Ontario regional police forces investigating threatening email sent to Muslim schools across Canada

Ontario regional police forces investigating threatening email sent to Muslim schools across Canada

Anonymous note threatened to kill Muslims, unless they are deported

A number of regional police forces in Ontario have launched an investigation into an email sent to Islamic schools across Canada over the course of this week, which threatened to kill Muslims unless they are deported.

The Muslim Association of Canada, which runs the eight private schools that received the email, said they alerted municipal police in Ontario, Vancouver and Montreal, as well as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, on Thursday morning.

The MAC schools follow standard provincial educational curricula, on top of Islamic, Quranic and Arabic-language education.

The email — which CBC News has seen — was fired off from a party identifying themselves as "Jehu, Citizen Vigilante" and came from an account titled "exposingNWO@protonmail.com." It was time-stamped last Sunday, Sept. 20.

Using dehumanizing language against Muslims, it says "millions on top of millions of people in the nation of Canada are ready to take up arms."

The email alludes to the upcoming Alberta referendum, which includes a question asking voters there 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."

It then says this will happen "regardless of the election results," and "you won't be warned again."

CBC News reached out to the RCMP and the six local forces where the eight schools are located.

In a statement, the 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.

In the Greater Toronto Area, Peel Regional Police also posted a statement on the social media platform X, saying its hate crime unit is actively investigating. It said it beefed up officer presence overnight near local mosques and schools, and patrols will continue over the weekend.

Waterloo Regional Police said its officers visited a school after receiving notification of an emailed threat and conducted safety planning. The Ontario service's hate crime unit has launched an investigation, and are aware of emails sent to other jurisdictions as well.

The Ottawa Police Service confirmed it received a complaint and said it is working with law enforcement partners as part of an ongoing investigation.

"As a precaution, police visibility remains increased around religious institutions and the educational facility that received the complaint," the OPS said in a statement. "At this time, we have no information indicating a specific or imminent threat to religious or educational institutions in Ottawa."

Scope of threat unprecedented: MAC

Nabil Sultan, a spokesperson for the Muslim Association of Canada, said while the organization has received "hate comments and emails on social media" in the past, a single note targeting many of its schools is something it has never experienced before.

"Such a disturbing email to be received by teachers and administrators, and families and children, really makes it difficult for us to live as a community feeling good about ourselves, feeling that we are welcomed in this society," he said in an interview with CBC News from London, Ont., where two of the schools that received the email are located.

Sultan said it was hard not to think of the Afzaal family, which lost four of five members after a man deliberately drove his truck into the group while they were out on an evening stroll in June 2021. London police called it a hate-motivated crime and a sentencing judge said it was a terrorist attack.

"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," he said. "And this is a reminder that that is not the case, and we're still under threat."

CBC News visited one of the two Ottawa schools that received the emailed threat, Abraar Elementary, on both Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, around the times parents were picking up or dropping off their children.

An Ottawa Police Service vehicle was parked outside the school on Thursday.

Sara Omar, who had just dropped her five-year-old daughter, spoke to CBC News outside the school on Friday.

"Definitely me and my husband, and other moms in group chats, we were worried and anxious. But at the same time, honestly, we won't be intimidated," she said.

"We have confidence in our schools, in our community. So we won't stop living and bringing our children to school because of these threats."

Omar said she and her husband are still trying to figure out how to have a conversation with their daughter about the threat.

"If there is a lockdown, what does that look like? How to listen to her teachers in that moment — in such an intense moment. How do you even have these conversations with a five-year-old?"

The school's principal, Mohammed Saleem, said getting the note in his inbox was a "total shock," given the "explicitly violent language" and clear threats to children in the email.

Parents at the school were notified by email and teachers were preparing to have classroom talks with students on Friday, he said.

Saleem said he is unsure how long heightened security measures, including police stationed in front of the school and patrolling the neighbourhood, might last.

"Usually, we will work with the police, consult with them to see, because they will let us know from time to time what they are hearing on their radar, what they're seeing," he said.

The school recently temporarily hired security guards, he said, after gunmen killed three people during a mosque shooting in San Diego last May in what police have called a hate-motivated crime.

Push for more government action

Statistics Canada reported in March that police-reported hate crimes in Canada more than doubled between 2018 and 2024, jumping from 1,817 to 4,882. Incidents involving Islamophobia in Canada nearly tripled, growing from 84 reported crimes to 229 over the same period.

The agency also noted a tripling of reported hate crimes targeting Jews from 2020 to 2024, rising from 331 incidents in 2020 to 920 in 2024.

Concerns over the email come on the heels of a shooting near the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ont., which police have said was a deliberate, hate-motivated attack aimed at the Jewish community.

Saleem said the incident highlights a hole left behind when the federal government scrapped two offices — focusing on combating Islamophobia and antisemitism respectively — earlier this year. They were replaced with an advisory council that is meant to combat all forms of hate.

"It was the wrong move," Saleem said. "It's important that we kept that office to make sure that proper interventions, policies are being enacted to combat Islamophobia."

In an interview, Amira Elghawaby, the former special representative on combating Islamophobia, did not go as far as saying her office should be restored, but said that the federal government needs to continue to "meet and uphold its commitments on human rights, which includes making sure that Canadians of all backgrounds, including faith minorities like Canadian Muslims, have the protections and supports and the solutions they need to live lives of dignity in Canada."

She spoke to CBC News from New York City, attending meetings on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly, where she said it was clear to her that both Islamophobia and antisemitism continue to be dangerous at the global level.

Raffy Boudjikanian is a senior reporter with the CBC's Parliamentary Bureau in Ottawa. He has also worked in Edmonton, Calgary and Montreal for the public broadcaster.