A Victoria Muslim leader is under fire again for comments shared online in which he says Jewish people are the enemy who “spread corruption through the land.”
In a 35-minute video posted to YouTube in August, Sheikh Younus Kathrada described Jewish people as murderers and killers of “prophets and the righteous” and said that “not even fetuses in the wombs are safe” from them.
“Here we are, listening to and watching the news and following it, while the tyranny of the enemy is ongoing,” Kathrada said in the sermon, posted by a user called “Muslim Youth Victoria” and titled “characteristics of the enemy.”
“Today let’s take a moment to remind ourselves who the actual enemy is,” Kathrada says in the video, referring to the “Zionist entity” that “calls itself Israel.”
He attributed the messages in the sermon not to personal opinions, but to “proofs from the book of Allah.”
A person who answered a call to a phone number on Kathrada’s Facebook page hung up almost immediately and a subsequent call went to voicemail. Voicemails and emails to the Muslim Youth of Victoria went unanswered.
The Muslim Youth of Victoria says on its website that Kathrada leads its Dar Al-Ihsan Islamic Centre, which serves as a place for Muslims to gather for religious and social events and provides educational activities for youth and non-Muslims to learn about Islam.
Michael Sachs, director for western Canada at Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, said the Jewish community is “disgusted” and upset with Kathrada’s antisemitic comments.
Kathrada’s comments need to be condemned by all religious leaders, politicians and communities across B.C., he said.
“Continuing to allow these hate-filled words to be spread without ramification has clear and dangerous consequences,” Sachs said, pointing to a recent spike in antisemitic acts of violence, including an arson attack at a Vancouver synagogue in May.
The video was reported to Victoria police and the B.C. RCMP hate crimes unit, Sachs said.
Both police forces said they are aware of the video but could not confirm whether they are investigating.
“Generally, only in the event that an investigation results in the laying of criminal charges would the RCMP confirm its investigation, the nature of any charges laid and the identity of the individual(s) involved,” RCMP spokesman Cpl. Alex Bérubé said.
Victoria police spokesperson Const. Terri Healy said the department cannot speculate on whether messages like the ones in the video could be investigated as a hate crime, but said VicPD takes reports of hate crimes seriously and encourages anyone who believes they have been the victim of a hate crime to report it to police.
On Tuesday, Kathrada lashed out against “the anti-Islam Zionist media” in a series of posts on social media accusing media outlets and politicians of dwelling on “non-issues” to distract from ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.
“More funding is approved for the ongoing genocide and the war is expanding to Lebanon; I guess none of this is newsworthy,” he wrote in one social media post. “Instead, let’s fabricate lies and find someone to victimize.”
In another post, he wrote: “It is so abundantly clear and obvious that the media is not invested in the truth, rather their loyalty to their masters who pay them and whose corrupt beliefs they share are more important to them.”
Kathrada has been subject to previous complaints over his sermons.
B’nai Brith Canada filed a complaint to the B.C. Hate Crimes Unit in 2020 for what the advocacy group called “another act of incitement by a firebrand religious figure.”
The organization said in a 2014 Facebook post that Kathrada likened Jewish people to monkeys and pigs and called on Allah to “tear them apart,” which B’nai Brith said is a “well-known antisemitic smear” in the Muslim world.
In 2004, the Canadian Jewish Congress filed a complaint against Kathrada over the contents of one of his lectures that included a reference to Jews as “the brothers of the monkeys and the swine,” made when he was head of the Dar al-Madinah Islamic Society in East Vancouver.
B.C.’s human rights commissioner issued a statement last November in response to rising antisemitism and Islamophobia.
“The devastating events in Israel and Palestine are creating ripple effects globally, including a surge of discrimination and violence targeting Jewish and Muslim people and recrimination against those speaking out peacefully against the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Kasari Govender said.
— With files from The Canadian Press
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