Violence Against Jews: Islamic Preacher Tells Muslims To Kill Jewish People

A Canadian mosque received intense scrutiny from the local Muslim community and was facing a police complaint after a video emerged online showing a visiting Imam imploring its worshippers to kill Jews, according to local reports Thursday.

The sermon was given last year on Dec. 23 at the Dar Al-Arqam Mosque in Montreal's predominately poor Saint-Michelle neighborhood, which was reported as having one of the most ethnically diverse populations in Montreal.

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In the video, which was posted to the mosque’s YouTube channel three days after the sermon, the imam can be heard saying in Arabic, “Oh Muslim! Oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

The tremendous amount of backlash the video received online prompted the hate crimes unit of the Montreal Police to file an official complaint Monday, with the Jewish community group B'nai Brith in Quebec, saying it was “totally unacceptable” for a mosque to allow such hate-filled rhetoric.

"This is inciting violence, and this is inciting radicalization," B'nai Brith’s regional director, Harvey Levine told local reporters, adding that he was troubled by the fact that the hate crime unit hasn't taken any action yet. "It's against the law and has to be stopped."

The president of the Muslim Council of Montreal, Salam Elmenyawi, wanted to know why the controversial imam was invited to the mosque in the first place and was demanding an apology, noting that the Dar Al-Arqam Mosque was not one of the 40 Muslim places of worship it represents.

The United States witnessed a plethora of bomb threats towards Jewish community center in recent months, with nearly 68 incidents being reported across 26 different states in January and February. When President Donald Trump was asked about the wave of bomb threats at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February, he responded that his daughter Ivanka had converted to Judaism and that “we’re going to have peace in this country," without ever mentioning the term "anti-Semitic," Haaretz reported.

Approximately 53.3 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes in the U.S. were towards Jews in 2015, according to The Jerusalem Post Nov. 15, 2016. The 664 hate crimes targeting Jewish people in 2015 was a nine percent increase from the number in 2014.