Islamophobia and racism were part of this election long before Trudeau’s racist makeup, Global News

I don’t know who is going to win in this federal election but I already know who has a lot to lose.

It’s those of us who make up Canada’s diverse minority communities. We are the ones who have to endure anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, homophobic, anti-Sikh, anti-Semitic, white supremacist narratives, candidates and comments.

Yet, why does it feel it’s only now that the images of the prime minister dressed up in racist make up decades ago has captured the country’s attention, finally bringing race fully into the conversation?

The irony here is that Justin Trudeau has, in fact, taken a lot of heat for standing up to racists and, in particular, to anti-Muslim sentiment.

Among the misinformation and deliberate smears against the Liberal leader is that he is a Muslim. He has faced the accusation by far-right groups and actors online and at protest rallies for a variety of reasons. These reasons include that his government has accepted more than 50,000 Syrian refugees since 2015, countered Islamophobia with Motion 103 and apologized and compensated Omar Khadr for the violations of his rights.

While the suggestion that he is an Islamist may be as ludicrous as the Netflix comedy in which a comedian tries to convert him to Islam, the consequences of growing Islamophobia among Canadians is not. In fact, Alexandre Bissonnette, the young man who murdered six men in a Quebec City mosque in 2017, told police that he snapped when Trudeau famously tweeted: “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.”

Consistent polls have demonstrated over the years that Canadians increasingly view Muslims negatively or believe that Muslims face the worst discrimination of any minority group in the country.

That makes the Islamophobic smears against Trudeau even more ominous and is why some of the consternation about the images feels less than genuine among folks who have never before said a word against systemic racism or welcomed efforts to address it.

Painting Trudeau’s government as sympathetic to Muslims, in particular, has made strategies to address Islamophobia, anti-black racism and other forms of discrimination contentious when it shouldn’t be.

A cartoon by Quebec artist Ygreck that surfaced on social media this week is a case in point. It features a smiling Trudeau taking a selfie with a shark’s fin dressed up like a woman in a hijab. The words “Radical Islam” are written in French on the shark’s body. Unsurprising, perhaps, coming out of Quebec, where Islamophobic narratives are widespread in most mainstream media. This is the context in which a majority of the province’s residents think it’s fine to strip away the charter rights of fellow Quebecers who wear religious clothing.

As for Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, he initially wouldn’t even mentionthat Muslims were the ones targeted in a white supremacist attack against two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last March. One can only presume that he was worried about Conservative voters who say too many immigrants to Canada are visible minorities.

Scheer’s current campaign manager also happens to be Hamish Marshall, a past director at the far-right, Islamophobic Rebel Media — whose co-founder Ezra Levant was most disturbingly invited to write a column for the Globe and Mail newspaper this week.

The leader of the People’s Party of Canada didn’t bother to acknowledge that the Christchurch attack happened at all. In fact, Maxime Bernier launched his independent right-wing party based on a Twitter rant against multiculturalism. Bernier stood alongside the keynote speaker of a party conference who claimed Islamists are “infesting” Liberal Party of Canada, a claim made by a keynote speaker at his party’s inaugural conference this past August.

That Bernier attracts the extreme fringe is despicable but not unsurprising. He’s been in photos with neo-Nazis, employed one on his campaign team (though he says neither were known) and even expelled a candidate who asked him to denounce white supremacy. No one is under any illusion about whom Bernier is attracting. (It’s the same reason people are questioning why this clown would be allowed into the official leaders’ debates. His presence only legitimizes hate.)

Yet, if Scheer is serious about representing all Canadians, then he must do far better in speaking out forcefully and unequivocally against the Islamophobia of his supporters, which has only gotten worse since the last federal election.

That includes making actual policy commitments towards strengthening multiculturalism and promoting inclusive communities.

Politicians make mistakes, and it’s impossible to know if apologies are genuine. What we can do is hold everyone to account for participating in narratives that put communities at risk. Should a pattern of tacit or explicit support of racism continue, voters must send a powerful message at the ballot box and reject the politics of division.

Why political ideology can’t be ignored in this election, Global News

A quote from French author Édouard Louis resonates deeply with those of us who understand that the outcome of elections will often have deep implications on those most vulnerable and marginalized in our communities. He wrote:

“Among those who have everything … politics changes almost nothing. … For the ruling class, in general, politics is a question of aesthetics: a way of seeing themselves, of seeing the world, of constructing a personality. For us it was life or death.”

While pundits scrutinize every move a political party makes, assessing the actions or inactions of party leaders and the missteps of candidates, the actual impact of proposed policies makes for decidedly less sexy discussion.

But each party’s ideology is where we must begin any analysis of the choices before the electorate in the 2019 federal election.

Many are familiar with the left-right spectrum to describe political parties. The spectrum emerged during the French revolution of 1789. Those who supported the King sat on the right side of the National Assembly. Those who supported the revolution were on the left. The term evolved and spread over the centuries.

“The right has been more favourable to the aristocratic position, to the hierarchy of birth or of wealth; the left has fought for the equalization of advantage or of opportunity, for the claims of the less advantaged,” wrote the late Scottish sociologist Robert M. MacIver in his 1947 book, The Web of Government. Little has changed since then.

It is through this lens that voters should be assessing the various parties offering to lead our country. To avoid doing so puts people’s lives and livelihoods in jeopardy — including their own. The reality is that parties which govern on the right have managed to co-opt the language of the left to appeal to working-class people. The centre borrows from both.

This is evident in provinces like Ontario, Alberta, and just this week, in Manitoba, where voters have elected right-wing governments that ostensibly promise to stand up for the less advantaged, but whose policies are often detrimental to those very same people. We need only look at initial reductions in spending on services for autistic children, cuts to education, clawed back refugee support, reversals on environmental initiatives, and attacks on efforts to reduce emissions.

Here’s the inverted logic: less government intervention means fewer rules about how workers should be treated or protected; less taxation of business profits means less regulation of environmental impacts, and the higher our standard of living.

Social services are a drain on taxpayers, so the logic goes, without examining the disproportionate taxation that average people pay as compared to corporations. The rich are simply getting wealthier, with Canada’s 100 highest paid CEOs earning 197 times more than the average worker in 2017, up from 171 times in 2012.

Throw in the latest right-wing populist argument — less immigrantion equals fewer people competing for scarce jobs — and you’ve now got a narrow, xenophobic basis on which to cast your vote. Anti-immigrant sentiment provides those disenchanted with their economic prospects an easy scapegoat on which to pin their problems — rather than re-examine their support of parties that actually undermine the social safety net. It also ignores the fact that immigrants are, in fact, a boon to the economy.

Richard Florida, head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, conducted a joint study of the role of class in the last three American presidential elections. The researchers discovered that working-class people who had historically supported Democratic candidates (arguably situated towards the centre-left on the political spectrum), had swung to the right and were now more frequently voting for Republicans. We all know how that is playing out.

Pollster and author Michael Adams notes in his most recent book, Could it happen here? Canada in the age of Trump and Brexit, that it is common for Conservatives to describe themselves as “fiscally conservative and socially progressive.” What we need to understand is that you can’t actually be both — fiscal conservatism, by its very nature, harms society’s efforts to address systemic barriers that prevent people from realizing their full potential.

If politics is simply the arena of the ruling class — the so-called “elites” — then no wonder voters are reacting by either losing faith in political parties altogether, or voting for politicians who claim to be challenging the system.

The sad reality, though, is that many of those politicians, by the very nature of their party’s ideologies, are all about maintaining that status quo. It isn’t about making life more bearable for those who are struggling — it is about cutting services, reducing taxes, and protecting profits. A matter of life and death? It can be. If you disagree, then you may want to pay closer attention.

Eid fashion is the latest highlight in a booming modest-clothing industry, the Globe and Mail

When Eman Idil Bare was a little girl, Eid celebrations offered the rare occasions for her outfits to be as “extra” as she wanted them to be.

“It was the few times of the year where my parents’ budget didn’t really exist,” the young Canadian designer, journalist and aspiring lawyer says from her dorm in New York. “My mom would just let me go to Fabricland and pick whatever I wanted. One year, I was seven years old and I saw this dress and I made my Mom buy it for me. I started adding all sorts of bows and lace to it. Looking back 20 years later, I looked ridiculous,” she laughs.

Bare says it is that creativity and excitement that led her to pursue fashion. She launched her collection, Al-Nisa, in 2018 at New York Fashion Week. Bare often designs exclusive Eid outfits for her friends and family, she says, and isn’t surprised that mainstream fashion retailers such as Oscar de la Renta have begun offering specialty collections around Muslim holidays. These include Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, and Eid al-Adha, which marks the end of the annual pilgrimage known as the Hajj, expected to fall on Aug. 12 this year. The collections often feature luxury caftans, tunics and pants, as well as maxi dresses and skirts.

