris. Fraternity — everyone fears the other, the foreigner — the Black or the North African."

Issa (full name withheld) from Paris suburb of African and North African residents 

"In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful..." 

"Macron, the leader of the infidels, I executed one of your dogs who dared to belittle Muhammad...".

Abdoulakh A, 18-year-old Islamist Assassin

"It is time to close all the Islamist prayer rooms, we know very well where they are." 

"It is an attack on the very existence of our nation and civilization." 

"They have known this for years and have done nothing. Courage is lacking, collaborationists abound. Only force reduces violence... It is time to send radical imams back to their countries of origin without delay."

General Pierre de Villiers

Police officers stand by a knife, seen on the ground, in Paris on Sept. 25, 2020. French terrorism authorities investigated a knife attack that wounded at least two people near the former offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, authorities said. (Soufian Fezzani Via AP)

Following the grotesque beheading of history/geography teacher Samuel Paty, 47, outside his middle-school in the suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Friday by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee, the Grand Mosque of Pantin was shuttered for an estimated six-month period as the investigation of the murder proceeds and the French Republic's earlier-made plan to crack down on Islamist extremism in the wake of previous attacks, proceeds. The mosque had shared a video days before the murder, on its Facebook page.

The video had been produced by the father of one of the Muslim students whom the father claimed had been outraged and upset at the teacher's use of a number of Mohammad cartoons in his class of 13-year-olds, dedicated to French values and freedom of speech. The mosque's 1,500 worshipers must now wait for a future date when their mosque will be re-opened after a closure meant "for the sole purpose of preventing acts of terrorism", according to an official notice posted outside the mosque.

"There's no room for violence in our religion", the Pantin mosque declared in a statement it later published on its Facebook page. "We strongly condemn this savagery." M'hammed Henniche, the imam of the Pantin mosque, said he regretted having shared the video on social media, but he was motivated out of concern for the well-being of Muslim children, and had no intention of validating the video's objections to the Mohammad cartoons.

That same man who produced the video is accused of an online campaign against Samuel Paty, and it emerges that he also sent messages to the killer, 18-year-old Abdoulakh A, before the attack took place. The father whose name has been withheld, has been accused as well of issuing a 'fatwa' against Samuel Paty whose horrendous murder has shocked France and sent thousands into the streets to denounce Islamist terrorism, and proclaim their support for the dead teacher and the values he sought to impart to his pupils.

 

The pupil's father along with an imam the media describe as a radical Islamist, are both considered to have jointly issued the fatwa calling for punishment for the teacher -- both are being investigated for an "assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise", according to Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. The Sheikh Yassin Collective - an Islamist group named after the founder of the Palestinian militant group Hamas - would be outlawed for being "directly involved" in the killing.

 

A further fifty-one French Muslim organizations, including charities and NGOs, are to be inspected by government officials and closed if they are deemed to be promoting hatred. "Police operations have taken place and more will follow, concerning tens of individuals", stated the Interior Minister; altogether some 80 investigations are being conducted into online hate. 

France, according to a police source, was preparing to deport 213 foreigners who are listed on a government watchlist, suspected of extreme religious beliefs. Of the total there are about 150 individuals serving jail sentences. According to a security source the deportations were already in the works before Friday's atrocity. In the 24 hours following the murder of Mr. Paty ten people connected to the attack were arrested.

Moroccan-born Abdelhakim Sefriuoi has used social media for many years and has been on the list of intelligence services for several decades. It was he who formed the Sheikh Yassin Collective, in his activist role supporting the Palestinian 'cause'. Hassen Chalghoumi, imam of the Paris suburb of Drancy's mosque had warned against Islamist extremists and of the influence of imam Sefriuoi, calling on parents not to teach their children to hate France. 

 

Accompanied by other Muslim leaders, Chalghoumi placed flowers outside the Conflans-Sainte-Honorine school, telling reporters the Muslim community must wake to the dangers of Islamist extremism. "[The teacher] is a martyr for freedom of expression, and a wise man who has taught tolerance, civilization and respect for others" Chalghoumi, president of the Imams of France Conference, stated.

