THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Monday, February 6, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met with videoconference this day at 4:01 p.m. [ET] to examine such issues as may arise from time to time relating to human rights generally.
Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Honourable senators, I am Wanda Thomas Bernard, a senator from Nova Scotia and deputy chair of this committee. In the absence of the chair, Senator Ataullahjan, I will chair our meeting today.
I would like to begin by acknowledging that we are gathered today on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people.
I will ask the members of the committee who are here participating in this meeting to introduce themselves.
Senator Hartling: Good afternoon. Senator Hartling from New Brunswick.
Senator Arnot: Senator Arnot from Saskatchewan.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: I’m Senator Gerba from Quebec.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Senator Omidvar is on her way. She is a senator from Ontario.
For our first meeting of the year, our committee will continue its study on Islamophobia in Canada under its general order of reference. Our study will cover, among other matters, the role of Islamophobia with respect to online and offline violence against Muslims and general discrimination as well as discrimination in employment, including Islamophobia in the federal public service. Our study will also examine the sources of Islamophobia, its impact on individuals, including mental health and physical safety, and possible solutions and government responses.
After having held two meetings in June 2022 in Ottawa, followed by public meetings and visits to mosques in September in Vancouver, Edmonton, Quebec City and Toronto, we continued our public hearings in Ottawa last fall.
Let me provide some details about our meeting today. This afternoon, we shall have two panels. In each panel, we shall hear from the witnesses, and then senators will have a question-and-answer session. I will introduce our first panel of witnesses. Each witness has been asked to make an opening statement of five minutes. We shall hear from all witnesses and then turn to questions from the senators.
I wish to welcome our first witnesses, who are joining us today by video conference: Jasmin Zine, Professor of Sociology, Religion and Culture, Muslim Studies Option, Wilfrid Laurier University; and Barbara Perry, Professor and Director, Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism, Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, Ontario Tech University.
Before Professor Perry speaks, senators, may I have your permission to distribute her PowerPoint, which is in English only? Agreed? Thank you. I now invite Professor Zine to make her presentation.
Jasmin Zine, Professor of Sociology, Religion and Culture, Muslim Studies Option, Wilfrid Laurier University, as an individual: Thank you very much for this opportunity to address members of the Senate today and to discuss Islamophobia in Canada.
I am a professor of Sociology, Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University, and I am also a co-founder of the International Islamophobia Studies Research Association, IISRA. I’ve worked as an expert on Islamophobia internationally for UNESCO, The Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. I have been researching Islamophobia in Canada for more than 20 years.
For the past four years, I have been working on a study of the Canadian Islamophobia industry. What makes Islamophobia distinct from other forms of oppression and racism is that there is an industry behind purveying anti-Muslim hate. Islamophobia is organized, orchestrated, networked and monetized. My report entitled The Canadian Islamophobia Industry: Mapping Islamophobia’s Ecosystem in the Great White North was released last October. It reveals the interconnected networks through which Islamophobia is purveyed Canada.
Given the deadly consequences of Islamophobia in this country, it is important to understand the various manifestations through which anti-Muslim racism operates. When I speak about the Islamophobia industry, I’m talking about a grouping or a network that is comprised of far-right media outlets and Islamophobia influencers, White nationalist groups, far-right groups, soft-power fringe right groups, Muslim dissidents, think tanks and their designated security experts, and the donors who fund those campaigns. These otherwise diverse individuals and groups have shared political and ideological goals that involve the demonization and vilification of Islam and Muslims, and often work in concert to foment controversies and spread Islamophobic narratives and conspiracy theories.
Research on the Islamophobia industry in the United States has shown how Islamophobic hate is monetized. Funding for Islamophobia networks in the United States circulates in the amount of $1.5 billion to 39 organizations that are dedicated to promoting anti-Muslim propaganda and disinformation campaigns. Some of the funding helps support groups in Canada whose goal it is to orchestrate controversies and promote conspiracy theories about Muslims as a demographic, cultural, security and civilizational threat.
The Islamophobia industry involves a number of players, including media outlets and Islamophobia influencers. In Canada, Rebel News and other far-right media circulate racist and Islamophobic narratives that can dog-whistle to various anti‑Muslim groups. Islamophobia influencers contribute to far‑right media forums and echo chambers, use social-media platforms to professionalize and monetize their propaganda and bigotry, and add to the propagation of Islamophobic ideologies and anti‑Muslim conspiracy theories.
We also have what we characterize as the foot soldiers, which are far-right, White nationalist and neo-Nazi groups, and the agitators behind them who are active in promoting anti-Muslim hate online and through public protests and demonstrations.
Drawing on Dr. Perry’s work, across Canada, there are approximately 300 White nationalist groups of different sizes and spheres of influence. Promoting Islamophobia is a core mandate for some of these Canadian groups, such as Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, PEGIDA; Soldiers of Odin; Canadian Infidels; Northern Guard; Proud Boys; The Canadian Nationalist Front; Three Percenters; Rise Canada; World Coalition Against Islam and Quebec’s Islamophobic group, La Meute.
While those may be the foot soldiers, there are also soft-power groups that leverage influence by promoting anti-Muslim campaigns to achieve specific political and ideological goals that drive Islamophobic subcultures. They do that under the guise of promoting democracy, human rights, free speech and Judeo-Christian values, ideals to which they deem Islam and Muslims as being antithetical and incompatible.
Soft-power groups engage in coercive tactics like bullying, harassment and intimidation to silence those who oppose them. These ideological purveyors espouse conspiracy theories about Canadian Muslim organizations and charities serving as a Trojan horse for Islamist groups like Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood whom they see as having an agenda of global domination.
Another group that’s part of this network is Muslim dissidents and ex-Muslims who play the role of authoritative interlocutors, creating and validating Islamophobic narratives and conspiracy theories. They play an insider role, validating pejorative stereotypes, and they play a major part in fomenting and legitimizing Islamophobic tropes, thereby providing the political cover for Islamophobic campaigns.
We also have think tanks and their designated security experts who create a cult of expertise promoting Islamophobic conspiracy theories that brand Muslims as potential radicals and national security threats. These think tanks and security experts propagate Islamophobic rhetoric under the guise of national security and protecting Canada from dangerous Muslim foreigners and homegrown radicals. These stereotypes allow for Muslims to be singled out for undue scrutiny and racial and religious profiling.
Islamophobia has fortified the security industrial complex and legitimized policies that construct Muslims as potential jihadists who require state surveillance and monitoring. Recently, we’ve seen reports looking at how that monitoring has been extended to Muslim charities by state agencies like the CRA.
We also find that, within the Islamophobia industry, the players are strengthened and enabled by politicians who authorize Islamophobic narratives and policies that promote anti‑Muslim sentiments as part of the wider ecosystem that primes the ground for Islamophobic racism to take root and spread.
There are a number of discourses, part of what I call Islamophobia’s play list, out there. Those involve various scare stories and conspiracy theories that are perpetuated by this Islamophobia industry. A central trope is this idea of the Islamist bogeyman, a conspiracy theory that claims that Muslims have been installed in Canada as a Trojan horse or a fifth column, where Muslim operatives are occupying positions of authority — Muslim MPs are usually cited as part of this conspiracy — and are using deceptive tactics, termed “taqiyya,” to fool Canadians and hide their alleged aims of waging a civilizational jihad and imposing creeping sharia law.
There is also the characterization of Muslim invaders seeking to overthrow Western civilization. The Muslim invader narrative was brought home on the far-right platform Terrorgram that referred to the Afzaal family who were mowed down and killed in a terror attack in London, Ontario, in 2021, as “dead invaders.” It referred to the perpetrator of this horrific attack as a saint.
These ideologies and conspiracy theories are not unique to Canada They are part of Islamophobia’s global mythologies. For example, the great replacement theory warns of a white genocide taking place. These ideas, promoted by far-right, white nationalist groups, have been galvanized by anti-Muslim demographic fears that have been widely circulated in Europe but also can be found in India and China, for example. These ideas were evident in the manifesto of the Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter, as well as the Quebec City mosque shooter who also cited fears of Muslim refugees “invading” Canada.
We saw these ideas surface as far back as 2007 in Canadian media through Mark Steyn’s Maclean’s article that claimed that while Western societies were in demographic decline, there was a growing young Muslim population poised to rise up and wage jihad. These discourses also depict Islam as posing a threat to Judeo-Christian values and democracy. That is a trope that is circulated widely among Islamophobia groups.
For me, it was very troubling to see how these Islamophobic ideologies and conspiracy theories were being reproduced, echoed and amplified by Canadian Islamophobia actors. Since 9/11, Muslims have been construed as the new folk devils around which moral panics have been galvanized. Players in the Islamophobia industry have been able to monetize this bigotry in ways that Islamophobia essentially becomes professionalized.
Unpacking the networks of bigotry and anti-Muslim hate and identifying how they bolster ideological and systemic forms of Islamophobia and create breeding grounds for hate crimes are imperative for fully understanding the dynamics of Islamophobia as a system of oppression and the industry behind its promotion. It is through such an examination and the resulting more robust understanding that we gain about Islamophobia’s ecosystem that the consequences of Islamophobia can be fully understood and measures that address the contemporary formations of Islamophobia can be developed and deployed.
