Edmonton’s Shaban Sharif Maidi has preached Islamic State support and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories since 2015, targeting Arabic-speaking newcomers with calls to destroy Jews, synagogues, and Christianity—even comparing Canada’s Justin Trudeau to a historical "protector" of Muslim refugees. Despite his extremism, mainstream media like CBC and the Toronto Star ignore him, unlike the hijab-cutting hoax involving Carla Noman, which persisted despite police debunking it. Critics also highlight Canada’s continued funding of UNRWA—despite corruption scandals (e.g., Pierre Krawenbuhl) and its alleged ties to Hamas—suggesting political motives over moral consistency. Maidi’s unchecked influence raises questions about media bias and the consequences of selective coverage in fostering radicalization. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I want to show you something that as far as I can tell has not been reported by any media, any newspaper, any TV, radio station in Canada other than one small reference in a Jewish newspaper out of Toronto.
It's about a hate preacher in Edmonton, but because he's not an alt-right Christian, KKK hate preacher, because he's a Muslim man from Egypt preaching in Arabic, I don't think that the mainstream media cares.
In fact, I think they actually care to silence the news on it.
Here, I'll give you my evidence and I'll let you decide.
Before I do, may I encourage you to become a video subscriber to The Rebel 2, to buy a premium membership.
It's easy.
Just go to the rebel.media slash shows, and it's $8.
And you just type in a coupon code podcast, and you can get a discount.
$8 a month, you can get the whole year for $80, or it's even less with a coupon code.
And the reason I would put to you to do that is so you can get the video version too.
I'm going to show you at least four video clips of this Edmonton hate preacher.
And sure, you can listen to the audio.
Good idea.
But you got to see this guy.
All right, without further ado, here's the show.
Tonight, an Islamic State supporter continues to preach hatred at Edmonton without a peep of interest from the mainstream media.
It's August 8th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government is because it's my bloody right to do so.
The law of supply and demand.
There is a huge demand from the media party for any hate crimes.
It's why there's so many fakes.
There just aren't enough real hate crimes in our wonderful, positive, harmonious society to suit the appetite of the media who want controversy and conflict.
I'm not saying we're perfect, but it's pretty good here in Canada.
In America, too.
That's what's so gross about fake hate crimes, hate crime hoaxes, like that absurd claim.
Remember that one from that millionaire actor, Jussie Smileet, who said he was attacked at 3 a.m. in Chicago by a bunch of rednecks wearing Trump hats saying, this is Trump country, who just happened to be carrying a noose and bleach when they happened to bump into him outside of subway sandwiches at 3 a.m. where thankfully Jussie was able to fight them both off and he didn't even drop his subway sandwich doing so.
I mean, I got to say that was such an obvious, weird, fake hoax.
You had to be a journalist to be dumb enough to believe it because they wanted to believe it.
They want to believe that America is a racist country because of Donald Trump.
Now, we've got plenty of racism hoaxes in Canada too, as you know.
Remember that 11-year-old girl, Carla Noman, who claimed that it's just, I can't even say without giggling.
It's not funny, but it's just so absurd.
Remember, she said that a Chinese man walked up to her as she was going to school, and without saying a word, this Chinese guy apparently took out a pair of scissors and started cutting her hijab.
And then he ran away, but then he came back again to do the scissor thing again.
He ran away again, and no one else saw him.
But it happened.
She promises.
And lucky for her, she wasn't cut by the scissors.
And that Asian man just happened to have those scissors on him.
I mean, just the whole thing.
So obviously a fake.
It was so weird.
Police said as much a few days later.
But in the meantime, look, all the politicians, they actually still have their tweets up condemning the hate crime hoax that never happened.
But they're not going to take those tweets down.
They needed them.
Like I say, they really, really need hate crimes to happen to justify their whole political belief, to justify calling Canadians racist, to justify censorship of conservative voices, to demonize their enemies.
So high is the leftist demand for hate crimes that they will either fake hate crimes or believe hate crimes.
And even once a hate crime is debunked, they'll keep referring to it as proof.
But of course they only do this when the hate crime fits a certain narrative.
A white racist, usually a visible minority victim, ideally a Muslim victim.