 Pictured: Bois-d'Aulne College in Conflans-Saint-Honorine, where Samuel Paty was murdered on October 16. (Photo by Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images)

"A borderline in the abominable has just been crossed."

"They are attacking the most sacred stronghold of the Republic: the school and the physical person of the teachers. A teacher is beheaded for showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons in a freedom of speech seminar. The victim has reportedly received death threats. The butcher of Conflans-Saint-Honorine is ISIS at home: a solemn message in the form of a macabre ceremony, a warning for all the teaching staff who will have to shut up or perish. This is not an act of 'separatism', it is a declaration of war that must be dealt with accordingly."

French essayist Pascal Bruckner

Canada's Official Terror List

"[Blood & Honour], an international neo-Nazi network whose ideology is derived from the National Socialist doctrine of Nazi Germany [now appears on an expanded list of terrorist entities under the Criminal Code list]."
"Through their armed branch, Combat 18 [C18], the group has carried out violent actions, including murders and bombings."
"The various divisions of Blood & Honour organize concerts and white pride rallies that bring together skinheads and other neo-Nazi supporters. Many acts of violence are attributed to members affiliated to the group."
Public Safety Canada

"[Both groups have] a presence in various places across the country. There has been accelerating public interest in this regard."
"The government is constrained from commenting any further, but what the listing demonstrates is that these two entities have been thoroughly investigated, that the proper police and security reports have been presented to the government, and the evidence is clear that they fall within [the criteria for a terrorist entity]."
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale

Canada's national security agencies have focused their sights on right-wing extremism as a threat to safety and security in the country, nudging off to a lesser focus it would appear, the threats emanating from Islamist terrorist groups, previously taking centre stage as imminent violent threats. In updating the list of terrorist organizations white supremacist groups and their "armed branches" now share space with threatening groups more familiar to the Canadian public, joined by three new groups, Iranian-backed Shia militias.

Canada is still avoiding the recognition long overdue that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran's military, its military leaders answerable to the Republic Grand Ayatollah, is by definition a terrorist group. The Islamic Republic of Iran tasked the IRGC with recruiting Shia Muslims in Lebanon in the 1980s to form an offshoot terrorist group now known as Hezbollah, training and arming them and dispatching them internationally for terrorist actions abroad.

Officials in the current Liberal Trudeau-led government feel more comfortable asserting their vigilance over neo-Nazi and other far-right groups as a destabilizing threat to Canadian unity and protection of vulnerable groups within the country. Blood & Honour originally established in Britain has been implicated in violent attacks in North America and Europe, and active in Canada where their focus is on victimizing visible minorities. Their offences revolve around weapons and assaults.

By listing a group under terrorism, authorities can legally seize property, prevent financial institutions from business associations with such groups and prosecuting those who "knowingly participate in or contribute to, directly or indirectly, any activity" of the group. "This participation is only an offence if its purpose is to enhance the ability of any terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity", according to Public Safety Canada.

Under the previous Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada cut off all diplomatic and official relations with the Iranian Republic, acknowledging its support of terrorism, its cult of aggrandizing Iran as a malign influence in the Middle East with its nuclear aspirations and its openly-stated threats against Israel. Islamist fundamentalism in Canada is not monopolized by Shia Iran; the Muslim Brotherhood, its Sunni counterpart, has a well-established foothold in the Muslim Canadian community.

The Brotherhood is as worrisome a threat to most countries of the Middle East and internationally as is the aspirations of Iran to take command of the region. Official Canada has placed Brotherhood-linked Hamas on its terrorism list, but not the Muslim Brotherhood which inspired Hamas's formation. A year ago a Conservative motion in the House of Commons to declare the IRGC a terrorist group had the support of all political parties and the Liberals pledged to support the motion, then failed to follow through.