In conclusion, I will emphasize one point or recommendation or call to action, if you will, that is coming from my perspective as a scholar in the field of Islamophobia studies. I would like to see that the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, SSHRC, helps to develop the academic field of Islamophobia studies through creating Canada research chairs, allocating designated research funding toward centres and projects on Islamophobia, and to recognize that because Islamophobia has no borders, Canada must help fund global networks of experts to combat Islamophobia since the global networks that purvey Islamophobia already exist and are very active in their destructive aims.
Thank you very much.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Barbara Perry, Professor and Director, Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism, Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, Ontario Tech University, as an individual: Thank you for this opportunity. I want to thank Dr. Zine for setting the foundations for me. Many of the narratives that she has outlined are issues that I identify in my own work as well as a foundation for anti-Muslim violence in particular.
I am the Director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism at Ontario Tech University, where I also hold a UNESCO Chair in Hate Studies. I have been working in this field of hate studies for about 30 years. For at least 20 of those years, part of my focus has been on anti-Muslim violence and hate crimes, specifically. That’s really what I want to focus on today. That is one of the most extreme manifestations of Islamophobia, and that is in the form of various forms of personal and property violence against individuals and communities as a whole.
I’m drawing here largely on the official statistics, the Statistics Canada data, that I’m sure you are all very familiar with, but I want to highlight some of the trends that we see year to year, not just in any particular year.
You have the slides in front of you. On slide 2, looking at the police-reported hate crimes by motivation, you see that, quite consistently, racially motivated hate crime is most common, followed by that motivated by religion. When we break that down even further, we see here that anti-Semitic hate crime is typically the most common form of religiously motivated hate crime, followed by anti-Muslim crime.
You will see, though, in 2017, there was a really dramatic uptick in reported anti-Muslim hate crime so that it’s nearly on a par with anti-Semitic hate crime. That was the first year of the Trump administration and the year in which we saw policies and rhetoric that really vilified and marginalized Muslims in that country, and the ideas bled into the Canadian context as well. In 2018, we see that it sort of returns to normal, or, rather, usual levels of hate crime, with some decrease in 2020. Now, in 2021, we do not have the full data yet, but we do know that anti‑Muslim hate crime increased again by 77%, so that’s another quite dramatic uptick in anti-Muslim violence.
It’s important also to look at some of the elements of racially motivated hate crime to understand this as well. I believe it’s in 2022 that we will begin to see multiple motivations. At this point, police can only record either race or religion or sexual orientation — one motivation only. We are also likely seeing some collapse or elision of religion with race and ethnicity here. For example, in slide number 4, you see violence against South Asian, Arab and West Asian communities has also increased in some years again. In 2021, it is up another 46%. I think we have to take into account some of this racially motivated hate crime as well to explain anti-Muslim violence. In Canada, I think nearly 88% of Muslims are also members of visible minority communities.
The Muslim community is a frequently targeted community in the Canadian context in terms of typical kinds of hate crimes. However, they are also disproportionately represented as victims and targets of far-right violence, specifically extreme-right violence. Dr. Zine alluded to some of the far-right groups that are active in the Canadian context and set the stage in terms of their narratives and rhetoric that vilifies and demonizes Muslim communities, but I think we also see that being played out in terms of the most extreme forms of violence.
In slide number 5, what I have represented here are the number of mass murders that are tied in some way to the far‑right movement in the Canadian context. Since 2014, we have seen at least 28 murders associated with far-right extremism in the context of mass murders specifically, perhaps more in the 2022 case in Winnipeg. There is some suggestion that there might be more Indigenous women who were victims of that particular murderer. There were also two other individual murders associated with the far right, one of which was anti‑Muslim and one of which was anti‑woman or motivated by incel ideologies. In total, we see that 11 of these murders are associated with anti‑Muslim narratives and anti‑Muslim rhetoric and motivation for the individuals. These are not just low‑level incidents of hate crime we are seeing. This is not just vandalism or graffiti at mosques or in the community. It ranges all the way up to the most extreme forms of violence in the form of homicides.
I just want to close by reminding you of the impacts. I know this is something you’re very interested in. What are the impacts? This comes from the work that I have done with Muslim communities across the country. It’s important to recognize that when we’re talking about hate crime, even at the individual level, the impacts are different than they are for non‑bias motivated similar offences, so an assault that is motivated by [Technical difficulties] tends to have longer-lasting, more deeply felt impacts than an assault that isn’t motivated by identity. We have quite a body of literature now that supports that.
What we’re also starting to unpack are the community impacts of anti-Muslim hate crime which is one of the reasons why we have this designation of hate crime. It is a recognition that it is a message crime that affects not just the direct or the immediate victim but community members as well. Many of the same emotional, psychological and mental effects that direct targets feel are experienced by others in the community when they are aware of these sorts of incidents. When they are aware of the risk of these sorts of incidents, they become fearful. They are paranoid and cognizant at all times and vigilant about their environment and who is in the area, who might be watching them, who might be following them or who might be turning their gaze to them in ways that they feel are threatening.
It creates a sense that they don’t belong, that they are not valued and not welcome in the community, whether we’re talking about the local neighbourhood and community or whether we’re talking about the national community. This creates a sense of isolation, not just in emotional terms but in physical terms as well as people become fearful of leaving the home and fearful of engaging with people who are not of their community for fear of the consequences.
It also leads people to manage their identity to find a way reduce the risk or threat and to very often reduce the signals or the signs that they are, in fact, Muslim. We hear of women deciding to no longer cover for fear of being targeted because we know how frequently Muslim women who are covered are targeted in this respect and Muslim men who shave their beard, really changing markers of identity.
At the broader social level, not just in terms of the effect on the Muslim community but the effect on the broader community as a whole, hate crime generally, and anti-Muslim hate crime specifically, has the effect of creating divisions between communities and driving a wedge between communities. It creates a sense of distrust amongst Muslim communities for others, particularly white communities who tend to be the perpetrators in this particular context.
If there is any silver lining here, it is that there are those for whom their own experience or the community experiences of hate crime also mobilize them. It encourages them to become involved, to push back against the risk and to push back against the reality of Islamophobia in their community. I think this is important if we’re thinking about how we intervene. What are the mechanisms that are necessary here? I think it is to leverage that mobilization and to leverage the work that is already being done, very often at the local level, by Muslim community groups and other equity-seeking groups.
That suggests, just as Dr. Zine was saying, that we do need a federal framework for engaging in this space. The government likes to talk about a whole-of-government approach, but I would much prefer to see a whole-of-society approach where the government provides a foundation, especially in terms of funding, not just for the research but for the community-based work and the grassroots work already being done and to ensure that it is sustainable. I think every sector of society has a role to play in countering Islamophobia, whether that’s through education or much more direct action.
Thank you very much for your time.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Professor Perry. Thank you both for your presentations.
Before asking and answering questions, I would like to ask committee members in the room, for the duration of this meeting, to please refrain from leaning in too close to the microphone or to remove your earpiece when doing so. This will avoid any sound feedback that could negatively impact the committee staff in the room.
We will now proceed to questions from senators. As was our previous practice, I would like to remind each senator that you have five minutes for your question, and that includes the answer.
Senator Hartling: Thank you to the witnesses for being here with us.
Professor Zine and Dr. Perry, it’s shocking and disturbing to hear what you’re saying, but I’m glad that we are hearing it because I think the more people that hear, the more we’ll be able to take some action. I’m thinking about your report, Professor Zine, The Canadian Islamophobia Industry, and about all the levels in which it is taking shape. It’s a real movement. I’m just thinking about what our federal government could do to systematically change the social and cultural landscape that gives rise to Islamophobia. What are some of the things that the government might do? I know, Dr. Perry, you talked about how on all levels that things definitely have to change, but just starting with the federal government, what might they do? Thank you.
Ms. Zine: Thank you very much for the question. In my report, which is very lengthy — it’s about 240 pages long — I didn’t actually add recommendations because of the fact that in the summit that happened about a year ago, there were hundreds and hundreds of recommendations that came forward from the Muslim community. I didn’t think I could trump any of that. However, I agree with Dr. Perry about this being a sort of society-wide kind of prospect for change. I think where the federal government can be instructive and leading some of that really starts with evaluation of its own policies and practices. I did mention reports that have come out of the monitoring of Muslim charities by the CRA. I’m sure you have heard more testimony about this, and the issue of securitization of Muslims beyond charities but in terms of other Muslim groups and organizations that have not been able to shake this association with terrorism that has been around since the aftermath of 9/11 and is continually being reinforced in new ways through the Islamophobia industry actors. Look at policies in Quebec like Bill 21, which isn’t the federal government’s purview but nonetheless have an impact in creating the environment.
If we think Muslim attire is not suitable for the Canadian public sphere, and if we think Muslim organizations and charities need to be surveilled in different ways or there needs to be a no-fly list that has Muslim names — and even Muslim toddlers — on this list, or that security agencies need to focus on the Muslim community, what message does that give to the wider public and what message does that give to Muslim children growing up who don’t have much counter-narrative to the ways in which Muslims are presented to them? I think those kinds of systemic changes around Islamophobia really need to happen.