So if there's a hate crime outside of that blueprint, they don't just ignore it.
They hide it.
They even try to debunk it.
American example.
There is a wave of hate crimes in New York City against Jews in New York.
It's hard to believe.
Especially Orthodox Jews who can be spotted by their Yarmouth because those little skull caps they wear.
So these are not hate crime hoaxes.
They're real.
They're all caught on closed circuit TV.
And I'm sorry to say it.
They all have one thing in common.
Facts are facts.
I'll just say it.
The victims are Orthodox Jews, and all the attackers are young black men.
It's not alt-right, you know, KKKers.
It's black men.
So that's just a fact.
So the media hate covering it.
It's a crime wave.
It's racist.
It's a hate crime wave.
But these guys are only being attacked because they're Jews.
But because the attackers are black, it doesn't fit the narrative.
So down the memory hole it goes.
Which brings us to our story today.
In Edmonton, there's a hate preacher.
There's a lot of hate in Edmonton, so we're told.
I mean, do you remember a while back when some white supremacists kept delivering racist pamphlets to mailboxes around Edmonton?
There was a national panic about it in the media.
Those racist Albertans, oh, everyone loved the narrative, except, you know, these days a lot of people have that little closed circuit camera on their property, those little doorbell cameras.
Ring is one brand name.
And so when this white supremacist was delivering his white supremacist pamphlets, one day he was caught on tape.
Finally, we got him.
And he was black.
A black man was perpetrating a hoax, a hate crime hoax.
He was handing out white supremacist letters.
Literally, he was black.
He was never caught, as far as I know.
But why would he do it?
Well, because demand exceeds supply.
Somebody wanted the narrative that there was white supremacy in Edmonton, and they were so desperate before they hired a black man to do it.
So who is the hate preacher in Edmonton I'm talking about today?
Is it some white nationalist, some Donald Trump supporting racists, some alt-right gang, some guy who would go after Jussie Smollett?
No, no.
It's a Muslim man from Egypt.
For some reason, we let him into Canada.
And he preaches in Arabic.
His name is Shaban Sharif Maidi, and he preaches violence against, obviously, Jews, Christians, obviously.
He preaches in support of the Islamic State, which is a bit weird.
I think he's a one-man hate machine.
That's my opinion, based on the videos I've seen of him.
I mean, look, let's be candid.
If you've ever read the Quran, it's a pretty bloody document.
Lots of massacres, lots of killing of infidels in that book.
But in fairness, there's some tough talk in the Bible, too.
I guess in the year 2019, we don't actually have Christian or Jewish clergy quoting literally Deuteronomy 21, verse 18, which says, if there's a stubborn and rebellious son, he's to be stoned to death by the men of the city.
You don't see a lot of let's go stone rebellious kids talk at church on a Sunday sermon.
I'm acknowledging there are some tough passages in the Bible too, but holy guacamole, does this Edmonton Muslim preacher go with the full literal Quran?
Here, I want to show you a few clips from this guy.
Now, I've been following him since 2015.
It's four years ago now.
This is a video I did back at the Sun News Network, so you know it's been a while.
I'm going to show you a few clips from my reportage at the sun.
So, first off, he's all about the Islamic State.
Seriously.
Well, let's play four clips.
Now, these are clips.
As you say, you've watched a lot of his sermons.
They're in Arabic.
You're fluent in Arabic.
That's his native language from Egypt.
And that's what he's telling new Canadians who speak Arabic.
Let's watch the first one where he talks about the caliphate.
That's another way of saying the Islamic State.
And then, talking about his support for the Islamic State and for the jihad, he just comes right out and says it.
And then, talking about his support for the Islamic State and the Islamic State and the Islamic State.
All right, here's one more.
And this was all from my son News show five years ago.
So this guy, four and a half years ago, he's no secret.
Take a look.
So we've got a preacher in Edmonton, obviously a foreigner from Egypt, preaching mainly in Arabic to other newcomers who still speak Arabic.
Is he preaching harmony to these newcomers?
Is he preaching love for Canada and respect for Canadian laws?