The modest-fashion industry has ballooned in recent years and is estimated to reach US$373-billion by 2022, according to Thomson Reuters’s State of the Global Islamic Economy Report. While several cultures and religions value modest clothing that covers more of the body, fashion retailers such as DKNY, Aldo and Uniqlo are starting to specifically target the lucrative Muslim modest-fashion market.

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H&M's collection includes embroidered dresses that could be layered over pants, and kimonos made with shimmering fabrics and brocade embellishments.

For instance, this year marks the second time the Swedish retailer H&M released a limited-edition capsule collection in time for Eid al-Fitr. The pieces for women and children were inspired by the Middle East and included embroidered dresses that could be layered over pants, and kimonos made with shimmering fabrics and brocade embellishments, says Maria Ostblom, head of womenswear design.

“Traditionally, there has been a very static understanding of what a hijabi woman looks like,” says Saba Alvi, a University of Ottawa professor of education with a focus on inclusive and anti-racism education who has been researching this field since 2013. But with the growth of Instagram, YouTube and other social-media platforms, Muslim women are now “vogueing the veil.” It’s a term Alvi coined to describe the emergence of a new subculture of modest fashion. She noted the existence at one point of more than 400,000 videos on YouTube that feature women sharing fashion tips on wearing the hijab.

It’s no surprise, then, that large retailers are capitalizing on this market, she says.

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Eman Idil Bare launched her Al-Nisa collection at New York Fashion Week in 2018.

But designer Nagat Bahumaid in Toronto says she’s skeptical of some of the efforts she’s seen to date, including a widely mocked make-up tutorial last year by MAC Cosmetics aimed at those waking up for suhoor, the predawn meal taken during Ramadan. “Who on Earth wears makeup at that time?” she says with a chuckle. “If they want to reach the Muslim community, collaborating with Muslim influencers and designers would go a long way for them," she adds.

But because of the potential for an intolerant backlash from the public, “a lot of companies are trying to capitalize on this trend without saying out loud that they support it,” she suggests. Bahumaid points to the decision by French retailer Decathlon to cancel plans to sell a sports hijab after a public outcry in France in February.

The University of Ottawa’s Alvi points to J.Crew as an example of how to do it right. The brand teamed up earlier this year with Haute Hijab, a company that sells high-end scarves.

Alia Khan, founder and chairwoman of the Dubai-based Islamic Fashion Design Council, notes that this trend includes an emerging segment of Muslim men looking for traditional attire that features loose-fitting pants, long coats and dress shirts that drop to the knees.

Her advice for anyone looking to tap into this burgeoning market? “I would say to the retailers: Do your due diligence. You need to understand the mindset of the consumer, and if you get it wrong, you’ll miss out on a huge opportunity,” she says. “This is a very loyal consumer market; they’re committed to this way of life and if you win them over, you’ll have this client base for a lifetime.”

The death of Hodan Nalayeh must not be the single story, the Globe and Mail

I had met Hodan Nalayeh on many occasions and was always struck by her brilliant smile, caring words and positive outlook.

Yet, like many other Canadians, it is only now, after her tragic death at the hands of violent extremists, that I have fully come to appreciate her immense contributions.

For the past several years, the Somali-Canadian journalist and broadcaster travelled between her home in Toronto and her homeland of Somalia.

Her stated objective: To provide uplifting narratives from the country her family, and countless others, had to flee due to war and conflict. Every report she shared was a challenge to the West’s “single story” about the African continent, one most synonymous with despair and tragedy.

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they aren’t true, but they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story,” Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie famously said in a 2013 Ted Talk.

Until just a few days ago, Ms. Nalayeh was achieving her goal of showcasing another side to Somalia that very few in the rest of the world ever saw. Through Integration TV, her hugely popular YouTube channel, Ms. Nalayeh had most recently uploaded stories from her stay in the port city of Kismayo, including of profiles of local women entrepreneurs.

In addition to her videos, she had also recently posted colourful, joyful images of local fishermen, overlooking the crystal blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Inspirational messages infused with her Muslim faith in both English and Somali were liked and shared by tens of thousands of people. She never wavered from expressing her many identities.

“We are inspiring millions of Somalis around the world to share their stories, to be authentic, to get to know themselves and where they come from, because all that we’ve known from our country is war. All that we’ve known from our country is division. All that we’ve known from our country is all the negative things,” she told an interviewer in 2017.

But even Ms. Nalayeh could not escape the harsh realities that continue to plague her country of birth. On Friday evening, terrorists attacked the hotel she had been staying in with her husband. They were both killed, along with 25 others. She was seven months pregnant.

While in life she was able to spotlight all she adored about Somalia, as well as highlight the immense contributions of Somali communities here in Canada, her death represents the very story she so desperately wanted to change.

That an act of terrorism would snatch her away from her family, and from communities that found renewed sense of pride in her narratives, has been hard to bear for many.

“Somalis around the world have lost a giant,” tweeted Mukhtar M. Ibrahim, editor and executive director of Sahan Journal, based in Minnesota, where news of her death was trending.

Many others added their condolences, including Canada’s Immigration Minister and former Somali refugee, Ahmed Hussen. “She became a voice for many,” he tweeted.

One of the most poignant reflections came from Somali writer and podcaster Idil Bilan who captured why Somalia’s stories must keep being told.

While reporting from the same seaside port, Ms. Bilan was once berated by a security official for trying to shake him off to explore the city on her own. When she began to cry, he said: "Idil, I’m sorry I yelled at you, but you're new to Kismayo, and I didn’t want you to die. Because we need you, and everyone else abroad here. I need you to be safe, so everyone back home knows it’s safe. And they come back, and I can stop carrying a weapon.

"I carried a weapon since 1991, and have fought for so many factions, I can’t keep count. I want the folks with the pens to return, so I can spend my days reading in the afternoon. I don't want to hold this weapon another day in my life. So stay alive, and help us fix this."

For those of us mourning the silencing of Ms. Nalayeh’s voice, we must commit to better listening to the next generation of voices following in her mighty footsteps. They, too, want to challenge the single story of their communities and help fix what’s broken.

Perhaps all that light will help overcome the dark, once and for all.

Quebec's Bill 21 shows why we fear the tyranny of the majority, the Ottawa Citizen

by Amira Elghawaby and Bernie M. Farber

As a Canadian Muslim and a Canadian Jew, we are both deeply concerned with the curtailments of religious freedoms in one of the nation’s largest provinces.

Late last month, Quebec passed legislation, Bill 21, that would limit the wearing of religious clothing by various public sector workers, including teachers, police officers, lawyers and judges. By passing the law despite protests and promises of civil disobedience, the government has demonstrated how we are all correct to fear the tyranny of the majority. It is exactly what our Charter of Rights and Freedoms was meant to protect against.

The Charter “stands as Canada’s ultimate expression of our commitment to freedom and human dignity,” opined Beverley McLachlin, former Supreme Court Chief Justice. “(It) provides all of us, regardless of race, religion, or gender, with a secure space in which to realize our aspirations.”

The Charter is among the reasons people immigrate to Canada; its promise of freedom and multiculturalism serves as a beacon for those “fleeing persecution, terror & war,” as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau famously tweeted in 2017. Just as the U.S. president was signing the first so-called “Muslim ban,” Canada’s federal government was distancing itself as far as it could from the politics of fear and division.

Just as the U.S. president was signing the first so-called “Muslim ban,” Canada’s federal government was distancing itself as far as it could from the politics of fear and division.

Canadian courts have consistently protected these fundamental human rights, even those that protect unpopular practices. These cases have included ones involving the wearing of the ceremonial Sikh dagger at school, or the right to construct temporary huts on condo balconies during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

Ironically, Quebec’s Federal Court of Appeal itself ruled last fall that a judge had discriminated against a Muslim woman by asking her remove her headscarf to be heard.

Unfortunately, the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment. A poll conducted by Léger Marketing earlier this year found that 88 per cent of Quebecers who held negative views of Islam supported the ban. “It’s mainly driven by the hijabs, and the other religious symbols are collateral damage,” said Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies, in an interview with the Montreal Gazette.

The collateral damage includes the ban of the Sikh turban, the Jewish yarmulke, Christian crosses and other symbols. The law will be enforced by what some have called the “secularism police.”

Not only has this legislation dashed the hopes and dreams of thousands of Quebecers who only wanted to contribute to the social fabric of their province, it is also putting them in danger, according to numerous reports. This legislation inadvertently bolsters those who hate and entrenches second-class citizenship, now state-sanctioned.

Minority communities were already anxious about the stark rise in hate crimes across Canada, including in Quebec. The province holds the tragic distinction of being the home of the first lethal attack on a place of worship. Six men were gunned down at a Quebec City mosque in 2017, and many more were injured.

And yet, the province’s premier continues to deny the existence of Islamophobia, including the experiences of Quebec women who say they have felt increasing racism in the province over the past few months. Politicians who continue to pander to xenophobic tendencies must be called on the carpet.