I have to say I was disappointed in the aftermath of the hearings that went after motion 103 and the report that came out that has framed the anti-racism strategy in Canada. Out of the 30 recommendations, only two or three even addressed Islamophobia. I think we need to do better. The resources are there. We have the wonderful Amira Elghawaby taking the role as a special representative, and she has received enormous targeting and attacks herself, which are completely unwarranted. This is just another example of how quickly, when racialized Muslim women try to speak truth to power in the public sphere, that gets shut down. Every effort to support her work will be vital.
Senator Hartling: Thank you.
Senator Arnot: Thank you, witnesses, for coming today. My question is for both witnesses to comment.
Professor Zine, you have done a comprehensive study. You called it an industry of Islamophobia and talked about the networks and the connections. You’ve also made a recommendation here today about the social sciences and humanities research grants available should be focused on studying this issue in a much more robust and aggressive way because the results of that kind of research in academia will support policy-makers and changes that you want. Professor Perry, you recommended focusing on education.
I would like to have Professor Zine amplify a little bit about the direction this committee’s work could go in recommending actions that would move towards prevention, reduction and elimination of anti-Muslim hate.
In particular, I would like Professor Perry to amplify her comment about education and the role of education, particularly in the Grades K to 12 system in Canada. Obviously, anti-Muslim hate is antithetical to democracy and democratic values but also Canadian values, and I’m wondering if you have any comments about the nature of current education and how it could be improved and how education can lead us out of the morass we’re in with the kinds of evidence that we’ve heard basically from coast to coast about anti-Muslim hate in the communities.
Ms. Perry: Thank you for that question.
You say an emphasis on K through 12, and I want to preface it by saying I think we also need to teach adults how to more constructively and positively engage with the Muslim community because many of the perpetrators of anti-Muslim crimes are in fact adults. They get to that stage having not gotten the foundations in their early years and are socialized in a culture and a community that often harbours pretty virulent anti-Muslim narratives. Absolutely, I think starting at K through 12, and I remember when doing some of the interviews that I was speaking with university students, some who had been active themselves when they were students in terms of promoting positive images of Muslims. That first-hand experiential introduction can’t be overstated in that respect. It’s not just the formal strategies of education but the informal strategies as well.
One of the most important points of intervention is also in terms of the online sphere. I didn’t really talk much about the online attacks, but they are endless, it seems, whether it’s individual attacks on individual people through email or attempts to libel them in public or whether it’s wide-scale commentary about Muslims and the evil associated with Muslims. So much of what we’re exposed to online are negative, demonizing portrayals of Muslims, and I don’t think we’re well equipped — either adults or children — to be critical of what’s passing by our screens and through our devices. I think of the role of critical digital literacy in particular and helping youth to develop those skills of how to identify suspect material and what to do about it, not just that you don’t pass it on and share it with others. Can you report it to someone? It’s probably not safe for youth to intervene and challenge it. If it’s amongst other youth, perhaps, but otherwise we have to be careful there. How can they report it? How can they create a groundswell of support for broader pushback in their online spaces as well? I think those are some of the skills we need to develop, especially in terms of challenging the narratives. That’s where they come in contact with them.
Ms. Zine: I was going to add to that briefly, if there is still time.
The Deputy Chair: We have actually used all of Senator Arnot’s time, but I think we have time so I am going to ask the indulgence of the committee to have you respond. Thank you.
Ms. Zine: Thank you very much for that indulgence.
Echoing what Dr. Perry was pointing out about some of the online communities and echo chambers that are there that propagate Islamophobia, it is vital to have that critical digital media literacy and to make young people, from a very early age, aware of the disinformation that’s out there and how to be critical about discerning truth from facts because the orchestrated disinformation campaigns are also deeply embedded. For example, if you are searching information — even as I was doing my report — about terms like sharia or jihad, the first hits will be anti-Muslim sites. It’s very difficult to get proper information. It’s important to have that education part of the curriculum from K to 12 and beyond. I mentioned about post-secondary because that’s where I work and where I do my work. There are very few courses on Islamophobia across Canada. I can name two or three others aside from my own teaching around that. I do think we need to fortify the kind of anti-Islamophobia education from a younger age but also into post-secondary.
I would add that one modality of education that is powerful is the arts, and it’s important to see Muslim artists and storytellers supported through grants and funding dedicated to this because we need to have a counter-narrative. We need that counter-narrative to resonate with the wider public, and the arts have an ability to do that. I would like to see that funding dedicated to all of the Muslim artists, storytellers and so on who have a powerful voice and have stories to share that others can benefit from.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: My question is for Ms. Zine. You’ve researched Islamophobia internationally for many years, so how do you distinguish between Islamophobia in Canada and Islamophobia elsewhere in the world? Have any countries put solutions or best practices in place that we could adopt to combat Islamophobia here?
[English]
Ms. Zine: Thank you very much for the question.
I have worked internationally, and Islamophobia is a global scourge. We can talk about genocide that’s happening in Myanmar, China, India and all over the world. Europe has also deeply embedded Islamophobia in many nations. This was why, in 2010, 2012, I started working with UNESCO, the Council of Europe and the OSCE on developing guidelines for educators and policy-makers around challenging Islamophobia. I notice they still have those guidelines up. The other day, I was thinking that they need to be updated.
What I found in Europe is that as far back as 2010, and even earlier, there has been dedicated focus, through a lot of different NGOs working with intergovernmental organizations, to bring these issues to the forefront.
One of the initiatives I was involved with through the Council of Europe was among youth and having youth across European nations come together in Budapest. We did a week-long session with them so that they could go back to their communities and be able to become leaders in challenging hate and Islamophobia. It was part of a wider no-hate campaign that UNESCO had.
What I have noticed is that Canada has been quite slow to implement any kind of national initiatives that would outreach to communities, that would engage those communities in a meaningful way and that would continue to inform policy, education and so on. I think that some of those examples could be very helpful as we look at more nationwide types of policies that are impactful.
Senator Omidvar: My apologies to the committee and to the witnesses for being late. Therefore, I am all the more grateful for the printed version of Professor Zine’s remarks.
Professor Zine, I have read about your work. I won’t pretend to have read the report, but I have read about it in newspapers and in academic releases. You talk about your conclusions that Islamophobia is an organized, orchestrated, networked and monetized industry.
Could you comment on the role of legislation in the roots of Islamophobia in this country? I refer particularly to the anti‑terrorism code that was passed in 2001 by Prime Minister Chrétien. Subsequently, around 2011, Prime Minister Harper approved the risk assessment against dealing with money laundering and terrorism financing. This brings the entire machinery of government — CBSA, RCMP, CSIS, CRA, IRCC, all of them — around the risk-assessment framework, which we have heard is part of systemic racism and Islamophobia in Canada. We heard earlier from Monia Mazigh that after the rendition of Meja Harar and his subsequent release, not a single thing changed in the anti-terrorism code. Would you comment on the role of legislation and legislators as part of this constellation of the industry?
Ms. Zine: Thank you very much for that question. It is an important one.
I mentioned earlier how the government needs to reflect on its own policies and their consequences when it comes to tackling Islamophobia. Security policies and the wider security industrial complex that is attached to it is also very important as part of that.
You’ve mentioned the Anti-terrorism Act. There are also security certificates that were applied to noncitizens, and, really, sort of operate around secret trials, secret evidence and so on, and that has affected Muslim men in this country. Obviously, there are issues of extraordinary rendition, and there are a number of other ways in which there are questions around certain cases to do with entrapment and other things that have specifically affected Muslim populations. When security agencies are directing their attention to particular groups in society, then those groups are singled out in the wider public as well as being in need of surveillance: We need to watch them. We need to monitor them. They could be threats.
For me, as a sociologist, it’s the way the legislation supports, sustains and reproduces Islamophobic ideas and narratives about the potential radical, the jihadist. In my book, Under Siege, Islamophobia and the 9/11 Generation, that came out last year, I was looking at Muslim youth and how they are responding to having been socialized into a world where they were perceived as radicals, as terrorists, as jihadists since 9/11 happened and all of those security policies were ushered in. There are a number of ways that has impacted this generation of youth and the generation of youth that has followed.
For me, it is not just the legislation itself. That has been widely critiqued. It’s also looking at what the effect is on communities and how that is taken up and what message it sends to the wider public about particular groups being criminalized, being seen as radicals and potential threats. I think we need to look at it more broadly, not just in terms of what is legislated but what the impact is of that surveillance.
As Dr. Perry said, I have found in my research with Muslim youth across Canada how they tend to internalize that securitization. They tend to worry about if what they are doing would be suspicious to others. “Can we go play paint ball? Can we be seen playing violent video games? We don’t want to be seen as being terrorists.” That internalization of that securitization is something that has carried through for decades. I think the impact has to be considered systemically but also in terms of the affective registers of Islamophobia and how those policies transcend and translate into responses from Muslim communities.
Senator Omidvar: Professor Zine, do you think it’s time for us to review the anti-terrorism code?
Ms. Zine: Along with other policies that I have mentioned, to take a serious approach to tackling Islamophobia, that is well overdue.
The Deputy Chair: You’ve both mentioned intersectionality and the role that that plays, particularly around race and being Muslim. I’m wondering if you have some suggestions around what kind of legislative or policy changes would be helpful in terms of even how we collect data around hate crimes in this country. Is that part of the problem? I would appreciate it if you could expand on that.