Is he preaching to his flock of newcomers to integrate and become friends with Christians and Jews and other Canadians?
He is not.
He's praising the jihad.
He boasts about how, just like the Christian city of Constantinople fell to the Muslims, so too will the Vatican in Rome and presumably us here in Canada too.
But look at this news I saw just yesterday.
Imam ousted from community center in Edmonton.
Imam in Canadian City prevented from leading prayers after B'nei Berth Canada draws attention to his hateful rhetoric.
Well, that sounds dramatic, but it's not quite accurate.
He just can't use a public community center anymore.
That headline sounds like maybe his own flock has rejected him or maybe he's being banned from Canada.
Yeah, no, nothing could be further from the truth.
They love his hate.
Here, let me read a little bit from this story.
And Edmonton Imam has been prevented from leading prayers at a local community center after B'nai Birth, Canada, drew attention to his hateful rhetoric from the pulpit and online.
The organization said in a statement on Tuesday, Sheikh Shaban Sharif Mehdi, who says he was licensed by the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Egypt, told congregants in March that international Zionism was behind the Islamic State, the recent terrorist attack on two monks and new mosques in New Zealand, and all terrorism.
It's those pesky Jews.
He followed this up with another sermon in June, in which he added, We know that Jews do not like Islam or the Muslims.
So let me read a little bit.
I just want to read a little bit more from the article.
In 2014, he shared a post predicting that on Judgment Day, the Muslims will kill the Jews.
And in 2018, he stated the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood to expel the Jews and restore the Al-Aqsa Mosque has not ended.
The post is notable because Mehdi identifies himself as a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In 2016, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, he asserted that Jerusalem will only be regained through blood and falsely described Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi as a Jewish Zionist.
All right, I'll stop there for a sec.
So obviously this guy is a total conspiracy theorist.
Imagine calling the Muslim Arab president of Egypt, which is the most populous Arab country.
Imagine calling him a Jew.
Imagine saying that ISIS was Jewish.
But you saw him earlier praising the Islamic State back in, I think that was 2015.
What a weirdo.
Weirdo, but a hater.
He wants to expel the Jews.
wants to support jihadists, but let me point out the obvious.
I haven't been quoting from the Edmonton Journal.
In fact, I searched every single Canadian newspaper for the name Shaban Sharif Mehdi, every single newspaper, and not one of them has ever reported on him.
If you can find an example, please let me know, because I use both the Google News database, but also the proprietary database called Newspapers.com.
I simply don't think a single Canadian journalist has ever reported about him, except me, of course, back at Sun News, and a couple of Jewish newspapers.
But other than that, it's foreign websites like the one I've been reading from.
That's weird.
There's such a huge appetite for hate crime stories.
It's so huge, people commit hoaxes to supply the demand.
And even when the hoaxes are revealed, the demand is still so high, those hoaxes are still held up as truthy facts.
I showed you all those tweets about the hijab hoax.
They're still up there.
But here's an Edmonton Imam praising the jihad, praising jihadists, praising the Islamic State, praising the destruction of Christianity and Christian churches, calling for the destruction of Jews and synagogues, and nothing.
You can hear a pin drop, nothing from the Canadian media.
I mean, I guess the community center booted him out or something.
But where's the Edmonton Journal even to talk about it?
Where's Justin Trudeau?
Where's his tweets?
Well, I'll tell you where Justin Trudeau is.
He's on the Imam's lips.
That Imam, Shaban Sharif Mehdi, he talks about Trudeau a lot.
He loves Trudeau.
He praises Trudeau.
He calls him the Najashi.
What's that?
That was a historical figure in Northeast Africa, a non-Muslim king who welcomed Muslim refugees into his country when others didn't.
And after a while, those refugees, those Muslim refugees, once they gained their strength, they went back to Saudi Arabia after Muhammad had killed off the Jews.
Here, let me read a little bit about the Najashi from a Muslim scholar in the newspaper Arab News.
Then I'll show you what our Edmonton hero has to say.
Muslim emigrants returned with Jafar to Medina when the Prophet conquered Khyber.
They thanked King Najashi for his good protection and hospitality provided to them.
So Jafar was the head of the Muslim refugees who had been protected by the Najashi.