We share a common humanity. Canada’s promise of peace, equity and social inclusion must not be compromised by those who permit ignorance to shape our society.

Every person in this country must be afforded the basic human rights and dignity they deserve. The safety and prosperity of all of our communities is at stake.

Amira Elghawaby and Bernie M. Farber are board members of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.

Carding of black student at uOttawa should never have happened, the Ottawa Citizen

The video of a young, black University of Ottawa student being harassed and carded by campus security last week was described as stunning by one Ottawa news media outlet. If anyone is stunned by what was a clear act of anti-black racism against Jamal Boyce, then they clearly haven’t been paying attention to what has been going on in our city.

The reality is that many within our institutions have failed to adequately address the racism and discrimination that far too many Ottawans experience on a regular basis. It is only because Boyce was able to film part of his interactions with campus security that we are having this wider conversation about how minority communities are treated.

First, the issue of carding must be confronted as part of the larger phenomenon of over-policing racialized people. Carding is the practice whereby law enforcement agents randomly stop individuals and request their identification. Although stricter rules around police practice were put into place in 2017, fears of discrimination persist. Boyce was carded by campus security and when he said he did not have his identification, police were called and he was detained for two hours.

Jamal Boyce was carded by campus security and when he said he did not have his identification, police were called and he was detained for two hours.

“I was forced to sit on the busiest campus road in handcuffs for 2 hours. This was humiliating and messed up experience. @uOttawa security used their authority to harass and demean me. Is this how students will be continued to be treated on campus @uOttawa?” he tweeted later.

Late last year, Ontario Justice Michael Tulloch released a report concluding that these random stops serve little purpose and in fact fray trust between the public and police.  The University of Ottawa has had a policy around carding at least since 1992 and a review is overdue. University of Ottawa law Prof. Amir Attaran revealed last week that he had lodged a complaint against the practice after he and a student were carded in 2017.

Justice Michael Tulloch released myriad recommendations on how to enhance oversight of policing in the province. He raised serious concerns about carding. FRANK GUNN / THE CANADIAN PRESS

That same year, a report on anti-black racism in Ottawa concluded that our city’s institutions are “insufficiently responsive to Black community concerns. Denial of anti-Black racism affects people’s ability to trust certain institutions, such as police and the justice system.” This was based on a forum that brought together more than 300 people to talk about systemic racism in public institutions and throughout our communities.

Another report, this time by the Outreach Liaison Team, formed by the Ottawa Police Service in 2016 following the horrific death of Abdirahman Abdi, concluded that there “is a lack of acknowledgement of racism and racial profiling concerns that affect all institutions including policing.” Prior to that report, a study had already found that black and Middle Eastern men and women were many times more likely to be stopped by police while driving than were other drivers, even though they had done nothing wrong.

Beyond the issue of racial profiling, people of African origins experience marginalization and unequal treatment in our country. This was the conclusion of a United Nations Working Group that toured Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Halifax in 2016. “(T)he Working Group is deeply concerned by the structural racism that lies at the core of many Canadian institutions and the systemic anti-Black racism that continues to have a negative impact on the human rights situation of African Canadians,” says its report.

Boyce is an accomplished black student with a 9.0 CPGA, who serves as the vice-president of Academic and University Affairs for the Conflict Studies and Human Rights Students’ Association. Under no circumstances should he have been racially profiled simply for skateboarding on a bright, sunny day on the campus he attends. How many others like him are daily subjected to such humiliations and abuse?

It’s time for the City of Ottawa to designate resources towards addressing anti-black racism. Our city’s first and only black municipal councillor, Rawlson King, has called for a dedicated secretariat, similar to the one established in Toronto and which is responsible for implementing an action plan against anti-black racism.

Every Ottawan with a conscience should join that call and demand municipal councillors do the same.

Why we need happiness when everything feels bleak, the Toronto Star

For those who remember watching the movie Titanic, you’ll probably recall that moment in which the ship’s musicians begin to play music as the vessel slowly sinks into the North Atlantic Ocean.

That wasn’t a bit of fictional flair thrown in for dramatic effect. The scene was based on Wallace Henry Hartley’s real-life decision to lead the ship’s eight-member band in a musical concert as a way to comfort the passengers as they were loaded on to lifeboats.

With so much depressing news filling our social media feeds from around the world — and even from our own backyards — one wonders how on earth we can find solace when it feels as though we’re all sinking into a despairing reality.

According to the newly released 2019 Global Emotions Report by the polling agency Gallup, more than 1-in-3 people around the world said they experience worry or stress. The number of people who said they had felt angry in 2018 hit an all-time high. Sadness is also at record levels globally.

This isn’t surprising as millions of people live in dire straits. Many of us are now able to instantly witness the ongoing pain and suffering of communities everywhere. And while the numbers of Canadians reporting feeling angry or sad is relatively low, close to half of Canadians reported feeling stressed out.

Depressing news is what led a young graphic designer in the U.K. to publish “The Happy Newspaper” in 2015. It continues to bring uplifting news to readers around the world who receive the quarterly paper in the mail. Its publisher Emily Coxhead was recently featured in a viral social media news story that has attracted over 2 million views. “I was trying to find the good in humanity and the good in people in really awful times,” she explained.

Her paper has become wildly successful and her social media platforms attract tens of thousands of followers, all searching for a bit of good news and everyday heroes.

One such everyday hero who has popped up on social media is Shaymaa Ismaa’eel. She decided to pose with a wide smile in front of a group of anti-Muslim protesters who had gathered near a conference she was attending in Chicago. With a powder-pink hijab draping her shoulders, the 24-year-old also flashed a peace sign. The image has been liked over 500,000 times. “On April 21, I smiled in the face of bigotry and walked away feeling the greatest form of accomplishment,” she wrote on Instagram.

When it comes to confronting hate, a former Ottawa resident also got into the spirit of turning ugly emotions into something beautiful. Canadian Egyptian Tarek Mounib travelled across the United States last year to find Americans who are “concerned about an Islamic threat” and invite them on a free trip to Egypt.

His aim? To introduce both Americans and Egyptians to folks they wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to meet. The heartwarming outcomes were captured in a movie that is set to screen across the United States in June, and in Canada, later this summer.

This may be the stuff of sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows but looking on the bright side of life doesn’t only make us feel better, it even improves health outcomes, according to a 2016 Harvard University study. After analyzing health data of 70,000 women collected over eight years, researchers concluded that “the most optimistic women had a nearly 30 per cent lower risk of dying from any of the diseases analyzed in the study compared with the least optimistic women.”

The desire to find hope even when the world feels dismal is why we so commonly see people who have been touched by unbearable tragedies do something positive to honour their loved ones.

For instance, the family of Logan Boulet, one of the young people who died in the Humboldt Broncos bus crash last year, marked the anniversary of the tragedy by launching Green Shirt Day to encourage people to register as organ donors.

Backlash over the Women’s Mosque of Canada is predictable – and misplaced, the Globe and Mail

Across the country, makeshift mosques are popping up in various towns and cities. Many Canadian Muslims are observing Ramadan and renting out community centres, or taking up space in each other’s living rooms, basements and local dining halls to join in congregational prayers before breaking fast or to perform extra evening prayers.

There isn’t anything controversial about these gatherings. As meals are set out on tables, patterned prayer rugs, large colourful linens or simple mats are laid out nearby. Men, women and children eventually line up together in prayer.

Yet, one such pop-up gathering has received particular attention – and not all of it positive. A few weeks before Ramadan, a group of women launched the Women’s Mosque of Canada. The inaugural Friday prayers were held inside Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church in Toronto. Roughly 40 Muslim women and allies from various faith traditions listened to co-founder Farheen Khan give the sermon.

While the prayers proceeded in tranquility, reaction to the event was less calm. The debate that emerged once again symbolizes the divide that continues to exist in our communities when it comes to the place of women in traditional sacred spaces.

Why do we need this, wondered people writing in an online discussion group of more than 300 Toronto Muslim activists, leaders and scholars and posting to the Women’s Mosque’s Facebook page. One community leader admonished the effort, saying there was nothing in Islamic tradition to support the notion of a women-only mosque. Others suggested the effort would only divide people and would reinforce harmful stereotypes about the oppression of women.

Then there were the supporters, including several men who have themselves witnessed the unequal treatment of women and girls. They are sometimes banished to cramped rooms and poorly maintained areas, or made invisible behind barriers – physically and spiritually separated from a wider community in which they expect to belong.

“It’s been 30 years. How long should I tell my daughters to wait before they get taken as equal partners where they worship?” asked Naeem Siddiqui, a long-time community advocate.

Many women have decided they’ve already waited long enough.

Ms. Khan, herself deeply tied to the traditional mosque environment, was hoping to avoid any backlash. She simply aims to provide an opportunity for women and girls to regularly gather for Friday prayers and together reclaim their religious inheritance.