Ms. Perry: I can speak to that because it’s something that I have been thinking about and talking with law enforcement about for some time. Law enforcement themselves have felt that their hands have been tied in terms of accurately representing the small proportion of hate crime that comes to their attention. Some of them do recognize that a racialized Muslim woman might be victimized not just because she is Muslim but because she is a Muslim woman and also because she is racialized. We are finally at that point, and it is a very recent change. As I said, it’s not in the 2021 data, but in the 2022 data, law enforcement can now identify multiple motivations as they see it. That will allow us to better understand the complexities associated with many forms of hate crime where gender is often an issue, or even gender identity or sexual orientation, and disability sometimes as well. That’s a very important step forward.
Before we think about new legislation, we have to think about how the legislation that we have is enforced, and that comes back to be laid at the feet of law enforcement, where there is often not the political will to fully and appropriately respond to and investigate hate crime and take it seriously as it warrants. In some cases, the will might be there but the awareness and knowledge aren’t. There is so little training in this space. I know that the national task force struck by the RCMP and Canadian Race Relations Foundation is making this one of their priorities, looking more closely at law enforcement, law enforcement training and whether they have a victim-centric approach to hate crime or not, but also more emphasis on victim and victim support. This is where the question of intersectionality will become important, because an individual victim or a community of victims may come with multiple sorts of needs, depending on which community they might be more closely aligned with or which part of their identity — very artificial — they think might have been most salient in the attack. That means we have to train our victim service providers in different ways as well. It’s not just about understanding Muslim identity, but understanding Muslim identity and Arab identity and how that might complicate gender identity as well.
The Deputy Chair: Professor Zine, do you want to respond that at all?
Ms. Zine: I think Dr. Perry has given a robust response. I will respond from a personal point of view as a racialized Muslim woman.
There were times earlier on when I used to wear a hijab or headscarf and had that pulled off my head. More recently, in 2019, I was subject to an assault that took place at a conference where I was researching the study on the Islamophobia industry, and within this group, I was physically assaulted for speaking out about Islamophobia. What someone yelled was, “You’re just lucky to be in this country in the first place.” When looking at those responses, the issue of “you’re just lucky to be here,” is reflecting on my racial background and identity. I wasn’t visibly recognizable as a Muslim. I’m sure people assumed that.
It all gets read into each other. Racism and Islamophobia are mutually entwined. Anti-Muslim racism is part of Islamophobia and, as Dr. Perry mentioned, there are different registers through which Islamophobia is lived and experienced. Whether it’s through the nexus of anti-Black, anti-Arab or anti-brown racism, there are different inflections to that Islamophobia and different ways it is experienced and lived. It arrives through different genealogies and histories, and that’s important to recognize. There is a tendency to see Muslims as monolithic and therefore a tendency to see that the impact of Islamophobia would be monolithic, and it’s not.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Senator Omidvar: This is a question for both of our witnesses, and it’s about language. You’re both professors. You deal with research, analysis and policies, but you use language to shape the ideas. There is some discussion and discourse between using the word “Islamophobia” versus using the words “anti‑Muslim racism” or “anti-Muslim hate.” There’s no right or wrong answer, but I would like to get both your perspectives on the relative advantages or disadvantages or the impact of using one over the other.
Ms. Zine: That’s an important question. There is a lot of debate about the naming of Islamophobia and the definition. I talk about that both in my recent book and report, and I do use the term “Islamophobia,” which is as a system of oppression that is manifested in individual, ideological and systemic ways, to boil it down simply. I see anti-Muslim racism as part of that overarching framework as the ways in which discrimination is enacted upon Muslim bodies. If you take Islam out of the equation in terms of its resonance within Islamophobic imaginings, conspiracy theories and discourses, it is very central to that. I don’t think you can have one without the other, and therefore I think it’s useful to talk about anti-Muslim racism as we talk about how the impacts affect the discrimination against Muslims, but I believe that Islamophobia is an overarching framework that better helps us understand the breadth of those individual ideological and systemic ways that Islamophobia takes shape.
On the issue of anti-Muslim hate, I think that’s a problematic way of using the term simply because “hate” reduces the phenomenon to something that occurs at an individual level, and we want to be aware of the systemic aspects. The individual level is part of it, but there is also a systemic and, as I’ve pointed out in the way that anti-Muslim narratives are being purveyed, a very deep ideological underpinning to all of this that has its own long history and genealogy. Talking just about anti-Muslim hate — and I know that’s a term being used in a lot of European circles right now — is too limiting and doesn’t allow us to interrogate the systemic aspects of Islamophobia.
Ms. Perry: I agree with that last point in particular wholeheartedly. It’s something that I’ve talked about. We’re saddled with this term “hate crime” when it doesn’t do justice to the phenomenon we are talking about, which really is systemic. It’s embedded in systemic histories and contemporary practices. It’s embedded in the narratives that we use to define, and often vilify, particular communities. It is a term that I’m afraid we are saddled with for the long term, I think.
I struggle with “phobia” as a suffix. I have done so with homophobia and transphobia as well. Perhaps that’s overthinking it a little bit. A phobia refers to an irrational fear, and in a culture like ours, there is nothing irrational about hostility towards particular communities because that is what we’re socialized to think. We are still very much living in a racist and homophobic culture that still has very rigid ideals of masculine and feminine. Does the broader community understand that phobia refers to irrational fears?
As academics, as long as we acknowledge the limitations as umbrella terms, they are powerful. For the reasons that Dr. Zine has discussed, Islamophobia in particular is a concept that resonates very well in terms of capturing that phobia is not just about, as I have just described it, the individual fear, hostility or anxiety but is a cultural phenomenon embedded in the national psyche at political and personal levels.
Senator Omidvar: I’m staying on the same strand of language and constructs. During previous testimony, when we’ve talked about Islamophobia, there has been, at various times, a follow-up conversation about diversity. I’ve worked in this field, as many know. Would you give us your views on whether “diversity” is a soft peddling of the real problem, which is systemic racism as you have described it?
Ms. Perry: Now you’re asking the easy questions, right? There is a recognition of that. We moved away from that notion of tolerance because that doesn’t connote any sort of respect or inclusion. Now we see, in many contexts, the term EDI — equity, diversity and inclusion. Perhaps the inclusion is drawing us a little more closely to the outcome we are striving for.
Diversity is like this term that they are using in the terrorism or extremism space — ideologically motivated violent extremism. It’s a euphemism in some respects. It really occludes the foundations. It really does mask, again, the histories of exclusion and marginalization and oppression as well. We need to turn it on its head and not use those positive terms to describe what we’re talking about. As you say, whether we’re talking about anti-queer hostility or anti-Muslim hostility, we should name it. Even with hate crime, I often say I would much rather hear us talking about racialized violence or anti-gay violence than just this term “hate crime” which smooths the rough edges. In many respects, it homogenizes a class of violence, a class of attack, that is experienced in very different ways for different communities.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you.
Ms. Zine: Just to add to that, the issue of EDI — or equity, diversity and inclusion — is one that I’m very critical of for reasons similar to Dr. Perry’s. I do a lot of consulting work, not as an EDI consultant but through the lens of anti-oppression. That allows a view of the interlocking forms of oppression that exist to look at the intersectionality of that. EDI has become a new buzzword. It is a very watered-down approach. Diversity and inclusion do not promise equity. That’s another issue that needs to be understood in the naming of this category. It’s been taken up in ways that do not allow a deeper interrogation of questions of power, historical privilege and disadvantage. It can focus a little more on positive ideas that don’t allow us to get to the underlying issues and causes about racism and various intersectional forms of violence and oppression. I work with an anti-oppression framework that allows for that type of analysis and intervention. It’s very important. Language is constitutive. How we define something and understand it implicates how we can intervene.
Many years ago, when I was working with the UNESCO project, they wanted to talk not about Islamophobia but about intolerance to Islam or intolerance to Muslims. It took me an hour, going into this meeting and talking about the fact that tolerance, in and of itself, is the lowest common denominator. People do not want to be tolerated. If we’re doing this as a process of intergovernmental work, the state cannot also be interrogated if we talk about tolerance. That is not the purview of the state. That’s why many states liked that term — because it left the discussion at the level of individuals. “Let’s just let people work it out amongst themselves, and let’s not examine the state.”
I find that a lot of the kind of language that’s being used plays that same role of obscuring the deep cleavages of structural, systemic and historical disadvantage that need to be fully understood and named and not sugar-coated with EDI language.
Senator Omidvar: I hear you saying — I’m just, chair, repeating back what I hear — that you would recommend we stay with the terminology of Islamophobia and not water it down with other definitions, including strategies of equity, diversity and inclusion, which simply obfuscate the heart of the problem. I’m just rephrasing what you said far more elegantly than I did. Thank you.
Senator Arnot: I would like to have Professor Perry speak a little more about some of the things she has raised. She has worked with police forces fairly regularly on the intersectionality and motivation and the reporting of data. Perhaps Professor Zine would have comments on the same thing. We have heard that there is a very clear impression that police officers on the front line aren’t taking as seriously as they should some of the incidents being reported to them. Police officers do have a number of tools to deal with Criminal Code offences of assault, intimidation and harassment, but there is an impression that they are not following up with some of these things. Perhaps it’s because of the deeply embedded systemic nature of this issue. Do you have any advice for our committee on recommendations we could make to police forces, particularly provincial and municipal police forces, in dealing with anti-Muslim hate or crimes that appear to be apparent on the face of the information we’ve been hearing?