Khyber is where Muhammad killed all the Jews in Saudi Arabia.
So Jafar, the refugee, went back to Saudi Arabia once Muhammad had made it Jew-free.
And King Najashi was the hero of the story for protecting the Muslims and letting them resettle and protecting them from Muhammad's enemies just until they were strong enough to go back to Saudi Arabia to kill the Jews.
Here, I want you, now that you know who the Najashi was historically, I want you to listen to two full minutes of this.
Listen to our Edmonton preacher praise the Najashi of our age, the Christian who's so hospitable to Muslims.
Everything He Touches Falls Apart00:02:46
Take a listen.
Take a listen. Take a listen.
I wonder if that's why the CBC and the Toronto Star and the rest of the anti-hate brigade seem just fine with what's going on with this guy in Emmett.
Why the Human Rights Commission aren't really interested?
Why the whole thing's just, you know, ignored.
I'm sure we'll be fine.
I mean, it's not like Edmonton has become a hotbed for Islamic terrorism, including attacks right on the city streets, is it?
Stay with us for more.
Palestinian Refugees and Their Dilemma00:06:43
Well, I don't think that Justin Trudeau has a coherent foreign policy or diplomatic policy.
I think that's fairly obvious by the fact that everything he touches, it's the reverse Midas touch.
Everything he touches seems to fall apart from China to India to Saudi Arabia and on.
But if you could detect a coherent philosophy, it would be whatever Donald Trump just said, say the opposite and do the opposite.
I point out that our open borders policy at Wroxham Road was in reaction to Donald Trump bringing in a travel suspension from several Muslim-dominated countries.
Trudeau had to talk back to Trump and thus he opened our border to bogus refugees.
Same thing with the Palestinian Authority, especially in Gaza that's run by Hamas.
Donald Trump lost patience with the Palestinian Authority, with the United Nations agency in charge of Palestinians called UNRWA, and he announced he was cutting American foreign aid.
Well, what does Trudeau do?
I told you what he does.
In exact and opposite reaction to Trump, he says, hey, hey, we up in here in Canada, we'll throw tens of millions of dollars more, and we don't care about the corruption, let alone the violence.
Well, there's more news from this bizarre agency that benefited from Trudeau's hatred of Trump.
Let me read to you the headline of a column from Lorne Gunter in the Empton Sun, funding UNRWA, that stands for the United Nations Relief Works Agency, is one of Trudeau's biggest and smuggest blunders.
And the author of this piece, Lorne Gunter, joined us now via Skype.
Lauren, great to see you again.
Good to see you.
Tell me a little bit more about UNRWA.
I've seen their works with my own eyes, but tell us more about the agency, its funding, and the criticism of it.
Well, it was set up a couple of years after the Arab countries following the Second World War tried to crush the new state of Israel.
And Israel fought back, and several hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were sent, not sent by anybody.
They ran off, went into refugee camps.
UNRWA was set up to provide schooling, health care, shelter, and basic necessities, sometimes food if that's needed.
And they basically were just a relief agency, like the sorts of people you see helicoptering in sacks of flour and running hospitals in tents.
But it's become an enormous agency.
It runs on about a billion and a half dollars Canadian every year.
And it has schools, hospitals.
It helps fund newspapers, radio and TV stations, and all of that.
All of the agencies and organizations that UNRWA helps fund with money from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, all of the Western countries.
Most of those organizations that it helps to fund are vehemently anti-Israel and often vehemently anti-Semitic.
The schools that UNRWA helps operate in the West Bank, near the Jordan River, in Gaza and other places around Israel.
The schools teach that Israel is illegitimate and that it is the duty of Palestinians to push it into the sea.
So, you know, they're working against any sort of peaceful resolution in the Middle East.
They would say they're not, but their idea at UNRWA of a peaceful resolution would be to eliminate Israel and let the Palestinians take over what is now Israel.
So it's been a rat's nest ideologically for a very, very long time.
Yeah.
There's one more thing I'd like to point out.
I mean, of course, the state of Israel was founded, the modern state, in 1948, which is more than 70 years ago now.
So there's not a lot of refugees from that event left.
