Edmonton: Same City, Same Islamic Daycare, Two Anti-Muslim Hate Incidents in Two Months, No Answers Yet.  

August 6, 2026: This marks the second time in two months that an Islamic daycare center in Edmonton has been vandalized with hateful graffiti. It is the same Muslim institution and the same location; even the structure targeted for graffiti is identical to the one defaced a month ago. A logical question arises: What happened to the first investigation? What are Edmonton police waiting for—a live bomb to go off, or for an innocent life to be lost—before taking this issue seriously and holding the culprit accountable?

The sequence of events is as follows: just last month, in June, similar anti-Islamic graffiti was sprayed on the wall facing the north side of the Edmonton Islamic Academy. The message read, “Protect women. Rise against Islam,” in bold red lettering on a white half-wall.

Fast forward a month, and the perpetrator(s), perhaps growing impatient with the local police’s inaction, struck again. This time, the message “Jesus loves you. Muhammad lies to you” was found spray-painted on the same half-wall last week.

While the Edmonton Police’s hate crimes unit is still investigating the June incident, they were unable to provide any details about the latest incident to the media as of late yesterday afternoon.

An advocacy group representing Canadian Muslims asserts that this graffiti is part of a troubling trend that has been escalating across the country. “We’ve seen, on average, one or more incidents of vandalism, threats, or violent attacks per day over the past month or so,” said Steven Zhou with the National Canadian Council of Muslims (NCCM).

Zhou urges the federal government to crack down on online hate speech while encouraging police across Canada to engage actively with the community to combat incidents like these.

However, this is easier said than done. The problem is that even if police wish to prioritize such matters, Canadian politicians with questionable loyalties and misplaced priorities often intervene. For example, just last week, when Edmonton police called on Edmontonians to report online hate speech on social media, Alberta’s Premier and Public Safety Minister, Danielle Smith, who has faced accusations of racism from her critics, dismissed the initiative. She argued that it could threaten free speech and insisted that police should concentrate on stopping violent crimes.

Smith went on to state that Alberta’s Justice Minister, Mike Ellis, would communicate with provincial and municipal police forces to ensure they understand that policing priorities in Alberta should focus on “violent crimes, illegal drugs, theft, and vandalism—not on regulating free speech“.

Thank you, Premier, for clarifying the distinction between violent crimes and free speech—and for making clear that no police action is warranted unless there is an actual violent crime involved. Now if only you could also explain why a student protest in support of Palestine at the University of Alberta was forcibly and aggressively shut down by the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) when all that those students were doing was exercising their constitutional right to free speech, something you specifically support.

Interestingly, not a single police report from the protest found evidence of any illegal or criminal activity.

And more worryingly, why were Edmonton police officers not wearing name tags while they were aggressively confronting students? Were they trying to avoid identification in the event their actions caused a serious incident?

Videos posted to social media by students show EPS officers using batons and what they referred to as “special munitions” to deal with the protestors. All this to suppress a student demonstration?

Finally, could you also kindly clarify what this incident, along with others like it, has to do with Edmonton Police Chief Warren Driechel’s trip to Israel to meet with law enforcement officials there? That information would be greatly appreciated.

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