Ms. Perry: Thank you for that question. It’s so important.
I wouldn’t leave the federal force, the RCMP, out of it because, of course, they are the law enforcement agency of record in most of the provinces. I actually find that some of the biggest problems are there, that there is even less awareness around hate crimes amongst the RCMP than amongst many of municipal and provincial services. It has to go across the spectrum.
On the research side, I did a pilot study in Ontario looking at eight police services. These services are engaged with the provincial HCEIT, the Hate Crime and Extremism Investigative Team. These are services that are very much engaged in conversations around hate crime. They have some trained officers on hand to respond.
Even there, there were a number of barriers. I identified three levels. One I called environmental; that is the legislative ambiguity that they have to work with. More importantly was the community trust deficit that made their work a challenge. There were also organizational factors and then individual factors as well. Organizationally, that often comes down to the level of commitment, the priority that a service places on that and how that is manifested through enabling training, sourcing and funding training, but also developing hate crime units — not just a dedicated officer or coordinator but dedicated units that have oversight around hate crime. Outside of those HCEIT members that I mentioned, a lot of services across the country actually have hate crime units. A lot of services don’t even have a well‑trained individual, in part because there’s not a lot of training available; that’s the other piece.
The individual factors are embedded in structural factors as well. It’s very much apparent from the findings we’ve had recently around police carding and profiling and all of that. There is still a problem with systemic racism within policing. That trickles down into the enforcement of hate crime legislation as well — not so much in the interviews because very different people are volunteering to engage in an interview. In the surveys, some of the qualitative comments written in by individuals really show the persistence of racism and also the lack of sympathy around hate crime. They see it as a political issue, the squeaky wheel, people trying to distract from their own violence, so the culture is not changing. This is coming from young officers as well as officers who have been in the service for a while.
Just as we’re talking about a shift in the culture in the military right now, I think we need to continue to have those conversations and continue to push that in the police services as well. How do we do that? Part of it is through hiring. There is this idea that hiring people who are representative of the community is a panacea. As we have seen with some of the murder by police officer in the U.S. in recent years, Black officers are no less likely than White officers to engage in these sorts of behaviours because they are socialized into that culture. They might come in with great ideals, but that is soon taken away from them, and those are the conversations that we need to have.
We’re trying to force those conversations at the level of the RCMP — I’m not sure how much is changing there — but we need to continue to have them at the local level as well. Perhaps they are easier conversations to have at the municipal level than at the federal level. Can we create best practices there for culture shift and let that trickle up?
Senator Hartling: Thank you very much for this interesting conversation.
We were talking about education, and you brought up the subject of where education should begin. I was thinking about that, and also we were about talking about police officers. What about in other professions? I’m wondering about the number of Muslims that would be in corrections, teaching, health care and those things. Is there a movement in that area? Having more people in those professions would help to set some movement towards the acceptance of other people in those professions and education. Do you have any documents on that?
Ms. Zine: I can add a little bit here. I do know of scholars, projects and community organizations that are looking at different sectors and how Islamophobia impacts. For example, Islamic Relief Canada just did a study on employment. I know that the University of Toronto just had a postdoc position looking at Islamophobia in medicine and in health care. There have been a number of initiatives around education, and I was happy to see that the Peel board of education in Ontario has taken up an anti-Islamophobia initiative there. It is important to interrogate different sectors.
Corrections too is another area that needs to be examined in terms of whether there is an over-representation of Muslims. I know that the number of chaplains for federal institutions was cut down years ago. I don’t know if that’s changed at all. I taught for four years in a federal prison for women through the Walls to Bridges program. The Muslim women who were there didn’t have a lot of access to support on a spiritual level, for example. Things like that and access to those kinds of supports are very important for people who have been involved with the law.
All of the sectors that you have mentioned are important in terms of looking at how Islamophobia has manifested. Again, that goes back to the funding and resources needed to do this kind of work, and then to build those recommendations and be able to share them with policy-makers and community at large is important to amplify the work that has already been done. It’s not as though nothing has been done in terms of some of this research, but it’s important to have that continue and not just be sort of a flash in the pan when people happen to be thinking about Islamophobia. It’s an ongoing problem that requires ongoing support and funding to address it.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: That’s very interesting.
I listened to the discussion about diversity. I heard Ms. Zine talk about her own experience and the fact that she had to remove her veil. In your research, do you look at the issue of secularism? On one hand, I don’t know whether removing your veil made a difference in your life or made you less of a target for anti-Muslim racism.
On the other hand, I’m from Quebec, a society that is very keen on secularism, hence Bill 21, which seeks to ensure that immigrants to Quebec integrate into Quebec society. Accordingly, those in public organizations who wear the veil are perceived as unwilling to integrate into society. In that context, Quebec society does not see itself as being Islamophobic.
My question is for both witnesses. What should we do when faced with a society that promotes secularism and wants immigrants to integrate into that society? As you know, immigration is under the province’s jurisdiction, so Quebec chooses its immigrants and puts Quebec culture above all else. Do you think secularism is an obstacle, or is it a way to avoid talking about Islamophobia when it comes to Quebec?
[English]
Ms. Zine: Thank you for that question. If it’s okay, I’ll jump in and respond.
I absolutely think we should be talking about Islamophobia in the context of Quebec, and I don’t think we should shy away from naming it or being open about how it’s become legislated through Bill 21. Scholars have talked about secularism as a system of power. Certainly in Quebec, it’s emerged as a racial project, and the racial secularism needs to be understood as well. Canada still has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms for religious freedom, and that should still maintain across the provinces. What we are ending up with is religious freedom being sacrificed on this altar of secularism. There has to be a better way to balance rights.
Particularly, we need to understand gendered forms of Islamophobia and how Muslim women are paying that price for having their sartorial choices regulated, their religious freedom curtailed and their ability to have the right to dress as they please. There is no other group of Canadian women who are being told that they cannot dress a particular way, whether that’s for any particular reason. The hijab, headscarf or niqab have become very heightened cultural signifiers in Islamophobic publics that resonate in a particular way that has very little to do with how Muslims see these symbols and how Muslim women inhabit their religious identity or understand it. Simply because others are uncomfortable with seeing how you dress, that is not a reason to legislate against — on the basis of people’s discomfort. Otherwise we could be legislating against all sorts of things. I can’t imagine any other group of women in Canada having their ability to dress as they please being curtailed without some sort of backlash against that.
I think this is very much a form of gendered Islamophobia that has been instituted in a form of secularism that goes right back to White settler colonialism and how it evolved within the province of Quebec. While there has been an emphasis on having francophone-speaking immigrants to Quebec from many African, North African and Caribbean — and so on — nations, the problem has been that their identities beyond language have not been respected or allowed to be part of a plural social fabric. Rather, they are asked to restrict part of who they are — their identity and their fundamental humanness — as a result of policies like Bill 21.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Quebec is part of Canada, and Bill 21 is a provincial statute. How, then, should we at the federal level recommend any necessary changes? How do we raise the issue without upsetting Quebec society, which sees itself as being secular, not Islamophobic.
[English]
Ms. Perry: I’ll take a go at that.
I think one of the problems is that we have become quick at the provincial level to invoke the notwithstanding clause. I think that is the root of the problem in terms of enabling these sorts of mechanisms to unfold. Yes, as you say, we are all Canadian provinces. The Charter rights need to prevail here. I think we need to take a firmer stance on that.
The other piece I wanted to emphasize is the disproportionate impact that Dr. Zine was referring to here in terms of how it has not just immediately affected Muslim women but it has also reinforced the messaging in terms of the presumed values or clash of values between — I would say eastern and western — Muslim and non-Muslim cultures. I think it allows that idea to continue to foment. The hijab then becomes a signifier — a marker — for all that Islamophobes would find wrong with Islam. I think that any piece of legislation that is going to reinforce that messaging is absolutely problematic and needs to be challenged constitutionally.
The Deputy Chair: I’m going to ask the last question. I’ll address it to Dr. Perry. In your opening remarks, you talked about mobilization being one of the community impacts. I wonder if you had some examples of community mobilization that could be seen as best practices to address systemic anti‑Islamophobia or anti-racism in this context.
Ms. Perry: Some of it is organic. It is what happens in the moment. I think back to 9/11, for example. Muslim women in particular were fearful of leaving their homes for fear they would be attacked because we saw such an upsurge. Then people from other faith communities began to create these communities of care where they would escort women to the grocery store or whatever their needs were — that sort of thing. We can’t discount those very simple things at the immediate level because it really does create a sense of community, which can be the foundation for action toward additional change.
Another great example is in the context of the pandemic when there was so much anti-Asian violence specifically. We saw new coalitions emerge around anti-Asian racism specifically. I think that’s going to resonate for years. We have coalitions now who are challenging the hatred on the streets and the violence they’re experiencing on the streets, and they are also beginning to find their voice in a way that Asian communities in particular haven’t in the Canadian context. They are beginning to talk much more concretely about how to create alliances, how to mobilize around systemic change and how to engage more effectively with government bodies to lobby for and urge legislative or policy reform.
I think those sorts of coalitions, again, take away from the idea of only the government having responsibility or capacity to act here. It reminds us of the impact and import of action at the community level because that then does resonate with municipal, provincial and federal policy. I think there are some really powerful examples to look at in terms of those kinds of coalition and civil society organizations that have emerged, often out of crisis and in response to crisis.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. I would like to sincerely thank our witnesses for agreeing to participate in this important study. Your assistance with our study is greatly appreciated.
