Results: Toronto Restaurant Forced To Close Its Doors Due To Death Threats

Restaurants close for many different reasons -- business is bad, health inspectors close them down, too much competition -- but one Toronto eatery has closed due to safety concerns and death threats. Opened by a Syrian family of newcomers in 2017, the thriving Queen Street West cafe, Soufi, known for its flatbreads and sweet knaffeh pies, announced on Tuesday that it was reluctantly shutting down "in effort to maintain [their] family and staff's safety." Are you aware of this story?

Recent video footage of the restaurant owner's son attending a protest outside a rally for People's Party of Canada (a political party described as right-wing populist) leader Maxime Bernier in Hamilton last weekend, surfaced. In the now-viral video, masked protesters can be seen blocking the path of an 81-year-old woman while screaming "off our streets, Nazi scum!" One of the protesters in that group was identified as a member of the Al-Soufi family by multiple alt-right and anti-immigrant Facebook communities. The restaurant's owners decided to publicly apologize for their son's involvement in the rally, noting in a statement on Facebook that "our family and business do not condone acts of hate, violence or harassment in any shape or form, and advocate for peace, equality, and free speech for all human beings." This only escalated the comments, most of them hateful, and many of them threats of violence towards the family and their restaurant. On Tuesday, just a few days after issuing the Facebook apology, Soufi's announced that it would be closing permanently after receiving a barrage of violent death threats. Do you feel they did the right thing, or should they have kept the restaurant open?

Given it was alt-right and anti-immigrant Facebook groups that posted the video, and caused the response, do you think this was an example of a hate crime, and should be investigated as such?

People across Canada, including Prime Minister Trudeau, are speaking out against the trolls who've been harassing Soufi's as news of its closure spreads. One fellow restaurant owner, and immigrant, Paramount Fine Foods founder and CEO Mohamed Fakih is taking things a step further by offering to pay for security at the restaurant to protect the Al-Soufi family, their staff and customers, so that they can stay open. Fakih also said he would consider sending his own employees into the store to operate it under the Soufi's name. "We can't let hate win, we will lose ourselves," said Fakih, who owns the fastest-growing Middle Eastern food chain in Canada with more than 60 Paramount Fine Foods locations as of 2019. Do you agree that closing the restaurant is "letting hate win"?