In this file photo taken on Sept. 22, 2018 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) march during the annual military parade marking the anniversary of the outbreak of the devastating 1980-1988 war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, in the capital Tehran.AFP / Getty Images

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau intended to 'mend fences' with Iran, to re-establish the Canadian mission in Tehran and invite Iran to re-open its embassy and consulates in Canada. And no doubt restore to Iran all the assets frozen by the previous Conservative government. Negotiations had been underway between Ottawa and Tehran on that agenda, with events since then stalling the effort. But then, Ottawa, led by Justin Trudeau, has had other problems to contend with; its failed relations with India, and then with China among other 'irritations'.

"The listing process requires careful consideration of criminal or security intelligence reports by our security and intelligence agencies, which are reviewed by Department of Justice counsel to ensure that entities meet the legal threshold for listing under the Criminal Code." 
“Canada is committed to working with like-minded countries to ensure Iran is held to account. This includes strong measures to hold Iran accountable for its support of terrorism."
Scott Bardsley, spokesman, Ralph Goodale, Public Safety Canada

Holding Iran to account? By what measure exactly! What would make Iran fall within the 'criteria for a terrorist entity' to satisfy its inclusion on Canada's terrorist list when it has consistently and repeatedly carried out terrorist acts through the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and its Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah? Its complicity in Syria's war against its own Syrian Sunni population, its instigation of conflict in Yemen through support and arming of the Houthi Shias. And its ongoing threat of weaponizing its long-rage missiles with nuclear tips in the too-near future...

Defending Canada While Holding Canada to Account

"[The National Defence counter-intelligence unit can not] arbitrarily conduct surveillance on Canadian citizens; [investigations may take place when a clear link is present to defence security interests]."
"[In] an increasingly complex global information environment, and with Canadians constantly travelling all over the world [military-intelligence personnel may incidentally gather some information about Canadian citizens]."
Capt.Nicola LaMarre, National Defence spokeswoman

"We're worried about what it means when they collect inadvertent information."
"We don't know the scope or the degree to which Canadians' information is being captured."
Tim McSorley, national coordinator, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, Ottawa

Military spies will be allowed to gather the information of Canadians in certain circumstances. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

"We have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms … when governments, regardless of which stripe, do not defend those rights, Canadians have to pay."
"I hope people take notice of this. I hope people are angered that governments violated people’s fundamental rights."
"And I hope people remember to demand of governments, this one and all future governments, that nobody ever has their fundamental rights violated."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, October 2017

Under Canadian law military intelligence is able to collect and share information about Canadian citizens -- and that includes material gathered by chance -- when it supports a legitimate investigation. This is a federal directive newly disclosed on a public request for information by the Canadian Press. The incidental or 'chance' information-gathering includes anything dredged from the Internet. And this concerns civil-liberties advocates who think in terms of the vast amount of data and sources available in cyberspace.

The directive, encompassing eight pages dated August 2018, is titled Guidance on the Collection of Canadian Citizen Information, made available through the Access to Information Act. It represents an instruction manual meant for National Defence employees and members of the Canadian Forces, that any information collected on Canadian citizens must have a "direct and immediate relationship" to a military operation or activity, warning as well that "emerging technologies and capabilities" increase the potential for such data to be scooped inadvertently from open sources such as social-media feeds.

Whether inadvertently collected or intentionally, data on Canadians may lawfully be kept and used in support of authorized defence-intelligence operations, points out the directive. Parliamentarians attached to the national-security and intelligence committee are in the process of examining the directive through a study on the manner in which Canadian Forces gather, use, keep and share information about Canadians, forming part of their intelligence work.

This study follows on an earlier report the committee produced that concluded the military has one of the largest intelligence programs in Canada, with little outside oversight. Thousands of pages of data were examined by the committee along with a number of closed-door briefings, to find that defence agencies carry out an entire range of intelligence activities. Information is collected through sensitive methods by means of human sources, technical means and investigations; activities that encompass considerable risks, among them the potential for Canadians' rights infringements.

Stricter controls on the military's intelligence-gathering including the possibility of legislation setting out when and how defence intelligence operations can take place, is being called for by the committee. The Canadian Forces national counter-intelligence unit carries out Canadian citizens' information which includes identifying, investigating and countering threats to the security of Canada's military from foreign intelligence services, or from individuals or groups engaged on espionage, sabotage, subversion, terrorist activities and other criminal activity relating to security concerns.

