On January 29, 2018, Canada will commemorate the first anniversary of the horrible and shocking killing of six Muslim men, shot by Alexandre Bissonnette in a Quebec City mosque.
Beyond the unanimous condemnation last year (rightly so) of such a violent and terrorizing act by politicians from all level of governments, I believe that nothing was achieved in fighting Islamophobia and stopping the wave of hate sweeping across Canadian cities.
Even the recent symbolic proposal to declare January 29 an official day of remembrance, initiated by more than 70 Canadian organizations, was met with staunch opposition from political parties in Quebec’s National Assembly — the Parti Québécois and the Coalition Avenir Québec — and tergiversation and non-committal replies from both Liberal parties in Quebec and Ottawa.
Like classic arguments used in France or by some conservative politicians during the debate around anti-Islamophobia motion M-103 last winter, each time the issue of hate against Muslims is evoked, it is turned into a semantic debate about the exact meaning of the word “Islamophobia” and about the imagined threats that such initiatives would pose to freedom of speech. As if the killing of six hard-working citizens in a place of worship came out of nowhere or the statistics revealed by Quebec City police last December were just another case of “crying wolf” by victimized Muslims interested in muzzling free minds.
Meanwhile, groups propagating hate, reinforcing stereotypes and ignorance, and inciting violence are left unbothered — or worse, they are growing in intensity and virulence.
During the summer of 2017, a controversy was falsely created about an organized trip at the Parc Safari zoo near Montreal. A group of Muslim families prayed on the lawn, a practice that as a practising Muslim I have been seeing in North America since I first arrived in Canada in 1991. On Facebook, some individuals criticized and attacked the park management, accusing them of allowing Muslims holding prayers in a public space and spreading their religion. With the administration standing by their decision to accommodate visitors as long as they don’t violate park policies, this manufactured crisis became another one added to the long list of incidents in which Muslims are portrayed as threats to the public order, and thus fuelling Islamophobic reactions and fear.
More recently, a Montreal mosque found itself in another fabricated controversy when a TVA journalist alleged that there was provision in the construction contract between the mosque and the builders working for them, barring women from the site on Fridays. Quebec politicians were quick to jump on the bandwagon and denounce the “misogynistic behaviour” of Muslims. There were no second thoughts, no calls to be cautious; every politician had a piece of wood to add to the fire. This time it was not the freedom of speech argument that was raised; instead the principle of gender equality came in handy for some.
Even when the news turned out to be plainly wrong, there were few calls for investigation, no serious reprimand and a very shallow apology by the media outlet.
The accumulation and repetition of these “stories” build on a suffocating atmosphere many Muslim communities breathe across Canada.
A recent media report showed that Toronto is another city where Islamophobia has been growing and left unchallenged by politicians. Anti-Muslim rallies have been held regularly in front of mosques, the Quran was torn in a Peel District School Board meeting about religious accommodation and a Toronto Imam has received death threats because he is helping the board with religious and accommodation issues.
Last December, Pamela Geller, a U.S.-based Islamophobic blogger who once described President Obama as a “third-worlder and a coward,” and said that “[h]e will do nothing but beat up on our friends to appease his Islamic overlords,” was invited to speak by the Jewish Defence league in Toronto, and Ezra Levant joined her at the event.
Once again, freedom of speech was a fine pretext for allowing a blatantly Islamophobic event to take place and hate speech to flourish and become normalized.
I believe there are three categories of people responsible for this troubling situation.
The first are politicians. Many of them have been playing with identity politics for a long time while others have remained sitting on the bench. Not long ago we had a prime minister named Stephen Harper who said that “Islamicism is the biggest threat to Canada.” The uncommon word “Islamicism” amalgamates Islam, fundamentalism and terrorism, making the terms interchangeable. Later, he even gave the example of a mosque as a potential place of youth radicalization, immediately making a connection in people’s minds between Islam and violence.
Even if Justin Trudeau considered the Quebec City killings a terrorist act, his government took very little initiative to help provinces and cities come up with education campaigns in schools, in hospitals or public transit to fight Islamophobia. He didn’t make any changes to hate crime laws to dissuade white supremacist groups, that are on the rise in Canada. Instead in 2015, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals voted for the anti-terrorism legislation introduced by Stephen Harper, formerly known as Bill C-51. Once again, they used laws to create two specific kinds of crimes: ones committed by Muslims and ones committed by other people whose faith doesn’t matter.
Here, it is ironic to remember that Alexandre Bissonnette won’t face anti-terrorism charges.
Even the recently passed amendments to the anti-terrorism law keep the heavy feeling that Canada is constantly under threat by terrorists, a.k.a. Muslims, allowing for secret trials to take place, a practice so far only applied to Muslim suspects.
The second group is media. Some media outlets have also been dangerously playing the card of fear against Muslims. They choose which incidents to report and over-represent, like the issue of the niqab during the 2015 federal election. That was not the only time. In 2008, during the reasonable accommodation crisis, many media outlets in Quebec inflated and distorted the cases of religious accommodation demands, making them seem overwhelming. In Ontario, during the “Sharia debate” crisis, some media invited only extremist views from each side, helping to polarize the debate, and leaving the population with more fear than real answers.
And finally, the third group is the general public. When violent events committed by Muslims occur around the world, the onus is placed on Muslims to distance themselves from violence, from their faith, and from the violent ideologies espoused by some Muslim groups. I lived through that and I keep going through it each time a terrorist act is committed in Western countries (mind you that when terrorist attacks happen in other places in the world, they go almost unnoticed).
I wouldn’t expect people to condemn every single Islamophobic act committed as this is not possible and it isn’t fair to make people guilty by simple association. However, I think that there is a huge duty for self-education about Islam and Muslims, and to make an effort to get out of our comfort zone and make new friends who are Muslims. They can be good or they can be bad, as anyone else. But the effort is worth it. Critical analysis of the news and of politicians’ words and actions should not only matter when it comes to work, health and the economy but also when it comes to national security too. Fear shouldn’t blind us and give a blank cheque to politicians. It should rally us to fight darkness and hate.
Monia Mazigh was born and raised in Tunisia and immigrated to Canada in 1991. Mazigh was catapulted onto the public stage in 2002 when her husband, Maher Arar, was deported to Syria where he was tortured and held without charge for over a year. She campaigned tirelessly for his release. Mazigh holds a PhD in finance from McGill University. In 2008, she published a memoir, Hope and Despair, about her pursuit of justice, and recently, a novel about Muslim women, Mirrors and Mirages. You can follow her on Twitter @MoniaMazigh or on her blog www.moniamazigh.com
Photo: J_P_D/flickr
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