Two suspicious fires over the weekend have left Montreal on edge.

An inferno gutted the popular kosher restaurant Nöam on Décarie Blvd. in the wee hours of Saturday.

And a blaze scorched the Baitul Mukarram Mosque on de Courtrai Ave. early Friday morning.

A beloved restaurant that was proudly Jewish but welcomed all has been ravaged by flames.

A place of worship where a tight-knit community of faithful came together was blackened by smoke.

Given earlier attacks on minority communities and an increasingly polarized social climate, it’s little wonder many Montrealers have been quick to characterize these fires as the latest in a spate of hate crimes to rock the city.

The Jewish community has been on high alert over a surging tide of antisemitism. In the past few years, schools have been hit by gunfire and synagogues have been struck by Molotov cocktails. Last month, Hassidic Jewish men in Outremont were accosted by thieves spewing antisemitic slurs who stole their streimls or customary fur hats.

The Muslim community has also been apprehensive about rising Islamophobia. Two weeks ago, a fake hand, severed and bloody, was left outside at an Islamic centre in Verdun that police are probing as a possible hate crime. And scars run deep from the mass shooting at the Quebec City mosque in 2017 that killed six.

Far-right groups have been recruiting in the city while also seeking to normalize their white........

© Montreal Gazette