It's probably maybe 10,000.
Oh, I wouldn't even think it's that many.
I would think 100.
When I was in Israel a couple years ago, I saw one of these UNRWA refugee camps, and you have to be told it's a refugee camp because it looks like a neighborhood with apartment buildings and shops.
Like it is permanent because, of course, the people who live there are the children and grandchildren.
So it's the only refugee status in the world that I'm aware of where, you know, almost a century later, people who aren't fleeing anything still get to call themselves refugees, still get themselves a special agency.
I mean, theoretically, I suppose my great-grandfather was a refugee in 1905 or 1903, and maybe I could still call myself that today.
That would be absurd to say that.
I'm as rooted to Canada as possible.
But that's sort of the analogy in Israel in the Palestinian territories, don't you think?
And the double absurdity of it would be that, you know, your grandfather fled whatever oppression he was fleeing, and you were still living in the location that he fled to.
Right.
That no one was taking you back.
The thing that is, this is sort of off topic a little bit, but the thing that always bothers me when we get into discussion of Palestinians in the Middle East and Israel's alleged oppression of the Palestinians, none of the Arab countries around Israel will take them back either.
The Jordanians don't want them.
The Saudis don't want them.
The Egyptians don't want them.
The Egyptians build walls on the other side of the Palestinians to keep them from flooding into Egypt.
So, you know, this is not just some one-way street that the Israelis.
In fact, the Israelis do far more for Palestinians than the Arab neighbors.
They will take seriously ill Palestinians into Israel for medical care.
They allow complex inspections of Palestinian-bound ships to make sure that what's going there really are necessities and not weapons.
They bend over backwards to try and be as accommodating to Palestinians as they can.
When I was in Israel with you in 2008, we saw a $3 billion highway system that the Israelis were building just for the Palestinians so they could move from one part of Palestinian territory to another without having to threaten the security of Israel along the way.
Funding UNRWA's Dark Side00:06:44
But they were working very hard to increase the mobility of people in the Palestinian hell territories at great expense to Israel and its taxpayers.
I remember that.
Thank you for that reminder.
Well, listen, we're talking about UNRWA, and people might be saying, well, why are you talking about that now?
Well, there's some amazing news.
Can I read one paragraph from your column?
Because I just, I can't improve on the wording here.
It's just great.
I mean, I shouldn't be laughing because it's sad, but let me read it.
Last week, an internal UN report on UNRWA was leaked to several media outlets.
The report outlines how UNRWA is rife with nepotism, retaliation against internal critics, racial discrimination, and sexual misconduct.
And here's the crazy part.
Commissioner Pierre Krawenbuhl from Switzerland is alleged to have created a toxic work environment by, among other things, hiring his mistress to be his special advisor and having the organization pay for her to fly around the world in business class with him.
And I just thought, and my first thought was that's insane.
My second was, so what's new?
That's how the UN works everywhere.
But my third thought, Lauren, was better that they waste it on being, you know, setting up these love shacks for these horny UN bosses than giving it to terrorist textbooks or rockets.
I thought maybe every dollar at UNRWA should be spent on mistresses and litter.
But you're absolutely right that this is just the way the UN works, right?
They hire these pompous Western intellectuals, academics, bureaucrats.
They give them these enormous expense accounts.
They set them up in apartments in beautiful cities like Paris and Geneva.
Kronbuhl, the commissioner general of UNRWA, does not live on the West Bank.
He lives in Switzerland from where he administers UNRWA and flies around at great expense.
And, you know, the report said that he created a toxic work environment by hiring his mistress to be a special advisor.
I'm thinking he probably created a toxic home environment too by hiring his mistress.
Mrs. Kronbuel is probably not real keen on finding all this out either.
So it's just, it's typical of the UN.
It's preachy, it's ineffective, it's biased, and it is an enormous sponge on funds from member nations.
And the funds, of course, from member nations like Canada, the United States come from taxpayers.
Well, I mean, let me read the next line in your article.
I probably stopped one sentence too soon.
You then said, already the Swiss, Dutch, and Belgian governments have suspended funding to UNRWA.
That in itself says a lot.
And you're so right on that.
