A Canadian Islamic organization is accusing a Toronto-area Jewish day school of using a textbook that vilifies Muslims.

In a Nov. 19 letter to Jewish groups, the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR-CAN, charges that a textbook used at the Joe Dwek Ohr HaEmet Sephardic School employs "inflammatory and hateful terms in describing Muslims."

CAIR-CAN alleges that the book, "2000 Years of Jewish History," describes Muslims as "rabid fanatics" with "savage beginnings."

"The entire chapter devoted to Islam presents a pernicious and extreme portrayal of Muslims and the Islamic faith. The material further denigrates the Prophet Muhammad as a 'rabid Jew-hater,' and falsely portrays Islam as inherently anti-Semitic and devoted to hating Jews," the group said in its letter to the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center For Holocaust Studies and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, or CIJA.

It said the text is used in grade 7 and 8 girls' classes at the Orthodox Jewish day school and "leaves impressionable young Jewish readers with a sense of suspicion and even intolerance towards their fellow Canadians."

The group wants the Centre for Jewish Education of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto to investigate.

No one from CIJA, the Wiesenthal Center or Ohr HaEmet responded to JTA's requests for comment.

CAIR-CAN's salvo comes on the heels of an investigation by Toronto-area police of a local Islamic school. Earlier this month, police cleared the school of hate crimes allegations following a complaint by Jewish groups. York Regional Police found that teaching materials at the East End Madrassah attacked Jews and "suggested intolerance," but were not criminal.

Part of the madrassah's curriculum encouraged boys to keep fit for jihad, compared Jews to Nazis, and referred to "Jewish plots and treacheries."

The complaint "prompted change" at the madrassah, noted CAIR-CAN in its letter, adding that the group "welcomes that change."

When police began their probe, the Toronto District School Board,  which rented space to the school, revoked its permit and the madrassah had to relocate.

JTA, 22 November 2012

See also "CAIR-CAN calls on Jewish school to remove anti-Muslim textbook", CAIR-CAN press release, 19 November 2012

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In case of competing rights, a Toronto woman has lodged a complaint against a barber who refused to cut her hair because he's Muslim.

In June, Faith McGregor requested a man's haircut at the Terminal Barber Shop in downtown Toronto. Co-owner Omar Mahrouk told her that his Muslim faith prohibits him from touching a woman who is not a member of his family. All the other barbers in the shop said the same thing.

"For me it was just a haircut and started out about me being a woman," McGregor, 35, told the Toronto Star. "Now we're talking about religion versus gender versus human rights and businesses in Ontario."

She has filed a complaint with Ontario's Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario because the incident made her feel like a "second-class citizen." McGregor is not seeking monetary damages, but wants the tribunal to force the shop to offer men's haircuts to both genders.

"In our faith, I can cut my mother's hair, I can cut my sister's hair, I can cut my wife's hair, my daughter's hair," shop co-owner Karim Saaden told The Star. "We are people who have values and we hold on to (them). I am not going to change what the faith has stated to us to do."

McGregor rejected an offer from the shop to find a barber to cut her hair. "It's the principle of the matter...This needs to be discussed and now it's bigger than what occurred with me that one day," she told the newspaper.

The case heads to mediation in February. If that fails, an adjudicator appointed by the Human Rights Tribunal will decide the outcome.

Religion News Service, 15 November 2012

You'll note that the shop did subsequently offer to provide a barber to cut McGregor's hair but she rejected this. Furthermore, as one columnist in The Star points out: "Not 50 metres away from the Terminal Barber Shop is a unisex salon that offers basic haircuts to both men and women for 15 bucks." Yet McGregor chose to ask for a haircut at a shop run by Muslims.

You can't help wondering whether this was, just possibly, a conscious attempt to provoke a confrontation with the aim of promoting the Islamophobic stereotype of Muslims as backward misogynists who present a threat to western civilisation.

If that was McGregor's intention, then she will be well satisfied with the result. The story, which originally appeared in the gay & lesbian magazine Xtra!, was splashed across the front page of the The Star (which then published an editorial dismissing the controversy as a storm in a teacup). No doubt it will be seized on by raving anti-Muslim bigots across the blogosphere.

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