I shall now introduce our second panel of witnesses. Each witness has been asked to make an opening statement of five minutes. We shall hear from all witnesses and then turn to questions from the senators.
I wish to welcome our second panel of witnesses. Joining us by video conference today is Fatima Coovadia, Commissioner, Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, who is appearing today as an individual; and Shahina Siddiqui, Co-Founder and Volunteer Executive Director, Islamic Social Services Association, also appearing as an individual.
Ms. Coovadia, I will invite you to make your presentation.
Fatima Coovadia, Commissioner, Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, as an individual: Thank you, and good evening from Treaty 6 territory and the traditional homelands of the Métis in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. My name is Fatima Coovadia, and I’ve been a member of the Muslim community here in Saskatoon for over 20 years now. I am currently serving in my fifth year as a Commissioner with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, and I’m the Vice-Chair of Concentus Citizenship Education Foundation. Today I will be speaking as an individual in what I consider my most important role — as a daughter, wife and mother.
My everyday engagement with the Muslim community is mostly with sisters and our youth. Over and over, they relay to me experiences of microaggressions such as harmful words, threatening gestures, being marginalized and discriminated against. Often we console ourselves by feeling grateful that it was just that and not worse.
I have to admit that I didn’t truly feel the full impact of Islamophobia until this last summer when I experienced it myself. I consider myself to be well armed to deal with most situations, yet nothing had prepared me for the intensity of the experience and the lingering repercussions. I will unpack those for you and hope to highlight what I feel are barriers to reporting Islamophobic events or attacks, particularly internalized racism, intersectionality and interpersonal relationships.
A stop at a drive-through resulted in a really scary and hurtful experience for my mom and me. The car behind us, occupied by a young female driver and a male passenger, proceeded to recklessly follow us, I believe because they could not get ahead of us in line. The pair yelled expletives and slurs at us, cursed us, made threatening gestures, pointed to and commented about our hijab, attempted to approach our vehicle multiple times and told us repeatedly, amongst other words, to “go back home.”
On the advice of a 911 dispatcher, we drove around in circles for over 15 minutes while she attempted to get a police vehicle to meet us where we were. These 15 minutes were the worst I’ve ever experienced. I had to try and keep calm, drive normally and safely despite being pursued by two unhinged individuals and not knowing what they were planning or capable of doing. I will never forget the feeling of my heart racing, being fearful for myself and my mom and trying to calculate exactly where I needed to drive to keep a step ahead of them.
Eventually, after what felt like hours, we approached the police vehicle, only to see them speeding off after opening their window and throwing their drink at my car. We stopped to chat with the officer and were met with, “Well, this was unfortunate, but there is nothing we can do since they didn’t do anything.”
At this point, I was physically shaking and mentally quite unsettled. The officer justified this as “these young people have nothing better to do” and really brushed off the encounter, even though both individuals were clearly adults and described as such. He failed to realize that every facet of my identity was attacked. He failed to use the intersectionality lens. It should have been classified as an Islamophobic incident. I also questioned whether, if the perpetrators had been my teenage children — my son with the name Muhammad and daughter wearing a hijab — would have been extended the same courtesy by the officer.
I felt as though I had received a punch to the gut, and yet both my mom and I tried to brush it off several times and questioned whether we were making a big deal out of it. I concluded that we were shaped more than we thought by our past. We had internalized the racism we had experienced growing up in apartheid South Africa, and so in some way expected to be treated like this. We both felt compelled not to share this experience with others, not wanting to be the ones upsetting the apple cart or creating chaos, like those who do report such incidents are often labelled. Many racialized individuals who grew up under colonialist oppressive conditions are hesitant to report Islamophobic incidents like this. We are made to feel ungrateful for the opportunities this society has given us, despite the immense contributions we make to society.
On the way home, we discussed what, if anything, we wanted to share with our family. Our immediate reaction was to not share anything, because we didn’t want them burdened with what had happened to us — again, interpersonal relationships being a barrier to reporting — but we realized that this was a teaching moment and so chose to have the courageous conversation.
Unfortunately, conversations like ours, as painful as they are, are a reality in most Muslim homes. Islamophobia is real. It hurts in so many ways. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, especially not on any of you lovely people here today, but I felt that it was important to share my personal story with you so that you could live this experience through me. I believe with empathy comes engagement and with engagement, action. That action should begin with education.
Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much.
Shahina Siddiqui, Co-Founder and Volunteer Executive Director, Islamic Social Services Association, as an individual: Peace be with all of you and thank you for having us here to talk from our heart. I have sent some notes, but if I go a little bit off, just remember it’s coming from deeply felt anxiety that we are experiencing in the social services sector, which is community-based.
I am deeply concerned and alarmed as we witness the growing intensity of Islamophobia from its inception — allegedly as a response to 9/11 — to its violent and systemic manifestation in Canada today. I have been at the forefront of addressing Islamophobia for 25 years with unrelenting media engagement — in the first 48 hours after 9/11, I did 72 media interviews, to give you an idea of how my life has changed — educating, writing and training sectors, doing Islamophobia training and training Muslim youth on how to do this training and how to do education on this subject. Correcting misinformation and propaganda for most of us in the social services sector is non-stop. It is consistent while also simultaneously counselling victims of Islamophobia, hate speech, violence, systemic Islamophobia and enacting of discriminatory laws.
Working in counselling and with newcomers especially, I need to bring to your attention how Islamophobia impacts newcomers, and perhaps in the question and answer period we can look at it. The deliberate and strategic stratagem of the demonization of Islam through various platforms and the media has fostered fear that has nurtured hate against Muslims and has resulted in dehumanizing and the othering of Muslims as a threat. There is a process, and this process applies to every community that has been racialized and marginalized. The first step is to create fear, and the fear in the case of Muslims was the demonization of Islam. From that, we were able to nurture hate, which we see manifested today.
I want to focus today on the impacts of Islamophobia on Canadian Muslims, namely, women and youth. The impact of internalized Islamophobic hate is intergenerational. I’m a grandmother with three grandsons in school, and I can tell you that we can see how it has impacted them. The growing mistrust within Canadian Muslims of public and political institutions is a serious indicator of the disconnect Muslims are experiencing within the larger society. Gendered Islamophobia is rampant and strategic to enhance its impact on family and community. Connect gendered Islamophobia to the impact on family and community and you will understand how critical it is that we look at it.
Islamophobia within four sectors has the potential to seriously harm societal harmony, and they are educational institutions, policing, political establishment, and media and social media. The collective trauma being experienced by Muslims through exposure to hate speech, violence and killings, and vandalism of Muslim places of worship, businesses and schools is taking a toll on Muslim mental health. Anxiety, depression and consistent fear are common outcomes, accompanied by social and civic disengagement and self-imposed psychological internment.
Islamic Social Services, in collaboration with Muslim mental health professionals, social workers, organizations and agencies across the country, met in November 2022 to launch the Institute for Muslim Mental Health Centre of Excellence, Resilience and Healing, to learn from the Indigenous experience and work in collaboration with other racialized communities and to develop research and good practices to help, empower and restore confidence in Muslims in their identity as Canadian Muslims.
Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you both. Now we will have questions from the senators.
Senator Hartling: Thank you to the witnesses, and for your bravery in sharing your story, Ms. Coovadia. I can only imagine how difficult that was to experience. I want to ask you about aftermath. Have you experienced post-traumatic stress, and how do you deal with that every day, you and your mom?
Dr. Coovadia: In the immediate aftermath, I was so shaken, more shaken than I have ever been in my life. More than anything, I was fearful for my mom, and I think she was fearful for me. It’s intergenerational, as Shahina said. I’m unpacking all of this for my kids.
Initially, during the day, I sat with it for a long time. I didn’t even pick up the phone to call my husband right away. Only at dinner time did we sit and unpack the whole experience with the family. Again, we always try to protect each other. We had to sit with it, and we really did question whether we were making a big deal out of it, only to have them tell us that it actually was something significant.
For the next few days, my mom would literally tell me every time I left the house to be careful. She was really fearful for me. I guess I wasn’t as afraid of going out, but she kept telling me they know my vehicle, my licence plate, and to be on the lookout. It took her a few days before she settled.
These incidents are traumatizing for everyone. Unfortunately, all too often we have to have these conversations with our kids. For me, it was more of a teaching moment, particularly for my teenage sons. I had to talk to them about being careful not to escalate situations and how to de-escalate. I was strategic in ensuring that I didn’t give them an opportunity to approach my vehicle. I just kept driving. I drove around literally in circles. Every time I would slow down, the man would attempt to leave his vehicle. I just didn’t give him that opportunity to engage. I wanted to use this as a teaching tool for my own kids, to tell them not to engage, to de-escalate. It’s really difficult as a mom to need to have those conversations.
Senator Hartling: What could have been the response from the police? What would you have hoped for?
Dr. Coovadia: I would have hoped for an acknowledgement of the harm that had occurred, at the very, very least. I am taking a little bit away from this. I do see how they could have missed pursuing the suspects. That is because there was a bit of a disconnect in communication. I was talking to the dispatcher, and the dispatcher was then communicating with the officer. In that split second where I could identify the vehicle for the officer, they used that little bit of a chance to get away. That’s, of course, something that needs to be looked at a little more.
