Multiple police forces in Ontario and Quebec have opened investigations into an email sent this week to nine Islamic schools across Canada, threatening to kill Muslims unless they are deported, the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) said Thursday.
The MAC, which runs the nine private schools that received the email, said it alerted municipal police in Ontario, Vancouver, and Montreal, as well as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, on Thursday morning. The email was time-stamped Sunday, Sept. 20, and sent from an account titled ‘exposingNWO@protonmail.com’ by a party identifying as ‘Jehu, Citizen Vigilante.’
The message, which CBC News has seen, uses dehumanizing language and states that ‘millions on top of millions of people in the nation of Canada are ready to take up arms.’ It alludes to the upcoming Alberta referendum, which includes a question asking voters to decide if the province should remain a part of Canada or eventually hold a vote on secession, and states Muslims will be ‘deported or slaughtered’ once ‘Alberta becomes its own nation,’ and that this will happen ‘regardless of the election results.’
Police forces in London, Peel Region, Waterloo, and Ottawa confirmed they are investigating. London Police Service said it is investigating a threat to a local school and ‘collaborating with partner law enforcement agencies to gather information and assess any potential connections.’ Potential Criminal Code offences may include uttering threats, criminal harassment, or inciting willful hatred, the service said.
Peel Regional Police said its hate crime unit is actively investigating and that it increased officer presence overnight near local mosques and schools, with patrols to continue over the weekend. Waterloo Regional Police said officers visited a school and conducted safety planning, with its hate crime unit investigating. Ottawa Police Service confirmed it received a complaint and said police visibility remains increased around religious institutions and the affected school.
Montreal’s police service confirmed its hate crime unit is aware of the incident and will lead its investigation.
Nabil Sultan, a MAC spokesperson, said the organization has received ‘hate comments and emails on social media’ before, but a single note targeting many of its schools is unprecedented. He said it was hard not to think of the Afzaal family, four of whose five members were killed in a hate-motivated attack in London, Ont., in June 2021.
‘A part of you wants to move on, and a part of you wants to believe that it was a lone wolf incident, and that something like this should not happen again,’ Sultan said. ‘And this is a reminder that that is not the case, and we’re still under threat.’
Mohammed Saleem, principal of Abraar Elementary School in Ottawa, said getting the note in his inbox was a ‘total shock,’ given the ‘explicitly violent language’ and clear threats to children in the email. He said the school recently temporarily hired security guards after gunmen killed three people during a mosque shooting in San Diego last May, in what police have called a hate-motivated crime.
Statistics Canada reported in March that police-reported hate crimes in Canada more than doubled between 2018 and 2024, from 1,817 to 4,882. Incidents involving Islamophobia nearly tripled, from 84 to 229 over the same period. Reported hate crimes targeting Jews tripled from 331 in 2020 to 920 in 2024.
Saleem said the incident highlights a gap left when the federal government scrapped two offices focusing on combating Islamophobia and antisemitism earlier this year, replacing them with an advisory council meant to combat all forms of hate. ‘It was the wrong move,’ he said.
Sources: CBC Politics