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Ms. Mailloux, a philosophy professor at the Cégep du Vieux Montréal, had been invited to speak on the issue of halal and kosher certifications, and quickly dominated the discussion with accusations that Quebecers were unwittingly funnelling tens of thousands of dollars to potentially shady religious causes.

“What you have to see is that, when we have established a link between halal certification, an imam and a mosque, we have to go see what they are saying in these mosques and the ideology that lives there,” she said.

In a Thursday statement, the Quebec branch of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs accused Ms. Mailloux of echoing “a conspiracy created and spread by the Ku Klux Klan, and championed by many other racist and neo-Nazi groups.”

Although theories vary, the premise of the so-called kosher tax is that Jews extort food companies for the cost of certification, and then pass on the funding to Zionist causes.

As a KKK pamphlet cited by the Anti-Defamation League writes “Jews have discovered a way to coerce business to pay taxes directly to Jewish organizations and pass the cost on to the consumer.”

In reality, while kosher and halal certification is not free; food companies do it for the same reason they would claim a product is low fat or GMO-free: to open up a new market segment and boost sales.

In a 2010 interview posted to the website of the Quebec Humanist Association, Ms. Mailloux said halal and kosher certifications were a “challenge to modernity and an attempt to inject religion into secular society.”