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Or sign-in if you have an account.Photo of Liberal MP Salma Zahid with Firas Al-Najim. Photo by X.comFirst Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorA man with a history of organizing public vigils for terrorist leaders posted a weekend picture of himself alongside a Liberal MP, praising their “nice interaction” and claiming she had promised him she wouldn’t “bow to any Zionist lobbies.”Firas Al-Najim has been described by multiple Jewish organizations as a “notorious” Toronto-area anti-Israel activist, with a years-long history of extremist rhetoric targeting Canada’s Jewish and Persian communities.On Sunday, Al-Najim posted a photo to X.com of himself alongside Salma Zahid, Liberal MP for Scarborough Centre—Don Valley East.In the image, Al-Najim is wearing a Palestinian-style keffiyeh, a hat bearing the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and a shirt and pendant bearing portraits of Iran’s supreme leaders, including the incumbent, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei.This newsletter from NP Comment tackles the topics you care about. (Subscriber-exclusive edition on Fridays)By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againIn between Zahid and Al-Najim is a young girl wearing a hijab.In her own social media post that same day, Zahid said she was “approached by a young girl for a photo,” and did not recognize the “older man” accompanying her.“I did not notice the shirt he was wearing and I would never have agreed to such a photo if I had,” she said.She added, “I unequivocally condemn the IRGC and oppose all foreign interference in Canadian politics,” and that she has always been “an advocate for human rights and peace, and the rights of women and girls.”In 2024, Al-Najim was the face of a planned vigil for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to be held at Mississauga’s Celebration Square. Occurring just two weeks after Remembrance Day, posters for the event included images of poppies and the phrase “lest we forget.”“Commemorating 40 days after the Martyrdom of the leaders of Resistance fighting for Palestinian freedom. Bring candles and pictures,” read a poster circulated by Al-Najim’s group, Canadian Defenders 4 Human rights.Hamas, the architect of the October 7 terrorist attacks, has been a listed Canadian terror entity since 2002. “For us, he’s our hero,” Al-Najim said of Sinwar in an interview at the time with Mississauga News.More recently, Al-Najim organized another vigil in Toronto for Qassem Soleimani, former commander of the Iranian Quds Force until he was killed in a U.S. air strike in 2020.The Quds Force is also a listed Canadian terror entity. The group’s official 2012 citation cites its history of providing “arms, funding and paramilitary training to extremist groups.”All the while, Al-Najim has been a regular feature of anti-Israel protests and demonstrations in support of the Islamic Republic of Iran.In 2019, B’nai Brith named Al-Najim as the figure in a video screaming invective at a Jewish man in a wheelchair. The man accuses “Zionists” of “claiming this country as if it’s occupied Palestine and calling it now Israel.”One of Al-Najim’s last social media posts before uploading the photo of Zahid, in fact, was an apparent death threat against an Israeli politician.“Seems like (Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir) will end up like kahane the way he is moving,” reads the post. Kahane is likely a reference to Meir Kahane, an ultranationalist rabbi assassinated in New York City in 1990 by an Islamist attacker.The post also includes a red triangle, a symbol used by Hamas to denote an Israeli military target.In his post with Zahid, Al-Najim said he discussed the issue of scheduled speakers to a Muslim Association of Canada conference being denied entry to the country.One of them was Anas Altikriti, a U.K.-based Muslim activist who has called the October 7 terrorist attacks a “lie,” and has personally met with senior members of Hamas.Altikriti was turned away at Montreal’s Pierre Trudeau International Airport, reportedly because he allegedly failed to disclose that he had been denied a visa to the United States in 2023.Al-Najim claimed that after raising the border issue with Zahid, “she said she is solving it.”This would not be the first time that Al-Najim has managed to be photographed alongside a prominent Toronto-area politician.Last year, he was photographed at a Ramadan event next to Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish, a former Liberal MP.In 2018, he was photographed next to Windsor mayor Drew Dilkens during an event at the city’s Ahlul-Bayt Mosque. As with Zahid, Al-Najim was similarly wearing garb bedecked with photos of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Aside from its other shortfalls, Canada’s MAID regime occasionally veers into the realm of a horror movie. The National Post’s Sharon Kirkey detailed a recent College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario investigation against James MacLean, a MAID administrator accused of meeting a 45-year-old patient with Crohn’s disease at a Tim Hortons, approving him for death, and then later personally driving him to a facility where he could undergo lethal injection. Photo by Tammy Scott-Wallace/Telegraph-JournalFor decades, Quebec politics has featured a delicate dance between Quebec nationalists who don’t want to separate, and Quebec nationalists who do.Prime Minister Brian Mulroney oversaw a massive caucus of nationalist-minded Quebec MPs in the 1980s, only for many of them to become explicitly separatist in the 1990s, forming the core of what is now the Bloc Québécois.On the other side of the equation, the Coalition Avenir Québec – the party currently in power in Quebec City – was founded in 2012 in part to serve as a home for Quebec nationalists who were tired of all the separatism.And now this same fissure may come to define Alberta politics.Separatism has only ever garnered support from about one third of Albertans. But among the conservative circles that are usually in charge of the province, the issue is much more divisive. A March survey by Abacus Data found that among Albertans who voted for Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party, support for independence is at 42 per cent, against 48 per cent who oppose.So what’s playing out now is Smith coming out publicly against separatism, but attempting to do it in such a way that it doesn’t scare separatists into forming conservative splinter parties. The threat of a separatist fissure being particularly visceral for Smith, given that her political career literally began with the Wildrose Party, a conservative offshoot formed in protest against the province’s reigning Progressive Conservatives. And that fissure, more than any other single issue, would lead to Alberta electing an NDP government in 2015. Speaking of separatism, Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a press scrum on Tuesday that if Alberta secured a referendum result that was just “50 per cent plus one” for separation, he wouldn’t recognize it. This isn’t that controversial; under the Clarity Act the rule is that something seismic as separation should require a “clear majority” in support. But the comment nevertheless irked the Bloc Québécois. Here’s Bloc MP Christine Normandin telling the House of Commons that “democracy” is “50 per cent plus one,” and that anything else is “authoritarian overreach.” Photo by ParlVu Get the latest from Tristin Hopper straight to your inbox Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.