A Montreal judge has issued an arrest warrant for a local imam who allegedly used his pulpit at a city mosque to call for the slaughter of Jews, JTA reported on Monday.
Sheikh Muhammad ibn Musa Al Nasr was charged with willful promotion of hatred, according to the Montreal Police Service’s Hate Crimes Unit.
B’nai Brith Canada lodged a complaint with police in March against Al Masr, in the wake of a sermon he delivered several months earlier in which he cited this passage from the Quran: “O Muslim, O servant of Allah, O Muslim, O servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
The video of Al Masr surfaced after the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) released a video showing Sheikh Wael Al-Ghitawi of the Al Andalous Islamic Center in Montreal, delivering a 2014 sermon against the “people who slayed the prophets, shed their blood, and cursed the Lord ...”
B’nai Brith CEO Michael Mostyn responded to the warrant against Al Nasr.
“This incident and others like it demonstrate that anti-Semitism, especially in the guise of religion, remains a serious problem in Canada today,” he said, according to JTA.
Al Nasr’s current location is unknown, but it reportedly may be in his native Jordan. B’nai Brith is seeking his extradition to Canada.
The warrant for Al Nasr’s arrest came in the wake of a Montreal police investigation into the American rapper known as Madd Cold, who allegedly has advocated violence against the Jewish community during his frequent visits to the city. The investigation also is the result of a complaint by B’nai Brith.
Meanwhile, in Toronto, a local mosque recently issued an apology for a hateful prayer supplication from 2016 in which an imam wished for the death of Jews.