But as far as I know, Canada is still shoveling money into this furnace.
Nothing will deter Trudeau from his virtue signaling, will it?
And you know, this is another very good example of pomposity and naivete in liberal foreign policy, both at the same time.
I mean, they said during the 2015 campaign, of course, that, oh, Stephen Harper's ruined Canada's reputation internationally.
We're no longer the honest broker.
We don't have the influence we once did because we've withdrawn from a lot of multilateral organizations.
We wouldn't have put up with this stuff from UNRWA.
We'd have pulled our funding too if Harper wasn't the, you know, if Harper was the prime minister.
He pulled it because of the textbooks that were in UNRWA schools and the support that UNRWA was giving fairly openly to the terrorist group Hamas.
And so in 2010, Harper canceled funding to UNRWA.
And in 2015, with big fanfare, the Liberals said, see, we're much more interested in playing both sides and being fair to both sides.
So we're going to give the money back to UNRWA.
What have they been doing?
They've been pumping about $25 million Canadian dollars a year into UNRWA, which then enables UNRWA to take money that it gets from other sources and very quietly pass it off to Hamas as money for health care or pass it off to other terrorist organizations as money for education.
And everybody knows that's not, you know, they're not funding hospitals and schools with that money.
They're using it to fight Israel.
But UNRWA maintains this facade, this play acting, that somehow, you know, our money is not indirectly going to fund terrorism, but it is.
Yeah.
Well, it's a joke, but it's an unfunny joke.
I keep saying to when I see Grassy Narrows Indian band pleading for help, they have, I think it's mercury poisoning there.
That's a real health problem.
And I think imagine if they had six months worth of Trudeau's UNRWA funding, they could clean that up.
Like that's a real actual problem that no one in the Indian band created.
I wish we treated northern Indian bands as luxuriously.
I mean, maybe we do, and maybe there's a problem in Indian bands.
But believe me, we have problems at home before we need to throw money to Virtue Signal in Hamas-run Gaza.
Last word to you.
Do you think that this latest scandal will move the needle on Canada's foreign aid at all?
Or is it not even registering?
Because frankly, I think a lot of the media loves the fact that we give money to Hamas as well.
No, I don't think it's going to move the needle in Canada because all of Trudeau's foreign policy is done exclusively with what it will do for Canadian votes in mind.
And I think that there are now, because there are so many Muslim voters in Canada that the Liberals think they need, and they're starting now to outnumber Jewish voters who the Liberals used to think they need.
I think the very naked calculation at Liberal Headquarters is that they're going to keep funding the Palestinians and UNRWA because that's going to get them some votes and a few ridings in Toronto and Montreal that they think they need in order to hold power.
Yeah, well, I mean, that math, I mean, liberals can, they can't balance a budget, but they can count votes.
And there's about 350,000 Jews in Canada, 1.3 million Muslims.
Justin Trudeau knows where his political future lies.
Live Chat at 12 Noon00:01:22
Lauren, it's great to see you.
And thanks for your time today.
You bet.
All right, there you have it.
Lauren Gunter, senior columnist with the Edmonton Sun.
The column is called Funding UNRWA is one of the Trudeau's biggest and smuggest blunders.
Stay with us.
There's more ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
Thanks for watching.
While you're watching this, I'm actually flying back from the United Kingdom where I went to visit Tommy Robinson very briefly to see how he's doing in prison.
By the time I land, it'll be time for tomorrow's show, so I'll give you a report then.
If not on my nightly show, I don't know if you know this, but every Friday at 12 noon, 12 noon Eastern, I do a live chat on YouTube.
It's called a super chat.
That's what YouTube calls it.
So I'm sure I'll talk a little bit about it there.
That's just my way of saying if you're watching my nightly shows, thank you very much.
You're a premium subscriber.
But if you've got the time, Fridays at 12 noon Eastern, tune in.
I have a live chat.
What that means is I'm talking, blah, blah, blah, play the videos.
But I take your comments and questions and you see it's very fun.
It's like a modern version of a call-in show.
So tune in tomorrow at 12 noon and I'll give you all the updates.
All right.
Until then, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, TU at home, good night.