Mayoral Candidate’s Social Media Posts “Extremely Disconcerting”

A candidate for mayor of the Sud-Ouest borough says he was “being sarcastic” in a now-deleted Facebook post about vacationing over the ruins of Gaza.

In the February post, Thierry Daraize was referring to Donald Trump’s proposal to turn the Gaza Strip into a resort, declaring, “I’ve already booked my 2032 vacation to Gaza, at an all-inclusive.” When confronted about the post earlier this week, the Ensemble Montréal candidate said he regrets not making it clear he was expressing his outrage at the inhumanity of Trump’s plan. Daraize’s boss, party leader Soraya Martinez Ferrada, accepted his explanation and apology.

But as it turns out, that wasn’t his only controversial statement. 

In a series of posts obtained by The Rover, Daraize appears to fixate on Muslims, referring to them as “bearded radicals”, lashing out against efforts by Canadian universities to hire more Muslim professors and liking a post that derisively calls the left-wing French political party La France Insoumise “La France Islamiste.”

In a 2024 post on the social media app Threads, Daraize wrote “this woman is dangerous” in reference to Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s Special Representative on Combating Islamophobia. Elghawaby was appointed to her position in 2023 by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who Martinez Ferrada worked for when she was a Liberal Member of Parliament.

In a Threads post dated Oct. 27, 2024, Daraize spreads a debunked piece of Israeli propaganda that purported to show the wife of now deceased Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar living a luxurious life in the tunnels below Gaza. His post, which claims to show Sinwar’s wife carrying a $32,000 Birkin purse, was initially shared by the Israeli military but later debunked.

Members of two mosques in the Sud-Ouest told The Rover Thursday that Daraize’s posts are Islamophobic and called on Ensemble Montréal to reconsider his candidacy.

“I’m disappointed. I grew up in the Sud-Ouest, it’s a great place, but our mosque has been smashed up before and many of us have been attacked for being visibly Muslim,” said Fatima Ahmad, whose father volunteers at the Khadija mosque on Centre St. in Point-Saint-Charles. “Islamophobia is a very real concern for us. The fact that he’s so comfortable sharing these posts publicly is scary for the Muslim community.”

Ahmad says she’s been attacked three times while wearing her niqab in public, with the last coming in February of 2020. That night, outside the Charlevoix metro station, she had her niqab pulled and was punched by a man who was later arrested and charged by police. 

A member of another mosque, who did not want their name published, called Daraize’s posts “extremely disconcerting.”

When made aware of Daraize’s posts, the National Council for Canadian Muslims (NCCM) reached out to community leaders in the Sud Ouest to meet and discuss the issue. 

“We’ve had members of the community reach out to us and say they’re extremely concerned,” said Stephen Brown, a Montrealer and the CEO of NCCM. “We’ll see what our community members want us to do but this is part of a much larger problem of Islamophobia that we’ve seen since (the Oct. 7 Hamas attack).

“In the past two years, we’ve seen more than a tenfold increase in people contacting our legal clinic to ask for our help. Especially women who are visibly Muslim that have been attacked in one way or another. In certain cases, sometimes, politicians address the issue. But for the most part, this is a phenomenon that isn’t being spoken about in our politics. The urgency to take this seriously and do something about it just isn’t there.”

There are more than 230,000 Muslims living in Montreal, according to Statistics Canada, representing roughly 12 per cent of the population.

A resident of the Sud-Ouest for the past decade, Daraize moved to Montreal from France over 30 years ago, making a name for himself as a chef at high end restaurants like the Lutetia Paris, the Ritz Carlton and Chateau Mont Tremblant. He is also an acclaimed author and frequent guest on local radio and television.

Daraize isn’t the only Ensemble Montréal candidate who has spoken out about Islam. Former TV journalist Leslie Roberts, who is running in Ville-Marie, called Muslim street prayers in Montreal a form of “intimidation.” In the column, Roberts suggests that the sight of Muslims praying outside the Notre Dame Basilica echoes “the social friction seen in European capitals.”

In 2012, Sonny Moroz — who is running for Ensemble in Notre-Dame-de-Grace — posted a link on Facebook to a video titled “The Most succinct powerful indictment of Islam in the modern world.” Above the video, Moroz typed “I honestly have to say this is the most sense I have ever heard in Arabic.”

We have reached out to Ensemble Montréal and this article will be updated to include the party’s response.