“Like many women, I grew up in a religious family and attended mosque. In fact, my father was one of the founders of the first mosque in Mississauga, so faith is an essential part of my life,” she wrote in a recent essay for NOW Magazine. “But as I got older I felt less connected to the experience. I didn’t see myself reflected in the scholarship, in the language and in the programming offered to women. Women’s Mosque of Canada is an attempt to engage women, like myself, to reconnect with their religion in a space with other women.”

That Muslim women, often facing the brunt of Islamophobia, need a place to heal is not lost on many. “Sadly, the reality today is that many women feel welcome everywhere except in what we believe are the best places on Earth, the mosques,” Ottawa Imam Sikander Hashemi acknowledged in an e-mail.

Indeed, a 2016 Environics survey of Muslims in Canada confirmed that women were much less likely to attend places of worship than their male counterparts.

Canadian filmmaker Zarqa Nawaz chronicled the growing alienation she felt in her own local community in a 2005 National Film Board documentary, Me and the Mosque. Little has changed since then, although many continue to push for better representation of all levels of mosque governance and participation.

Following in-depth studies of American mosques titled Re-Imagining Muslim Spaces, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding launched a toolkit in 2017 to encourage religious leaders to nurture more welcoming spaces. Other American national institutions have similarly called for more inclusion and provided advice on how to achieve it. Last year, the Muslim Council of Britain launched a six-month program to train women to become mosque leaders.

“Muslim women, Muslim male allies and non-Muslim supporters of mosque reform are participating in one of the most significant struggles presently happening in our global Islamic communities,” Canadian researcher Fatimah Jackson-Best wrote in 2014 for the magazine Aquila Style. “Mosque reform is not some fringe movement or a bunch of troublemakers trying to jeopardize the image of Islam. This is about spiritual equality and destroying archaic notions that are based in culture and custom and have little to do with the religion.”

Growing alienation has sparked the UnMosqued movement in which women, young people and converts eschew traditional institutions, including multimillion-dollar mosques, in search for alternatives or third spaces. These are formal and informal gatherings outside of traditional religious centres and homes, where there is often less rigidity and an authentic embrace of diversity.

Those anxious about the Women’s Mosque of Canada should be less concerned with the thought of women reconnecting with their faith and instead commit to addressing the schism that drove them out of the mosques in the first place.

Quebec’s bill on religious symbols poses a new threat to Canada’s unity, the Toronto Star

In 1995, I joined tens of thousands of people who poured into Montreal to show Quebecers we didn’t want them to vote yes in a referendum to separate.

While historians would suggest that the Unity Rally wasn’t necessarily what convinced people to vote no to separation, it nonetheless symbolized the commitment of Canadians outside of Quebec to see our nation remain intact.

A large Canadian flag is passed through a crowd in this Oct. 27, 1995 file picture, as thousands streamed into Montreal from all over Canada to join Quebecers rallying for national unity three days before a referendum that could propel Quebec toward secession.  (RYAN REMIORZ / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

A quarter of a century later, we face a new kind of separatist threat emerging from Quebec. This time we face a separation from the very idea of what Canada represents and stands for: a beacon of peace and security where global diasporas contribute and participate freely in the nation’s success.

Instead of embracing this legacy, Quebec’s governing party has decided to finish the job that previous governments and political parties have toyed with over the last decade — to once and for all, scrub all visual symbols of religion from key areas of public service in the province.

For the first time in our nation’s history, members of a variety of communities will be officially forced to choose between their religion and their career aspirations. Though let’s not forget how Indigenous communities were once shamefully outlawed from practicing their own spiritual teachings in this country, too. Nor the various moments in our history when racism and xenophobia influenced immigration policy.

Now, in the name of laïcité, the Quebec government is arguing that freedom from religion is even more important than freedom of religion. We must view this latest legislation as a potential dagger in the heart of Canada’s national identity as a multicultural nation.

Renowned historian and journalist Gwynne Dyer noted decades ago in his oft-quoted essay “Visible Majorities” that the entire notion of multiculturalism may have actually saved Canada from further fragmenting along linguistic lines. At the time of Confederation, English and French communities were often in conflict. In fact, the relationship between Quebec and Ottawa was even described as being akin to two scorpions in a bottle.

Multiculturalism, wrote Dwyer, would later neutralize those scorpions. Instead of holding on to tribal loyalties, Canadians would instead embrace the diversities of its various newly arrived immigrant communities — their languages, cultures, religions, and traditions.

Author Erna Paris has similarly pointed out the centrality of multiculturalism to the story of Canada. “One of the most important reasons for Canada’s success is the fact that we have eschewed demands for total assimilation to a defined identity in favour of integration,” she wrote last year. “Integration is the foundation of the support we offer newcomers. Its most salient feature is that no one attempts to alter the core identity of an individual or group.”

Even Quebec’s own version of this policy, interculturalism, valued a human rights framework, pointed out University of Montreal academic Marie McAndrew in a 2007 analysis.

Now, Quebecers and newcomers belonging to religious minorities are anxiously wondering how they will fit in the province. This anxiety should extend beyond provincial boundaries. One of the premier’s own parliamentary assistants, Christopher Skeete, has already opined that the rest of Canada is due for a similar conversation.

This is why federal government action, or inaction, could forever impact the character of our country. Will it permit the province to override our cherished rights and freedoms, in defiance of careful and successful immigration policy that has made Canada one of the most successful models of integration in the world? Or will it explore every legal option in its toolbox to hold Quebec to human rights standards the country’s courts have painstakingly laid out over the past several decades?

Quebec’s use of the notwithstanding clause to pre-empt Charter challenges will be a stumbling block but it’s not unsurmountable.

As right-wing populism continues to threaten democratic values, Canadians will have to resist every effort that undermines our collective identity as a country where everyone is welcome and free to contribute to the very best of their ability. What we wear should never factor into the equation.

Will we manage to unite around principles of human rights and multiculturalism as we united decades ago in an effort to save our country? The answer will have far-reaching implications.

Symbols of love can help heal pain of New Zealand attack, the Ottawa Citizen

The flags were flying at half-mast at my children’s school here in Ottawa.

The principal spoke over the loudspeaker to explain why. He addressed the horror that was inflicted on the town of Christchurch, New Zealand. He offered support to the middle and high school students who might need it, spoke about how racism and discrimination are anathema to their school and to our society.

Those gestures won’t solve the world’s problems, nor address the troubling tide of white supremacy and far-right movements that contributed to the radicalization of the terrorist who shot dead 50 people at prayers two weeks ago. But those words and actions send such a strong signal to our young people and to the adults in their lives.

It is such efforts that make all the difference.

It is why people everywhere are lauding New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. In both word and deed she symbolized the empathy and humanity we all search for when the worst kind of evil is on display. When we are at a loss to explain to our children why anyone would carry such hatred and commit such violence, we look for symbols and gestures of love and compassion.

Young people were sharing the video of the attacks on Snapchat shortly after they had taken place more than halfway around the world. My daughter and her friends were together for a sleepover and awoke their mother in tears at what they had inadvertently just witnessed.

When they returned to school, there were conversations about what had happened. There were those who had talked about it with their families, those who hadn’t. Not all schools provided space to address the tragedies — understandable because, as my children’s principal told me, there are so many horrors in the world and where would it end?

Yet, just as gestures have an impact, so do the omissions. So, too do the things we do not say to one another, the smiles we do not share, the space we do not offer.

The invisibility of our experiences can have a harmful effect on our sense of belonging. If our educators cannot acknowledge how a world event could impact their global student body, if our law enforcement agencies aren’t sensitive to the heightened anxiety of minority communities, if our media outlets fail to address xenophobic currents or appropriately explore threats, then we can’t help but feel abandoned.

If our political leaders refuse to accept that Islamophobia exists, or to unequivocally condemn far-right and white supremacist ideologies, we feel all the more vulnerable and alone. If the public does little to oppose policies implemented to limit religious expression, undermining our ability to both practise our faith and serve the public, we are further isolated.

It’s why we should hold up and acknowledge the efforts that are made to reach out and bring people together. When fear and bigotry influence social consciousness, we each need to highlight and express the opposite of those attitudes. We need to spotlight the compassion and care we give and receive in times like these.

There are those who see our pain, who feel the depth of our anguish. Knowing that is integral to the healing we need to begin. Those who rush to provide protection to places of worship, those who take a moment to send messages of solidarity and peace, those who dance the Haka in honour of those who were stolen from us, those who don a hijab for a few moments in kinship.

All of this permits us to fully grieve, even to forgive.

There is no simple solution to confronting the radicalization of those who are threatened by the mosaic of cultures and religions and experiences that make up our multicultural societies. But there are ways to counter the hatred and provide a balm for those who are hurting.

“We are brokenhearted, but we are not broken,” said Imam Gamal Fouda, the imam of the Al Noor mosque in a speech one week after the attack, surrounded by thousands of fellow new Zealanders, united in grief.

It is the gestures and symbols of love that keep us whole.