The activities of intelligence gathering, ensuring that specialized agents acquire and maintain critical information pertaining to the actions and activities of Canadians whose sympathies may lie with an outside body engaged in terrorism, potentially threatening the safety and security of other Canadians and/or Canadian institutions logically would seem to justify the requirement for such data collection. Without which it would not be possible to be alert to danger, and to the capacity to react, in apprehending dangerously sinister plans to wreak havoc on Canadian interests.

There have on occasion been just such incidents which have been identified and apprehended, those involved placed on trial, convicted, sentenced and imprisoned. There have also been instances where Canadian intelligence units have shared information with foreign-partner counterparts as within the Five Eyes compact in a bid to allow for cooperation between Western democracies threatened by common enemies. Aside from which it is no secret that malign actors on the international scene have infiltrated Western societies, requiring that their activities be monitored.

All this by way of setting the stage for events that brought the Charter of Rights and Freedoms into direct confrontation with the imperative for Canadian Defence and intelligence to apprise their global defence and intelligence partners in discussions and prevention of terrorist attacks. Particularly at a time when Islamists have demonstrated their facility in carrying out horrendously murderous attacks on Western democracies. Not to mention the issues involved in Canadian Muslims enrolling themselves as members of Islamist terrorist groups.

Omar Khadr appears at the courthouse in Edmonton with his lawyer in hopes of getting a Canadian Passport to travel to Saudi Arabia and permission to speak with his sister in Edmonton, December 13, 2018. Greg Southam/Postmedia

As, for example the prime minister asserting that Ottawa’s apology and reported $10.5 million compensation to Omar Khadr is about the former Guantanamo Bay inmate’s Charter rights, not about the details of the case. Details, what details? That the Khadr family, Egyptian immigrants to Canada, the father a confidant of Osama bin Laden, who raised funds within Canada for the support of al-Qaeda activities and who took his sons to Afghanistan's jihadi training camps where 15-year-old Omar was taught how to make explosives and threw one at a U.S. Army medic, killing him, blinding another.

Details, details. American surgeons saved Khadr's life from life-threatening injuries he sustained during that attack in which he took part against an American military group in conflict with the Taliban. As a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay prison for Islamists Khadr claimed to have been mistreated. As a Canadian he was visited by a Canadian diplomat and by the CSIS group who questioned him there. That, according to the prime minister, abridged his Charter rights, therefore Canadian taxpayers were on the hook for $10.5 in 'compensation'.

And there were others. Just after the horrific 9/11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, the international community was placed on high alert, and Muslim men were under great scrutiny, a web that caught another Canadian, Maher Arar who happened to be in the wrong place at the right time, was apprehended by U.S. agents and sent to his home country of Syria where he was arrested, imprisoned and tortured. His Charter rights too were judged to have been abridged and a similar pay-out of 'compensation' awarded him for his pain and troubles; Canadian investigators charged with giving questionable data to their U.S. counterparts.

Wait, why stop there!? There's also the 'settlement' reached by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with three other Muslim-Canadians, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin who sued the government for $100,000 million. Trudeau saved Canadian taxpayers quite a bit of tax funding, he claimed, with the final payout to the three men of $31 million, who wee 'falsely accused of terrorist links' but not by Canada. 

El Maati had been detained in Syria after travelling to the region from Canada for his wedding, which he was never able to attend. Nureddin, a geologist and educator in Toronto, was imprisoned while visiting family. Almalki, an Ottawa electronics engineer, was held for 22 months. And they alleged that Canada was instrumental in aiding in their ordeals. And our government agreed with them, yet even so in language couched to imply perhaps yes, perhaps not.

That uncertainty can be read in the joint statement issued by Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland who formally apologized to the three men "for any role Canadian officials may have played in relation to their detention and mistreatment abroad and any resulting harm."

Is this the price of being Canadian?