Recent Islamophobic Incidents in Canada Exceed Levels Seen Post-9/11
In his nearly 30 years as co-founder and then president of the Canadian Muslim Forum, Samer Majzoub said he has never seen the level of anti-Islamic hate crimes and intimidation reported since Oct. 7.
“Honestly, it hasn’t just increased, it has skyrocketed,” Majzoub said Monday. “It has even exceeded the level we saw after the 9/11 attacks. And we’re seeing new types of anti-Islamic harassment.”
People have called in to report intimidation at their places of work, at schools and at universities. They include drivers spitting at people from car windows and individuals being pushed or verbally abused. People have seen their addresses published on Facebook. Incidents are being reported across Canada, and Montreal police have tallied a growing number of hate-related crimes against both Islamic and Jewish targets in the last month.
In late October, a mosque at the Badr Islamic Centre in St-Léonard was spray-painted with a swastika and the message “Kill all (Muslims)”.
Last Friday and Saturday, the Canadian Muslim Forum received reports of Muslim women being verbally attacked near mosques.
“These were just young women. They were students,” Majzoub said.
Montreal police received 98 reports of hate crimes or hateful incidents between Oct. 7 and Nov. 7, many of them against the Muslim-Arab community.
The true number is much higher because many citizens are hesitant to file reports for fear of intimidation or reprisals, or that their complaints won’t be taken seriously by police, as has been reported in the past. Lately, however, Majzoub said the Montreal police force has been proactive in communicating with members of the Muslim community.
Majzoub says certain members of Canada and Quebec’s political class are partly to blame as well as some media, who have used “inflammatory rhetoric” or language that “demonizes one population against another. They are trying to paint a whole population, a whole ethnicity or a whole religion with certain colors.”
At the same time, he denounced recent attacks on Jewish schools and a synagogue in Montreal.
“This is outrageous, that someone would even think of hurting children. This is scary and crazy at the same time.”
A Senate report released on Nov. 2 found that Islamophobia remains a persistent problem in “Canadian society and in many of our institutions,” and called for “urgent action to reverse the alarming trajectory of Islamophobia in Canada.”
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The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights found that incidents of Islamophobia “are a daily reality for many Muslims, that one in four Canadians do not trust Muslims, and that Canada leads the G7 in terms of targeted killings of Muslims motivated by Islamophobia.”
Some authorities are not equipped to handle explosive situations, “and this is where it becomes dangerous and alarming,” Majzoub said. Counter-protests between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrators turned violent last week at Concordia University, resulting in one arrest and two minor injuries.
The National Council of Canadian Muslims has recorded a 1,300 per cent increase in the number of hate incidents reported since Oct. 7, said Fatema Abdalla, an advocacy officer with the organization. The council has received an average of eight complaints a day across Canada, with the majority of incidents happening in densely populated areas in Ontario, Alberta and Quebec. Reports were fairly evenly spread across the provinces, she said.
Incidents included being spit on in public spaces or at work or seeing messages like “Kill all Muslims” written on the walls of apartment buildings, or “You Muslims need to die” scrawled on the bathroom stalls of children’s schools.
“Part of the problem is the rhetoric political leaders have used when putting out statements,” she said. “Especially the statements we saw coming right after Oct. 7, a lot of them once again bringing it back to that notion of Muslims equate terrorism. That’s why we say it’s important for political leaders to put up principled but balanced statements when it comes to what’s happening overseas.”
Source: Montreal Gazette