New Zealand’s response to mosque massacre offers lessons for Canada, Global News

Like many people around the world, I am in awe of New Zealand’s prime minister.

My admiration isn’t solely based on Jacinda Ardern’s graceful compassion — though that has provided a balm for so many of us who were deeply shaken by the horrific violation of human life and dignity in our most sacred of spaces.

The deep sense of appreciation is also due to the fact that her actions — and those of her government — have stood in stark contrast to those that followed a terrorist attack here at home in which a terrorist similarly massacred six worshippers and injured many more in a Quebec City mosque in 2017.

It’s instructive to look at how these two massacres played out in both these nations to better understand how our various levels of governments in Canada are failing to meet the challenge of growing far-right movements and the climate that nurtures them.

It’s barely a week after the tragedy and Ardern has already called for a public inquiry into how the attacks could have even occurred.

“It is important that no stone is left unturned to get to the bottom of how this act of terrorism occurred and what, if any, opportunities we had to stop it,” she said as she outlined the areas a royal commission will examine. Headed up by a high court judge, the inquiry will examine the role of social media and possible intelligence failures in the attacks.

Here in Canada, there was no similar inquiry. Far from it.

On the contrary, following the Quebec City attack, CSIS quietly conducted a “preliminary threat assessment” that was kept largely secret from the publicregarding the threat of far-right extremists.  While it reopened investigations into these movements in 2017, a 2018 public safety report on terrorism and extremism failed to identify these movements as a threat to national security, instead calling them more of a “threat to the fabric of Canadian society.” That same report also suggested that far-right groups in Canada are not openly promoting violence, when there is ample evidence of the opposite.

Canadian researchers and advocates have called for increased resources, strengthened or new legislation and more focus on policing. One community advocacy group has even called on the government to add a paramilitary, anti-Muslim group to Canada’s terror watch list. The federal government finally seems to be getting the message with modest funding initiatives related to studying far-right movements.

And a public inquiry following the Quebec City attack would have offered immense value in helping better understand what led a young man to go on a shooting rampage of innocent worshippers. While we would learn that he had consumed a variety of far-right, white supremacist content online, an inquiry would most certainly have additionally shone light on media outlets that regularly trade in anti-Muslim tropes and narratives.

In fact, for a brief moment following the killings, there were mea culpas from media personalities and politicians who spoke about how “words could cut like knives”.Those sentiments quickly dissipated and the status quo returned.

Without any real accountability, there is little hope for change. The climate is so toxic that just a few weeks ago, some people were even celebrating the death of seven Syrian refugee children in a house fire in Halifax. Quebec’s own Premier, François Legault,  has himself struggled to admit the existence of Islamophobia altogether.

New Zealand’s prime minister also quickly promised to help care for the victim’s families. In Quebec, the wife of one of the men who was killed was only granted compensation on the eve of the two year anniversary after fighting to be recognized as a victim that entire time.

Then there are the countless numbers of women across New Zealand who donned a headscarf, just as their prime minister did, to show support to the nation’s Muslim communities. This is perhaps the most jarring contrast of all — Quebec’s government wants to force women to either choose between wearing their headscarves or to work in the public service. The decade-long obsession around the wearing of the hijab in Quebec insinuates over and over again that religious minorities should not have the same rights and freedoms as other Quebecers. This entrenches systemic discrimination and fuels division.

New Zealand’s government also moved quickly to implement a widely-lauded ban on military-style semi-automatic weapons, assault rifles, and high-capacity magazines. Whereas in Quebec, there continues to be widespread reluctance among gun owners to comply with recent legislation requiring them to register their weapons. And at both provincial and federal levels, there are concerns that not enough is being done to screen gun buyers for mental illness, or extremist views.

Heidi Rathjen, co-ordinator of the gun control advocacy group PolySeSouvient, lamented Canada’s slow pace of change compared to New Zealand. “It shows we are sorely lacking in political leadership and courage when it comes to gun control,” she remarked.

To point out where we may have fallen short in comparison with New Zealand’s response is not to ignore the waves of love and solidarity that engulfed our communities here in Canada following the tragic attack in Quebec, or even following these most recent ones in New Zealand. Like those who performed the Haka in honour of the victims or who stood protectively behind worshippers as they prayed, those who stood hand in hand in rings of peace circling mosques in this country demonstrated empathy and support for minority Muslim communities.

Yet, we should always strive to do better — as should our governments. New Zealand has shown us how.

Christchurch attack: No one should be this afraid to practise their faith, the Globe and Mail

I woke up to the news from New Zealand and my hands started shaking. My stomach began to ache.

Within minutes, I was scrolling through my social-media feed. Soon I was telling my partner he’d have to call local police authorities to request additional security at a community event planned for this weekend. My hands were still shaking.

Would families attend Friday prayers today? Even if I had planned to go, I would now be too afraid. I worried for those who would attend, refusing to let such violent hatred stop them from practising their faith.

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Then feelings of relief when I realized I wouldn’t have to send my son to the local private Islamic school he attends. I just don’t know how I will find the courage to send him on Monday.

I didn’t see the whole video. I inadvertently came upon a news story that included a segment of it. I couldn’t turn away even though people said not to look.

The clip showed only the first few minutes of the video of a shooter pulling out his weapons from his car while music played in the background. The camera approaches a building, clearly a mosque, and the frame freezes, although the sound of rapid-fire bullets continue over the image.

The newscaster tells the audience that while everyone in the newsroom has already watched the video numerous times, they will not be broadcasting it.

It doesn’t really matter because tens of thousands of people have already seen it, even as social-media companies were working to remove the footage. My WhatsApp feed was full of hundreds of messages talking about the brutal scenes showing a shooter killing at least 49 people at point-blank range. My friends wondered how they would prevent their children from seeing this, how they would explain the senseless slaughter.

The terrorist who live-streamed his horrific acts has succeeded in sending a message to other like-minded individuals that Muslims deserve to die. He has succeeded in striking fear into the hearts of millions of people around the world, particularly those of us living as religious minorities in societies that may have become increasingly uneasy with our presence.

It isn’t as though sectarian violence is a new phenomenon in our world; there are killings between and within faith communities at almost any moment, somewhere.

There is immense shock though when this happens in countries where there is a promise and expectation that people of all faiths and backgrounds will co-exist in harmony. It shatters a collective sense of safety. It reminds us that there are those who are willing to use violence to hurt and divide us.

Those who oppose inclusive multicultural communities are becoming more empowered in a world in which they can radicalize among like-minded co-conspirators and supporters online. They have become more vocal and more dangerous. New Zealand isn’t alone in having to confront the ugly reality of white supremacist ideology. There are at least 100 far-right groups in Canada, at last count. Hate crimes are on the rise in this country, particularly those targeting Muslim, Jewish, black, Arab or West Asian communities.

We know that the Quebec City mosque shooter was influenced by a coterie of the who’s who of the American far-right. The New Zealand gunman reportedly had the Quebec City shooter’s name etched on his weapons.

When our federal government finally tried to address Islamophobia, racism and religious discrimination in 2017, the effort was met with even more hate in the form of rallies and online threats. Some politicians even played along, suggesting that the whole exercise was simply a way to shut down freedom of expression.

Subsequent government consultations to confront racism had to be held behind closed doors to avoid the backlash.

If we are to learn anything from this latest attack on our cherished right to practise our faith freely and without fear, it is that we all have a duty to confront hatred unequivocally. We need to hold each other to a higher standard, and we must demand better from those with any power to fix what’s breaking in our societies.

No one should be this afraid.

Communities need a say on how their data is collected and used, the Ottawa Citizen

While data is being heralded as the new oil, there are serious questions about who actually owns it. Particularly from communities that have every reason to fear the misuse or abuse of this increasingly valuable resource.

Consider that First Nations’ communities decided they had to assert control over their data as far back as 1998. That’s when the OCAP principles (Ownership, control, access and possession) were established to govern how their data should be “collected, protected, used, or shared.”

“We’re not going to advise you on what you should be doing with your data. We’re going to tell you what we’re going to do with our data,” said Gwen Philipps, a citizen of the Ktunaxa Nations in a 2017 paper released by Open North, in collaboration with the British Columbia First Nations Data Governance Initiative.

It was part of a project called Decolonizing Data, which invited input from First Nations’ communities towards the creation of 10 key principles around data sovereignty to help inform discussions with the federal government.

As the editors of the 2016 book, Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an Agenda, concluded, the “emergence of the global data revolution and associated new technologies can be a double-edged sword for indigenous peoples.” If communities “lose control” over their data, write its editors, “discrimination will persist.”

That’s true for other communities, too.

Consider how some members of Toronto’s Black community have called for the destruction of data collected through the practice known as carding, in which police randomly stop people, asking for identification. Analysis has frequently shown that Black people are disproportionately singled out. Some advocates don’t want that information to be stored without their consent and potentially shared with other agencies.