Something else that I didn’t realize was that as soon as you engage 911, your phone totally shuts off every other device. I couldn’t record the incident while I was on the call with 911. We didn’t have enough specific information to pass on to the officer. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a licence plate number because they were behind me.
All those factors taken into consideration, I still would have expected an acknowledgement of the harm, not to have it just brushed off so nonchalantly, like, “Kids will be kids.” These were adults who clearly knew what they were doing. That goes back to training of officers, I think.
Senator Hartling: Thank you for sharing.
Senator Arnot: Thank you to the two witnesses who are here today.
Thank you, Dr. Coovadia, for having the courage to explain your story and how deeply it impacted you as an individual and your family and the Muslim community. A lot of that, I think, is generated by a lack of understanding and a lack of empathy on the part of the police professionals with whom you were dealing.
I am sure that there is an element of the deeply embedded systemic nature of anti-Muslim hate and Islamophobia in action which may explain the actions of the police at the time — but does not excuse it. I think there’s a disconnect between the progressive leadership that we see in some municipal and provincial police forces and the front-line officers who deal with these issues. What do you think this committee could do with respect to reducing that disconnect and addressing, in a comprehensive way, the kind of situation that you faced and which you have articulated very well?
Dr. Coovadia: Thank you, Senator Arnot.
I truly believe that it begins with education. Generating that empathy has to start at a very young age. I believe it starts and it should start in schools. We should have a very intentional educational strategy to empower our youth, our kids, to be able to combat this hate. I do believe it does start with education and with having that engagement from all levels of government to support education curricula that teach empathy to kids.
I am the Vice-Chair of the Concentus Citizenship Education Foundation. We have developed a curriculum which answers those very questions: What does it mean to be a competent Canadian citizen? What does it mean to empower kids with the education that is required to offset this type of hate that we’re seeing across this country?
Similarly, this type of education needs to extend into post-secondary institutions across all sectors, and very much so in policing as well. We need to get people on the front lines caught up with some of the more progressive nature we see in leadership. For example, in Saskatoon, we have a very progressive police chief and police commission. They have just instated a special officer in charge of hate crime investigations. We need that to trickle down to the front lines, for those already in the profession but also upstream as well. We need to see this type of education in post-secondary institutions, for example, in teacher colleges, in medical schools, in law schools — throughout all sectors, so they can carry this into their professions.
Senator Arnot: Thank you.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you to our witnesses for being here.
Dr. Coovadia, do you feel safe today?
Dr. Coovadia: I do feel safe. I do feel safe in Saskatoon. I have to say that when I heard the words, “Go back home,” it disarmed me. Saskatoon is the place where I have lived for the longest stretch of time in my life — for 21 years. I have felt safe here. This is my home. This is the home of my kids, where they were born and where I choose to raise my family. Just hearing those words really affected me; it affected me for a while.
But I’m very grateful that I do have a strong support system, a strong community around me. I am a pretty stubborn person, and I refuse to give power to people who choose to extend hate to me. I refuse to do that. I do feel safe.
Senator Omidvar: That’s very good to know, and it’s very good to know that you are stubborn because we need a certain kind of stubbornness to deal with wicked problems. Certainly, structural Islamophobia is a wicked problem.
We heard in the previous session from Dr. Perry that there is a trust deficit between institutions and the community — in particular, between institutions of policing and the community. She also noted, and it certainly resounds with me, that there is a trickle-up theory. If you do things right locally, then they will trickle up to the federal level. Could you comment on that? Do you have any engagement at other levels of government on tackling Islamophobia?
Dr. Coovadia: Absolutely. I will say that, in Saskatoon, we saw two more public Islamophobic attacks in recent years. The first one happened in 2017. An elderly gentleman, walking home from the mosque early in the morning, was run off the road by a pickup truck. The driver really attempted to run him over. He managed to get out of the way on time. He literally crawled home. Then the same person threw a brick through this elderly gentleman’s front living room window. Then, in 2020, another gentleman, again out on his morning walk, was attacked by two people. He was physically and verbally assaulted. His beard was cut off, and he was told to go home as well.
At the community level, something really powerful happened after the second incident. A group of three ladies got together and organized a walk against hate in the very neighbourhood of this gentleman. I was invited as a participant at that walk, just to say a few words. Last year, I was so happy to be invited back by this lady, this time as an organizer, to do a second walk against hate in their community. We just had our last meeting last night, planning this year’s walk. It’s taken hold, this grassroots — if I can use that word — organization where people are reclaiming their communities and standing up against hate. It’s something very powerful. This year, other neighbourhoods have asked to join us in this walk. I do see that effect. It’s very heartening for people like me to see the support that we got as a Muslim community and then seeing the progression that we have seen within our own police force here in Saskatoon with having that special investigator.
I think if we have more voices, we can demand more action. I think that we can see that at all three levels of government. Particularly the National Council of Canadian Muslims had put forward recommendations to municipalities to take on an anti‑Islamophobia strategy. This has just been proposed to the City of Saskatoon, and they are currently studying it to see if they can implement it. I do see a lot of benefit that can come from the grassroots level as well, from the community level.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: My question is for Ms. Coovadia. First, though, I’d like to thank the witnesses for being here today. Your stories are quite compelling. Now I’ll come back to Ms. Coovadia. You said that, despite the very scary things that happened to you, you didn’t want to tell your family and friends. Is that correct? Did you not want to scare them? At the same time, we are here to examine Islamophobia. How do we address the issue if people don’t report incidents? That’s my first question.
Here’s my second question. You came before the committee today, and, as you know, the goal is really to make policy recommendations to the government. What, specifically, are you looking for from this committee? What are your main recommendations?
[English]
Dr. Coovadia: Thank you.
With regard to your first question about not wanting to talk about it, for me as a mom, I always try to empower my kids to be proud of their identity. I don’t ever want incidents like this, or what happened to me, to shape their identity negatively. For example, my daughter started wearing the hijab just recently, within the last year, but before then, about two years ago, she was going to the mall one day and decided to put it on. She was very proud of herself. I told her that she looked great. I was proud of her for trying to wait, but at the same time, I had this niggly feeling at the back of my mind that I needed to tell her what to do if someone makes a comment about her hijab. It’s that constant pull, trying to balance empowering them, on the one hand, and saying, “You’re doing a great job,” but then trying to give them the tools, on the other hand, to respond in a way that will keep her safe should something happen, should anyone comment to her. It’s a constant tug-of-war that you have, trying to balance empowering them, being proud of who they are, and trying to keep them safe. That was one aspect.
The second aspect really was due to that internalized racism that I feel, that my mom and I experienced: Well, maybe it wasn’t as bad as it was. Maybe we are making too big a deal out of it. I really didn’t share it with very many people. We need to empower Muslims to be able to share their stories. A way in which we can do that is by acknowledging them when they actually do share, acknowledging the hurt, listening to them and not re-victimizing them by further labelling them. Many people pause because they just don’t want to cause more chaos. So it’s trying to balance all of those opposing tensions when trying to deal with how to get more people to talk. People only talk when they feel safe to do so. So we need that.
With regard to the recommendations, I do believe that there are many great recommendations that have been put forward to the committee and the government, particularly following the Summit on Islamophobia. The National Council of Canadian Muslims put together a pretty comprehensive list of recommendations to all levels of government. That’s not my field of expertise, so I would leave it more to the Muslim thought leaders and policy-makers to make those particular recommendations.
For me personally, and in my little sphere of work that I do, I would love to see more support, more financial assistance and more collaboration with Muslim organizations around curriculum development and having strategies within schools to combat Islamophobia, so a real effort in funding resources that combat hate.
The Deputy Chair: Ms. Siddiqui, you’re the volunteer executive director of the Islamic Social Services Association. I am wondering how much connection, if any, you have with the social work organizations in your area and if they are partnering with you around any of these issues around education, training and so on.
Ms. Siddiqui: We are doing a lot of collaborative work. One year after 9/11, we had produced seven guides, tool kits, for every sector, which are very popular and have been reproduced in Australia, Europe and other places. We now have 26 guides.
We work with other organizations to put on anti-racism training. We have just published Building Resistance to Islamophobia. It took me a year to do the research and put this together, to actually train. We trained police officers. I have been on the RCMP commissioner’s diversity committee for 20 years. I am on the division committee as well. Our training is mostly populated by RCMP, police, teachers and other sectors. I cannot emphasize education enough. I had a case where a girl who had just started to wear a hijab had it pulled down by a teacher. Because she was on a staircase, she lost her balance and fell down the stairs. The trauma was so severe that the parents had to keep her home for one year — they did home schooling — before she was ready to move up. I can write a book on the cases that I have counselled and the stuff that we have seen within my lifetime.
With 25 years of training, writing and relationship building, we have to emphasize relationship building. Whether it’s police or schools, they are part of my community. I have to have a relationship with them to make a difference, and it is making a difference. I am hopeful. Otherwise, I wouldn’t continue to do this. But I’m still receiving death threats and getting calls that someone’s coming to chop off my head, getting letters in my mailbox saying what they are going to do to me. I just laugh it away because there is no point in getting upset.
