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Jamie Sarkonak: Mayor puts 'Islamophobia' fears ahead of policing

Edmonton's Andrew Knack criticized police chief for Israel trip, along with Canada's oldest mosque

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Since last week, Edmonton has been embroiled in a controversy that should be impossible for a city that underwent an ISIS attack less than a decade ago. On one side, diaspora groups and progressive politicians; on the other, Police Chief Warren Driechel, who dared to take a professional development trip to one of the most terrorism-stricken developed countries in the world: Israel.

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It all began when CityNews recapped Driechel’s journey in a brief Wednesday Q&A. It was part of a semi-regular delegation organized by the professional organization for North America’s big-city police chiefs; Dreichel’s seat on the tour was paid for by the organization and approved by his civilian oversight board. The tour primarily focused on “police stations, police leaders,” he said.

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“My big takeaway was that what they’re learning, and what they’re working on,” he told CityNews. “How do they build that connection to all of their community, including the Muslim people that live within Israel.”

It was also helpful in understanding “historical, geopolitical context, and how that maybe shapes things that go on in our own community.”

The delegation didn’t meet with anyone from the government, military, or intelligence networks, he said.

So, here we have a police chief of a city that had a near-miss with tragedy in 2017, when ISIS flagbearer Abdulahi Sharif tried and failed to kill downtown pedestrians with a U-Haul truck; a city that has even seen residents go off to join ISIS abroad. Learning about policing from one of the most terrorism-afflicted countries in the developed world should be an uncontroversial matter. This should be of obvious importance to Edmonton, where we have direct lived experience of this problem.

Enter the diaspora uproar. The day after Driechel’s recap of the excursion, the National Council for Canadian Muslims and 25 Muslim entities expressed their “profound disappointment” and called on the chief to resign unless they received a satisfying explanation of the decision to go, the lessons learned and the plan to restore trust with Muslims.

“At a time when countless families in Edmonton are grieving the devastating violence unfolding in Gaza and the region more broadly, the decision by the chief of police to travel to Israel to meet with policing institutions demonstrates a serious failure of judgment toward the communities he is sworn to serve and protect,” they wrote.

“For many members of Edmonton’s Muslim community, particularly those with family directly impacted by the ongoing genocide, this decision has caused great pain.”

Among the signatories was the oldest mosque in Canada, Edmonton’s Al-Rashid Mosque, which has become one of the great symbols of Canadian multiculturalism.

They were soon joined by the city’s progressives, eager to amplify the message. Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack — who went to China in the fall, unbothered by the country’s repression of Muslims along its western frontier — denounced the police chief’s trip for damaging relationships with “communities that already feel marginalized and break trust.” The mayor invoked “Islamophobia” and “anti-Palestinian racism” as reasons he objected to the trip. “At a time of rising Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, anti-semitism, and hate towards marginalized communities, the choice to make this trip is harmful and further alienates members of our community.”

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Knack was also a city councillor when gunman Bezhani Sarvar fired on Edmonton’s city hall in 2024, citing “the wokeism disease” and “the genocide that’s going on in Gaza and throughout the world” among his reasons. Not even a close strike to home, evidently, can interest the mayor in improving police readiness.

Similar diasporic controversies have spread across the continent, particularly since October 7. The Al-Rashid Mosque was built in 1938, and nevertheless, it’s using its place in the community not to build bridges, but to bully and remind us where exactly the cracks in the cultural mosaic lie. Mayor Knack and the rest of the politicians encouraging it are only making those fissures grow larger.

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