Yet that very same data can become critical in highlighting the existence of racism and can become the basis for further investigation, censure and correction. For instance, Renu Mandhane, head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, has pointed out that the commission requires the data in its ongoing inquiry into racial profiling and discrimination at the Toronto Police Service.

That’s because complaints from communities often don’t get the same attention from government and public institutions as do hard facts. In Ottawa, a three-year study of police traffic stops revealed that a disproportionate number of traffic stops targeted Middle Eastern men and women, and Black men. “The data can help demonstrate the lived experiences of communities,” Mandhane explained during a gathering of human rights and technology advocates in Toronto last spring.

The problem is that aside from Indigenous communities, which have established the First Nations Information Governance Centre, many communities are barely catching up to the advantages and pitfalls of data-gathering. At the government level, analysis has primarily focused on the impacts of open data on individual privacy and security.

“Citizens need to be more actively engaged and advocating for public ownership of data,” argues Bianca Wylie, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and the head of the Open Data Institute of Toronto, who has frequently raised concerns about public/private initiatives that could inadvertently lead to the sharing of publicly gathered data with private interests.

The Digital Justice Lab, Tech Reset Canada, and The Centre for Digital Rights recently offered community grants to encourage people who aren’t typically engaged on these types of topics to explore them. One such gathering in Ottawa attracted nearly 100 people, many of whom wanted to learn more about just how their communities’ data was being used.

These are complex topics but they have become key in any human rights advocacy. Marginalized communities whose data have historically been missing, or ignored, should advocate for better information. That data could help substantiate claims of discrimination, or help strengthen policy decisions made about or for them. The problem is that we have yet to have robust conversations about just who will gather it, how, and to what end.

Sexism is a shared burden for women around the globe, the Toronto Star

“I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy.”

These words were first uttered by American abolitionist and suffragette Sarah Moore Grimké in 1837. They were revived again by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the early days of her legal career as she set out to dismantle systemic gender discrimination in America.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s “legacy has taken on a new dimension in Trump’s America, where women’s rights are again under threat,” writes Amira Elghawaby  (REBECCA GIBIAN / AP)

Ginsburg’s legacy has taken on a new dimension in Trump’s America, where women’s rights are again under threat.

“Trump and his evangelical backers are united by a common desire to constrain the behavior of women,” writes Peter Beinart in a troubling article in last month’s Atlantic. Beinart suggests authoritarianism is on the rise as a direct reaction to women’s emancipation: “. . . the more empowered women become, the more right-wing autocrats depict that empowerment as an assault on the natural political order.”

Women’s struggles continue to play out on the international stage, most recently with the case of Rahaf Mohammed, now hopefully safe on Canadian soil. The young woman had to publicly defy her own family to escape a society in which patriarchy is woven tightly into the fabric of everyday life, despicably justified in the name of Islam.

This despite the fact Islam recognized women as full legal persons over 1,000 years before European women would win that recognition in Western law.

That far too many communities and governments have backslid from this revolutionary history is the subject of considerable feminist Muslim scholarship, often invisible to Western audiences. “[I]t is left to those people thought not to exist — Muslim women who fight sexism — to rewrite those scenarios and reclaim our identities,” points out Susan Carland, author of Fighting Hislam: Women, Faith and Sexism.

What is also true is that gender struggles continue to exist within and beyond a variety of religious traditions. A group of female leaders representing Jewish, Christian, Indigenous, and Muslim traditions reflected on their shared struggles during a panel at the Parliament of World Religions in Toronto held late last year. “There is an inside, outside challenge,” remarked Ottawa Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton, acknowledging that some women are able to work within their own faith communities to challenge the patriarchal status quo, while others simply decide to fight for women’s rights outside of religious frameworks altogether.

These experiences underscore how challenging sexism is a shared burden, crossing religious, cultural, and social lines.

Here in Canada, there is a gender pay gap that will take 100 years to close, according to the World Economic Forum. Many women struggle to find adequate and affordable child care to make it easier to participate in the workplace. We also continue to lack adequate representation at almost all levels of leadership, from corporate boards to the halls of power, and everywhere in between.

When it comes to racialized and Indigenous women, the situation is often more stark. Consider recent reports of the sterilization of Indigenous women, without free and informed consent. Indigenous women have historically been subjected to colonial laws that have aimed to limit or erase their presence and power. Even those who manage to overcome barriers to education and employment will still earn less than other non-racialized women.

Throughout the country, violence against women continues to wreak havoc on families; a woman is killed at the hands of her partner every six days, according to the Canadian Women’s Foundation. Canadian shelters are full of those seeking to escape abuse; workplace policies to support victims of violence are only just catching up. Advocates have called for a national action plan to address these issues.

Beyond the celebratory breakfasts, brunches, and galas, International Women’s Day is an opportunity to reflect on all that remains to be done to achieve women’s full equality — and together, recommit to making it happen.

Quebec Media Contribute To A Climate Of Hate And Intolerance, Canadaland

Corporate giant Quebecor should be held to account for the content that its outlets regularly peddle

While horrifying, it didn’t come as a surprise that some people would leave racist comments on the Facebook page of a Quebec news outlet when it posted a story on the deaths of seven Syrian refugee children in Halifax in February.

Among the comments on TVA Nouvelles’ post: “Good riddance” and “We’re tired of paying for them.” One young man who posted xenophobic comments admitted in a radio interview that his constant exposure to negative information about Arabs contributed to his immediate feelings of hatred when he saw the story about the Syrian family.

Indeed, Quebecers are exposed to a steady barrage of dehumanizing tropes about, and caricatures of, Muslims. One recent survey conducted by Leger Marketing on behalf of the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies found that while Quebecers matched the national average in terms of the proportion who said they encountered racism and hatred online, 62 per cent of Quebecers who saw such hate speech said it was most often targeted towards Muslims, compared to 46 per cent for Canadians overall.

While TVA Nouvelles was right to remove the Facebook post altogether in response, Quebecor, the media giant that owns it, must be held to account for the Islamophobic content that its outlets peddle regularly. Quebecor’s various properties have contributed to a hostile environment for minority communities in Quebec. Take, for example, two recent Journal de Montréal columns taking to task the survivors and families of the victims of the Quebec mosque shooting carried out by Alexandre Bissonnette.

Lise Ravary, a regular columnist who has said that there is no such thing as a “moderate Islam,” criticized members of the Quebec City Muslim community for wanting a stiffer sentence for the mosque shooter. In the same article, she maligned their previous efforts to find land for their own cemetery, suggesting both scenarios prove that community members have failed to integrate. She even questioned the decision by victims’ families to bury their loved ones in their countries of origin.

(In a seeming effort to distance herself from the idea that she promotes hateful views, Ravary penned bizarre columns in the Journal and Montreal Gazette, maintaining that she totally condemns the hateful comments left about the Halifax fire. In the latter piece, she seems to conclude that racism isn’t really the issue, because, scientifically, there is no such thing as race, and that people just seem to be really ignorant. The possibility that she herself feeds into that ignorance is, of course, left unmentioned.)

In another column for the Journal, a columnist named Joseph Facal defended Bissonnette’s parents for criticizing the sentence he received (life imprisonment, without possibility of parole for 40 years) and then accused survivors of wanting to inflict the kind of vengeance present in Middle Eastern countries. Such stereotypes fuel the type of hatred we see on social media, and in real life. The same year that Bissonnette killed six people in a mosque, hate crimes targeting Muslims actually tripled in Quebec.

“Quebecor Media Group has a unique perception of what journalism ethics are,” explains Université Laval professor and media expert Colette Brin, pointing to its 2010 withdrawalfrom the Quebec Press Council and lawsuit against the organization for continuing to render decisions regarding its media outlets.

Just last week, the Council found that TVA Nouvelles had breached journalistic ethics in a 2017 report that wrongly claimed officials at a Montreal mosque had asked a construction company to keep female workers away from a nearby site during Friday prayers. The Council concluded that the false reporting “unnecessarily exacerbated social tensions with the Muslim community” and that the outlet took too long in issuing a subsequent retraction and apology.

“There is no transparency: no public editor, no ombudsperson. Their approach is, ‘If you have a problem with us, sue us,’” says Brin. (Quebecor’s TV channels remain subject to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, but this does not apply to its print publications.)

Taking legal action against a media giant is out of reach for most people. One is left to hope that the public would switch off media that is divisive or which serves to inflame fear and xenophobia. But that’s not happening. Quebecor’s channels are the most popular in the province (though, thankfully, its television foray beyond Quebec was far less successful).

One could also hope that elected officials would look into this phenomenon, particularly considering the hand-wringing that originally followed the Quebec mosque massacre concerning the troubling media discourse in the province. A spokesperson for the coalition Sortons les radio-poubelles (“Take Out the Trash Radio”), has called for stronger consequences for those broadcasting racist, homophobic, and sexist views.

