Muslim Chaplain at Toronto Hospital for Sick Children Eulogizes Founder of Hamas
Ayman Taher speaking at Palestine House in Toronto. Photo: Screenshot
An Islamic chaplain at Toronto’s main pediatric hospital was under scrutiny on Thursday after video emerged of him encouraging parents to show their children a clip of the founder of Hamas predicting the eventual destruction of the State of Israel.
The video clip — unearthed by the Washington, DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) — showed imam Ayman Taher praising remarks made by the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, in a 1998 interview with the Qatari-owned broadcaster Al Jazeera.
“If you did not watch this, Google it and watch it, let your children watch it, because this is history that needs to be absorbed,” Taher — who serves as the Islamic chaplain of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and as imam of the Ibrahim Jame Mosque in Hamilton, Ontario — stated during a Dec. 18 speech at Palestine House in Toronto, the headquarters of a nonprofit organization that caters to the Palestinian community in Canada.
“When [Al Jazeera correspondent] Ahmed Mansour was asking Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, he said to him: ‘Sheikh…’ And the sheikh was barely out of Israeli jails, by the way. He said to him: ‘Do you believe that Israel will [be] finished?’ He [Yassin] said to him with confidence: ‘Yes.’ He [Mansour] said to him: ‘When do you think it will [be] finished?’ He [Yassin] said: ‘2027.’ And I said to myself: ‘How calm, how confident this man is.'”
Taher went on to eulogize Yassin, a wheelchair-bound cleric whom Israel held responsible for the deaths of several Israeli citizens and who was killed in a March 2004 Israeli strike on Gaza City.
“Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was handicapped,” Taher said. “The only thing that moved in him was his tongue. Allah gave him that faith to speak his mind and inspire the generations to come. In the most difficult time, when his own life was not safe, and we know how Allah has honored him.”
He said that when Yassin “was in jail and after that when he was living in very difficult times, he never had doubt that Allah is going to give victory to his religion, we [also] should not, because he has inspired millions.”
He then added: “I know I am getting myself in trouble now for speaking on social media. Who cares, because if [we] do not get ourselves into trouble, we will not be getting victory.”
On Thursday, one pro-Israel advocacy group claimed in a post on X/Twitter that the Hospital for Sick Children had suspended Taher pending an investigation.
“What is there to investigate? It’s right there in black and white,” one X/Twitter user responded. “Sick Kids that should have acted before now. Repugnant.”
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