I say yes to collaboration, especially with the Indigenous community. What we forget is that Canada is built on racism, on injustice and on colonization. How can you and I expect my issue to be understood unless I stand with the Indigenous of this land, unless I stand with the Black community and unless I stand with the LGBTQ2 community? I don’t want that colonial practice of dividing us and making us silos of racialized people. In Manitoba, we have taken on bringing all the communities together and teaching the history of racism in Canada to our youth. They do not know. They hear stories, and anti-racism training is offered. Three or four were offered [Technical difficulties] — This is life changing for the people who attend because they are hearing stories from the heart. I always say, “You want to know what racism or Islamophobia is? Google it. You will get the definitions.” The impact it has on the person, on the community, is only going to come through stories.
The Deputy Chair: I have a follow-up question. How do you maintain critical hope and positivity in the face of the violence and the anti-Muslim racism?
Ms. Siddiqui: I am very confident in my faith and in myself, but I have a responsibility. An Indigenous person came to work in our community because we are doing Indigenous-Muslim reconciliation. He came to me and he said, “Shahina, why are you doing this? Your people didn’t do anything to us.” I looked at David and said, “Elder, the day I took citizenship in this country, I inherited the burden, and I can’t look away.” For my grandchildren, my parents are buried here. My son is buried here. This is my home. I cannot leave a Canada where the children will say, “Why? Why did she come here?” I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t trust that Canada can change.
Senator Omidvar: Dr. Siddiqui, you are Co-Founder and Volunteer Executive Director of the Islamic Social Services Association. Are you a registered charity?
Ms. Siddiqui: We are a registered charity, but we do not get any operational funding. That is why I volunteer my time. They couldn’t afford me otherwise.
Senator Omidvar: I understand that. But you do file an annual return every year as a charity?
Ms. Siddiqui: Every year, absolutely.
Senator Omidvar: Every year. So the organization has not had any negative interaction with the CRA?
Ms. Siddiqui: Well, just when we were applying, right after 9/11. When we were applying for charitable status, we had to fight for two years because they kept coming back and saying, “You are a special interest group.” Thankfully, we had a good lawyer who said, “Shahina, I’m not going to give up.” He came from the Jewish faith and is still on our advisory board. He fought them. But for me, personally, I wouldn’t understand the system. I wouldn’t know what to do. To be able to have someone who volunteered their time to get us the charitable status has helped us to go for project funding and keep the doors open.
Senator Omidvar: I’m sure you’ve read about — and probably through witness testimony, as we have heard — the lack of trust between the Muslim community and the CRA, so you are up to speed on that. Is this a narrative that you hear in your community with other Muslim charities who may have interactions with the CRA and are left feeling disempowered and mistrusted?
Ms. Siddiqui: Absolutely, all the time. This comes and goes, but it comes in waves. I don’t know the reason for it but, yes, there is always this thing hanging over our head. One organization had one line on their website that was considered threatening to Canadians, and it was really nothing. It seems like somebody sits there looking for excuses. When I speak outside, I always make sure that I am speaking as myself, not as my organization, because I’m very outspoken and it may impact our situation. That sword is always hanging on our heads. It’s just there. You can either let it put you down or you can continue to keep going.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: I want to follow up on the idea of educating people. Many witnesses told us that education was the key to combatting Islamophobia. Senator Arnot is a champion of education and awareness-raising among various groups and populations.
Ms. Siddiqui, education is an area of provincial jurisdiction. Our job is to recommend solutions to the federal government. How do you think the committee can make recommendations around curriculum, to introduce anti-Islamophobia initiatives or raise awareness about Islamophobia?
[English]
Ms. Siddiqui: For education, I think the curriculum that we are talking about is not about Islamophobia. Every training starts with what Islam is, what Islam contributed and the Islamic civilization, which is not present in our school system, just like Indigenous studies were not included in our curriculum. When people do not know what Islam is, what we have contributed, all the disciplines that came to Europe through Muslim scientists and sociologists and architects, how can they appreciate getting a lesson in Islamophobia? Islamophobia is based on misinformation and propaganda, right? You have to dispel that first. How many teachers who have gone through education studies have actually read about Islamic civilization? It has been erased from Europe and from North America, right? You have to take a program perhaps in some university where you will be able to do that.
When I talk about education, it is about the teachers. If they are informed and if they have taken a course in Islamic civilization and all that, they study it. They study algebra, but they don’t know that it comes from an Arab-Muslim algebra. That is what algebra is based on. Things like that are making our generations ignorant about each other. You can see the eyes that open up when I’m talking. I have spoken to thousands and thousands of teachers, police officers and you name it — every sector. At the end of the call, they say, “We didn’t know.” Right? For me, that’s one way of keeping a positive outlook, knowing that education can make a change.
However, please don’t just concentrate on anti-Islamophobia training. Talk positively and give information and knowledge so we have the context when we go and say that this is wrong because this is not what happened or this is not what we believe in.
Senator Arnot: I would like to put forward the idea that there are a couple of ministries in the federal government that could actually do something about education. I would like the witnesses to comment on this. For instance, the Department of Canadian Heritage — Canada is a multicultural, multi-ethnic and multitheist country, and Heritage has a responsibility and a mandate to promote that very ethos. There are ways the federal government could contribute even though education is a provincial jurisdiction, and that is through professional development programs for teachers that would reinforce common, Canadian values — the rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship — which include respect for every citizen with no exceptions. That is the fundamental issue facing this committee because it’s all about non-understanding, no empathy, fear and ignorance. The way to take that away is to give teachers the tools they need. That can be done through optional programs for the professional development of teachers, which teachers can do without their organization. They can do it on an individual basis. The other major ministry, in my opinion, is Public Safety Canada, which has a real mandate to deal with racism. It has a mandate to deal with terrorism and the violence that racism leads to. There are programs that can be tailored to the education system and not directly interfere with provincial jurisdiction. I would suggest this committee could explore this avenue or make a recommendation on it. I would like to hear what the witnesses might say about that.
I would also like to ask the witnesses just one last question. Is there anything you would like to address to this committee that you have not been able to convey to the committee in the previous questions?
Ms. Siddiqui: If I may, in 2007, the Canadian Parliament designated October as Islamic History Month. This is the least utilized across the country. I hope that this will be reignited. I’m the chair of Islamic History Month Canada. I have no staff. We are volunteers across Canada, and we do what we can.
About education: We do Multicultural Tea Fest, for example, in Winnipeg. It’s the most highly attended because people are coming and listening, and they are listening about the contributions that Islam has made. The attention that is coming from Black History Month, which we are living in today — and 9% of the Muslim population is Black — is good.
We also need to pay attention to Islamic History Month and make that a feature in schools. When students talk about their culture and their faith and bring their food, it brings people together. For example, we have told the schools to adopt a buddy — to take two kids from different cultures and tell them to adopt each other, invite each other to their homes, eat each other’s cuisine and build a relationship. Kids are too innocent. They don’t learn hate. They are taught hate. If we look at it from that perspective, we can erase hate by relationship building and more information.
Canadian Heritage has been funding our booklet — not lately, but in the past. But we are producing them anyway. I can say that even the European Union Commissioner for Human Rights has reproduced our booklet on police and what they need to know about Islam and Muslims. It’s unfortunate that we are not seeing the take from the federal government on this work that we have produced. It is, I think, a good contribution to this conversation.
Making mandatory trainings for professional schools — doctors need it. You know, I go to emergency at the hospital, and I’m wearing this, and the nurse starts to talk to my husband. I said, “Don’t you dare. I’m going to answer. I still have a brain under this scarf.” Those are the kinds of interactions that are important.
I really think we can make a difference, but when politicians make comments like, “Yes, Islamophobia is bad and diversity is our strength,” if I ask any of them why, they will not be able to answer me. I can answer why diversity is important, but nobody can. So we are only addressing what is happening rather than why it is happening. Without the why, you cannot develop cultural competency and anti-Islamophobia and address anti‑Black racism. You can’t do it because the root of this tree of racism is poison. The fruit it is bearing is also poison. When you pick this fruit one by one, the new fruit will still have poison because the root is poisoned. We need a nationwide conversation. We need a council of grandmothers from every culture and every faith. This is what we need to help our politicians and leaders understand. We have a bird’s-eye view. We are thinking about our grandchildren, not us. We are done. Our time and our journey is ending. But if this wisdom and learning die with us, we’ll keep repeating, I’m sorry to say, the same old.
Senator Arnot: I wonder if Dr. Coovadia might have a comment.
Dr. Coovadia: I think that Shahina articulated that perfectly. It is a good note to end on. However, I want to say that there has to be an acknowledgement that this is a problem — that this poison exists in the first place. We have to call it out for what it is. This permeating White supremacist, right-wing infiltration into our communities that’s collapsing and threatening the democracy we also cherish needs to be addressed, and it can only be addressed if it’s acknowledged, that we acknowledge that it exists and that we have the will to do something about it. We have to shout from every rooftop that this is not the Canada we want or hope to leave for our future generations, and it’s not the Canada we are all so proud of. I think it starts with that acknowledgement to identify and name the poison, as Ms. Siddiqui so eloquently stated early on.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you both very much. I want to sincerely thank our witnesses for agreeing to participate in this important study and for sharing their experiences and perspectives with us today. Your assistance with our study is greatly appreciated.
(The committee adjourned.)