In the U.K., there was a judicial public inquiry into the actions of the British press following the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. Is it time for a provincial inquiry into the promotion of racist discourse on the airwaves and online to help find a meaningful solution to all this? It’s hard to imagine Quebec’s government doing much to tackle this, considering that the premier has been reluctant to address the existence of Islamophobia and that its minister for the Status of Women belittles women who wear the headscarf. All while public servants brace for a discriminatory ban on their freedom to wear religious clothing, widely supported by a population encouraged to view non-Christian practice as a threat.

Certainly, Quebec isn’t the only province in which people expressed violent, racist views at a moment of deep national sorrow for the family in Halifax. A CBC Nova Scotia moderator told one user that they had to ban numerous comments on its coverage. Our communities are being dehumanized across the country, and this will continue to put people in real danger.

This environment must be categorically condemned by elected officials both inside and outside of Quebec, and it must be reined in. The loving majority must demand better.

Justice isn’t served when double standards taint the system, the Toronto Star

The parents of Alexandre Bissonnette made an impassioned plea on behalf of their son last week: 40 years in prison without the chance of parole is too harsh a sentence, they argued, despite the horrific murders he committed.

His parents expressed their wish they’d done more to support their struggling son who had been severely bullied. “Alexandre suffered psychological and physical bullying during his school years, which had devastating effects on his personality,” they wrote.

It’s hard to imagine what it must feel like to have a child grow up to become a deeply troubled adult who would brutally kill other people, destroying families, shattering an entire community and sending shock waves throughout the country.

Yet, there is another set of Canadian parents whose lives have similarly been upended but who have received far less attention. Their son, like Bissonnette, suffered mentally and was also recently sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges brought against him.

That’s where the similarities end.

Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, 20, did not actually kill anyone, but was accused and pled guilty to plotting terrorist attacks against targets in New York City back in 2016. Unlike Bissonnette, the Mississauga man did not solely self-radicalize but was also caught up in an FBI sting operation at age 17.

His lawyer, Dennis Edney, said the young man had a clear history of mental illness, including psychotic episodes and had grappled with drug addiction since the age of 14. While the judge acknowledged all this, El Bahnasawy was convicted nonetheless this past December.

His parents were shattered, blaming the RCMP for knowing about his mental state after obtaining medical records from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and then handing them over to the FBI. Why didn’t they alert the family that their troubled son had fallen down a rabbit hole of radicalization, and that an FBI informant was pushing him further and further into the abyss?

The double standard is clear: Bissonnette pled guilty to killing six people, attempting to kill six more, and injuring many others. The judge concluded he was motivated by a deep hatred of immigrants and of Muslims, and that he showed little remorse; that he had visited dozens of social media pages of prominent far-right figures who promoted supremacist ideology and even admitted he wanted to kill people in order to protect his family from terrorists. While legal experts, including University of Toronto professor and author Kent Roach, argued there was enough evidence to merit terrorism-related charges, none were brought forward.

But when El Bahnasawy, grappling with drug dependency and in constant mental distress, became embroiled in a Daesh plot, his terrorist credentials were immediately presumed. While he was thankfully caught before anyone was hurt, he nonetheless received a sentence as lengthy as Bissonnette’s, despite strong evidence of entrapment and after penning an apology letter denouncing violence.

Sentences involving Muslims in the U.S. are often significantly longer than those meted out to those who aren’t Muslim for similar crimes, according to research released last spring by the Washington-based Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.

We’re consistently conditioned to view terrorism as being committed only by Muslims. Mainstream media is seven and a half times more likely to report on attempted violence committed by Muslims, and twice as likely to report on successful plots involving Muslims, than by others, according to that same research.

This context may also provide some understanding as to why survivors, family, and community members of the tragic attack on the mosque were so upset by Bissonnette’s sentence. Shooting survivor Said El-Amari explained that he was made to feel like “a Muslim Canadian citizen is worth less than any other citizen,” when compared to a case like that of Justin Bourque, who was sentenced to 75 years without parole for killing three RCMP officers in 2014.

In their open letter, Bissonnette’s parents suggested that their son deserves a second chance — similar to those that immigrants or refugees receive when admitted to Canada.

In what universe are these two situations even remotely comparable? Maybe it’s the one in which some lives are weighted differently than others.

Searching for answers, two years after the mosque massacre, the Globe and Mail

Two years ago, a little girl in a purple tuque was standing in the wide, green expanse of the first floor of the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec. Three more children were nearby as community members were milling about in conversation after completing evening prayers.

This was the quiet scene Alexandre Bissonnette walked into on the frigid night of Jan. 29, 2017. His gunshots shattered the calm, and within minutes six men were dead and several were severely injured. Soon, more than a dozen families, a religious community and an entire nation were confronted with the worst manifestations of hatred, bigotry, and Islamophobia.

Mr. Bissonnette pleaded guilty to several counts of murder and attempted murder and is scheduled to be sentenced next month. But as we mark the second anniversary, we are still missing closure.

It took two years for Khadija Thabti, widow of Aboubaker Thabti, to finally win financial compensation from the provincial victims’ compensation board – only granted abruptly late last week. The mother of two, who hasn’t been able to work and still has nightmares, was otherwise scheduled to appeal her case in court on Jan. 29, of all days. While it must be a relief that she now won’t have to, what about other families – who had only two years from the timing of the tragedy to make a claim?

Jan. 29 this year is also the deadline for Quebecers to register their firearms in a public registry. Many in Quebec City’s Muslim community have welcomed this move, though they remain justifiably concerned that gaps that permitted someone with a history of mental illness like Mr. Bissonnette to obtain and hold on to weapons will remain.

In the meantime, the federal government is also in the midst of updating firearms regulations, but nagging concerns about screening persist nationally as well, including whether those who publicly exhibit racist, extremist views can be prevented from purchasing guns.

Then there’s the reality that minority communities in Canada are increasingly targets of hate; the year of the massacre saw a 151 per cent rise in hate crimes targeting the Muslim community. Just this past week, worshippers arriving for Friday prayers at Al Rashid mosque in Edmonton were confronted by two men allegedly belonging to an anti-Muslim hate group. One of them was wearing a hat emblazoned with the word ‘Infidel’, a clear hint he wasn’t simply there to use the bathroom, as he later claimed on Facebook, but to intimidate the community at a particularly anxious time.

Among the growing number of far-right, anti-immigrant groups in Canada, there is the newly formed yellow vests movement, modelled after the French protest group. The original message has been appropriated by those holding racist, anti-immigrant views, according to Canada’s ambassador to France.

Yellow vest protesters now frequently rally across the country, ostensibly against the government’s economic and immigration policies. Yet anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant posters and flyers distributed at various events point to dangerous views. Even the group’s Facebook page, with 100,000 members, has included a variety of racist comments, even death threats against the Prime Minister.

Two years on, this country still has no clear strategy for addressing online hate. We know now that Mr. Bissonnette was consuming Islamophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric spewed by a coterie of online propagandists. And while a parliamentary committee recommended increased funding for law enforcement to investigate online hate speech, we’re still waiting for concrete action.

One can find solace in the acts of kindness offered by individuals and communities during these past two years. The hundreds of thousands of dollars raised to purchase a house for Aymen Derbali and his family are a reminder that many people do want to help. Mr. Derbali, who was paralyzed in the shooting, hasn’t let the attack shake his faith in his fellow Canadians.

He deserves to be commemorated as a hero, along with the other men who selflessly ran toward the gunman that night in an effort to stop the rampage and who lost their lives or were severely injured in doing so. Their sacrifices should further compel us to do more to honour their legacy, and to help bring about closure to this national tragedy.

Why we're holding vigil for Quebec's Islamic Centre victims, the Ottawa Citizen

This past Sunday marked International Holocaust Memorial Day. Around the world, people gathered to reflect, share, and mourn the genocides that destroyed lives and shattered families in Germany, Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia and Darfur in decades past.

“Together we bear witness for those who endured genocide, and honour the survivors and all those whose lives were changed beyond recognition,” reads the United Kingdom-based Holocaust Memorial Day Trust website.

While it’s overwhelming to imagine the millions of people who have been killed for no other reason than their race, religion, or ethnicity, it’s also absolutely critical that we do remember them. It’s part of an ongoing healing process, points out sociologist Nancy Berns, author of Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us.

Writing about the importance of memorials, Berns argues that remembrance provides an opportunity for people to share their stories, builds public bonds, documents history, and inspires movements for social change. “Storytelling does not just benefit survivors and victims’ families. Individual stories can help the world understand the human toll of mass tragedy,” she writes.

It’s why, Tuesday, thousands of people across Canada will be holding vigils and events to remember the six men killed at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec exactly two years ago.

Many of us are now familiar with the events of that horrific night. It was a frigid evening on Jan. 29, 2017 when Alexandre Bissonnette walked towards the mosque and began shooting. Within minutes, he had shot dead Ibrahima Barry, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Khaled Belkacemi, Aboubaker Thabti, Abdelkrim Hassane and Azzedine Soufiane and had severely injured many others, including Aymen Derbali, who was paralyzed.

