Only months after a Muslim Sunday school lost its rented space for using material with anti-Semitic passages, the tables have turned: a Jewish school in Thornhill faces accusations that one of its textbooks contains anti-Muslim language.

In an open letter sent Tuesday to several Jewish organizations and the Ontario Minister of Education, the Canadian Council on American-Islamic relations called for the textbook, 2000 Years of Jewish History: From the Destruction of the Second Bais Hamikdash Until the Twentieth Century, to be removed from the curriculum at the Joe Dwek Ohr HaEmet Sephardic School.

The textbook calls Muslims “rabid fanatics” with “savage beginnings” and characterizes the Prophet Muhammad as a “rabid Jew-hater,” according to the organization’s letter.

A private letter was also sent to the school asking it to remove offending textbook. The organization offered to help develop “alternative material that is more aligned with the values we share — tolerance and understanding,” said executive director Ihsaan Gardee.

Feldheim Publishers, which publishes the textbook in New York, did not return calls or emails to confirm the language in question.

The Orthodox Jewish Sephardic School, which teaches Grade 1-8 students, said it was investigating the matter. In an email to the Star, School Rabbi Zvi Kamenetzky wrote, “the book was never used for classroom teaching purposes and has been removed as a reference resource.”

The intolerance complaint is virtually symmetrical to one that played out in May, when the East End Madrassah, a weekend religious program run by a Thornhill mosque, lost its permit to use space at a Scarborough school.

Jewish groups had expressed shock at curriculum that appeared on the school’s website that called ancient Jews “treacherous” and “crafty” and accused them of “conspiring to kill the Prophet Muhammad.”

The Madrassah apologized immediately and withdrew the offending material, though it lost its permit to use public school space.

Unlike the Madrassah, Joe Dwek Ohr HaEmet does not rent space in a public school. It is not registered with the Ontario Ministry of Education and operates as a private business, Education Ministry spokesperson Paris Meilleur wrote in a statement emailed to the Star.

“The ministry has no authority over private schools,” says the statement. “The book referenced is not on the ministry-approved Trillium List.”

Because the school does not teach at the secondary school level, it is not required to follow curriculum to issue credits, and its students can graduate into any Ontario high school.

“There’s no place for hatred in any of our schools,” Meilleur wrote.