Islamic Sunday school pulls anti-Semitic teachings from website

A Toronto-area Islamic organization is facing a police investigation after one of its Sunday school texts drew a comparison between Judaism and Nazism and accused "treacherous” Jews of conspiring to assassinate the Prophet Mohammed.

The East End Madrassah, which holds classes in a Scarborough public school, apologized for the offending statements, removed them from its website and promised to review its teaching material. But a Jewish advocacy group says the school must go a step further and open up its curriculum to scrutiny by outside organizations and the provincial Education Ministry.

"The onus is on them to prove to the community at large that they are not teaching hate,” said Avi Benlolo, president of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies. "They need to reach out to us and to other groups to convince us that this was not meant and they will take any step to change it.”

It’s not clear if that will happen: the Sunday school’s principal did not respond to The Globe’s request for comment Wednesday.
On its website, the East End Madrassah says it has been operating for 37 years out of David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute, a high school on Lawrence Avenue East. Classes run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sundays. It is affiliated with the Islamic Shia Ithna-Asheri Jama’at, a charity based in the suburb of Vaughan. (...)