One of the widows, Khadija Thabti, recently shared that she continues to experience nightmares about that night and increasing anxiety around this time of year. One can’t help but deeply empathize, almost wishing she didn’t have to relive the memory. Yet we need public memorials and commemorations in order to demonstrate our collective commitment towards addressing the hate that would drive someone to murder her husband simply because he was Muslim.

“When societies have crisis of identity, or other forms of crisis – economic or political – it becomes all too easy for unscrupulous leaders to say ‘Those others among us, they’re the problem,’” surmised former Brock president and history professor Jack Lightstone during a lecture about the Holocaust at the Niagara Falls Military Museum this past weekend.

“It’s easy to blame the stranger among us, even if they’re not really a stranger at all. I think that’s the lesson.”

Lightstone’s words apply to the circumstances that drove Bissonnette to commit his atrocities. He told police that he wanted to save Canada from terrorist attacks, based on anti-Muslim rhetoric he was consuming online through the accounts of a wide range of far-right leaders, white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Court proceedings further revealed he was angered by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tweet welcoming refugees to Canada, the day after U.S. President Donald Trump’s had instituted the first so-called Muslim ban.

As is so often said, those who forget history are bound to repeat it. That’s what motivates people like Bryan Stevenson. He’s the founder of the American Equal Justice Initiative and the National Museum for Peace and Justice, which opened this past spring. The museum is the first of its kind to explore America’s painful history of “racial terror” and commemorate thousands of lynching victims.

“It breaks your heart to have to deal with this, but it will break your heart even more when your children and your grandchildren and their great-grandchildren are as separated and burdened by this legacy as we are,” Stevenson has said, finding inspiration on a visit to Germany where there are constant reminders of the Holocaust.

Here in Canada, hate crimes against Muslims increased by nearly 50 per cent the same year of the massacre, along with a significant rise in attacks on Jewish and Black communities. We clearly must do more to confront the hatred and bigotry that persists. Memorializing Jan. 29 with vigils, public memorials, and as a nationally designated day, are urgent and necessary steps.

Muslim women in Congress reinforce what is possible, the Toronto Star

It would be easy for many of us to shrug nonchalantly at the historic images of two American Muslim women taking their place in the U.S. Congress.

After all, Canadian Muslims have been elected to Parliament over the years, and are currently represented in cabinet and in the Senate. In 2015, Maryam Monsef became the first Muslim woman ever to be appointed to the post of minister. She would be followed by current Immigration Minister, Ahmed Hussen.

Many people in Canada have nonetheless taken notice of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib’s wins. Their victories are significant for a variety of reasons that resonate well beyond American politics.

Consider that Muslim women, in particular, have often been silenced, stereotyped, pigeonholed and underestimated since the first Orientalist images of Muslim women began to appear in the salons of Europe centuries ago. Artistic themes often centred around the notion of “white men saving brown women from brown men,” as described by Indian intellectual Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

While Muslim scholars have chronicled a rich feminist history within early Islamic civilization, patriarchal notions of the role of men and women have greatly distorted the faith and have indeed resulted in unjustifiable oppression in some parts of the world, even here. This has led to the popular and long-held Western view that Muslim women are generally oppressed and in need of liberation.

“A moral crusade to rescue oppressed Muslim women from their cultures and their religion has swept the public sphere, dissolving distinctions between conservatives and liberals, sexists and feminists,” wrote Lila Abu-Lughod, professor at Columbia University and the author of Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Muslim women themselves have been challenging these notions, taking control of narratives that attempt to frame their experiences within a limited Western understanding. Yet analysis of Western media frequently demonstrates limited representations. One British study in 2016 analyzed 200 articles in the most widely read British newspapers and found that most stories featured Muslim women as passive or submissive and lacking positive representation.

This type of limited coverage has a long pedigree in Canada; academics Katherine Bullock and Gul Joya Jafri concluding as far back as 2000 that “Muslim women are presented as outsiders: as foreign, distant ‘others’, and as members of a religion (Islam) that does not promote ‘Canadian’ values, but anti-Canadian values such as indiscriminate violence and gender oppression.”

While social media has gone a long way in helping to counter mainstream representations, negative perceptions remain. “This one-dimensional image is being stamped on every Muslim woman, all 850 million of us,” wrote photographer Alia Youssef in an introduction last year to her photo collection, the Sisters Project.

The wearing of the hijab in Congress is also a critical milestone. Here in Canada, MP Salma Zahid became the first MP to wear a hijab this past summer, receiving some backlash from far-right commentators. She was forced to explain why she had decided to don it midway through her term in office (she cited her cancer treatment as being the prime reason, though she was clearly taken aback at having to explain herself at all). As Harvard professor Leila Ahmed has pointed out, the veil continues to represent “a sign of irresolvable tension and confrontation between Islam and the West.”

Unsurprisingly, some of the most vicious attacks against both Omar and Tlaib have emerged from Middle Eastern governments. After all, these two women represent a number of important realities that despots want to obscure: that all women can and should have full and equal rights and freely participate in the political sphere; and that Islam and democracy are fully compatible.

Even while Muslim female leaders have long existed within contemporary and historical Muslim societies, these latest achievements reinforce what is possible.

By breaking through the barriers to participation, these women are now able to bring forward progressive policies that reflect what all faiths and beliefs are meant to instill: compassion, humanity, and public service. Their win is a win for all of us who stand for these principles, wherever we are.

Is it OK to say Merry Christmas? Yes, the Toronto Star

First, let’s get one thing straight: There is no war on Christmas.

A recent survey in the United States found that whether or not people care about saying “happy holidays” or “Merry Christmas” often depends on their political leanings. If you guessed that those who identify as Republican are those with their stockings in a knot over what people say around this time of year, you’re right.

“Diluting religious celebration harms all of us because we should all be able to share who we are and what we believe in a free and open society,” writes Amira Elghawaby. “In fact, a movement toward promoting religious literacy in Canada is long overdue.”  (DREAMSTIME)

“The issue of ‘War on Christmas’ seems like asymmetrical warfare, in that only one side seems to be fighting it,” remarked pollster Dan Cox.

For everyone else, the notion that saying “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” is part of a dark plot to rid the world of Christian references is, of course, ludicrous. That being said, a 2014 poll by Angus Reid in this country found that over 80 per cent of Canadians prefer to call this time of year “Christmas,” over the more generic “holiday seasons.” I happen to be one of them, though I assure you I am most certainly not a Republican sympathizer.

On the contrary, I’m for saying “Merry Christmas” precisely because I believe so wholeheartedly in promoting inclusive communities. Even while some people choose to avoid referencing the underlying reason we are all currently surrounded by bright lights, endless treats and ugly sweaters, saying “happy holidays” is not a panacea to ensuring that everyone feels included.

Multiculturalism is about embracing our diversity, not making it invisible. That includes Christian practice. Sure, many of our institutions are already strongly influenced by “residual Christianity” which, at times, can advantage Christian communities over others. And yes, that can potentially lead to discrimination — “systemic faithism” — as described by the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

This legacy can feel overpowering at times, especially when there are so many other religious communities here, and particularly when considering how Indigenous communities were at one time even outlawed from practicing their spirituality.

Yet denying the sacredness of this time of year for those who observe Christmas will not correct any of that. A more meaningful gesture, for instance, would be to designate June 21 a statutory holiday so that we can collectively celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day. 

At a more basic level, employers, managers, and educators could always be more mindful of various faith traditions so as not to organize meetings or events during sacred occasions, in addition to encouraging feedback around how to celebrate together (a “holiday” party at a pub isn’t necessarily more inclusive than a Christmas party at a restaurant).

Diluting religious celebration harms all of us because we should all be able to share who we are and what we believe in a free and open society. In fact, a movement toward promoting religious literacy in Canada is long overdue.

“Too often, we speak about religion as though it’s somehow over here,” reflected Diane M. Moore, founder and director of the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School, during a panel discussion earlier this year.

Moore works with educators to promote critical thinking about the broad influence of religious belief and practice on the whole of society. She has developed a framework for teachers to guide students on a journey of learning intended to serve them well as they interact with people of all backgrounds.

On a recent episode of CBC Radio’s Q, singer Michael Bublé, explained how asking his children to pray for him before a performance brought him a great sense of peace. Many people find solace in religious belief; 60 per cent of Canadians describe themselves as either privately faithful or religiously committed.

As one Ottawa Catholic school choir even discovered a few years ago, combining a Muslim song into the annual Christmas Concert sent a strong message of welcome just as countries around the world were shutting their borders to Syrians fleeing war.

It’s not always going to be easy to encourage celebration, even acknowledgement, of religion, especially as there are those who deliberately fuel divisions.

We can resist those efforts by being thoughtful toward the various sacred moments our neighbours, colleagues, and friends are marking in their own special ways.

Opposing view: Is it OK to say Merry Christmas? No