Representative of the favourable commentary to her appointment. I agree, if she hadn’t been public on her opposition to Bill 21 and the public attitudes behind it and previous Quebec debates, she would have no credibility. It is more with respect with her other positions that questions can be asked:
It took 18 months for the Trudeau government to carry through on its promise to name a “special representative” to combat Islamophobia. It took just 24 hours for that appointment to blow up in its face.
Last Thursday the government announced it had named Amira Elghawaby to the position. Elghawaby is well known to us at the Star; she’s been contributing thoughtful, insightful articles to our opinion pages for several years on all sorts of subjects, with a focus on social justice issues.
It was an excellent and well-deserved appointment. The government patted itself on the back for making it a few days before the anniversary of the Quebec City mosque massacre. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called it an “important step” in the fight against “hatred in all its forms.”
Cue the outrage in Quebec. A federal Liberal minister (Pablo Rodriguez) professed to be “profoundly insulted” as a Quebecer by Elghawaby’s comments. Trudeau called on her to “explain” them. By Monday, the Quebec government was demanding her resignation. And Pierre Poilievre found the time to craft a video attacking Trudeau for appointing someone he smeared as “anti-Quebec, anti-Jewish and anti-police.”
Poilievre’s attack is particularly sleazy. His real target isn’t Elghawaby. She’s just road kill in his assault on the Trudeau government and all its works.
It’s also BS. The idea that Elghawaby thinks Quebecers are Muslim haters is based on an article she co-wrote in 2019 for the Ottawa Citizen with Bernie Farber, who is a human-rights activist as well as being Jewish. They cited a poll showing 88 per cent of Quebecers who hold anti-Muslim views supported Bill 21, and wrote that “unfortunately” most Quebecers seemed at that moment to be swayed “by anti-Muslim sentiment.”
Frankly, viewed in the context of the time, when Quebec had just passed the most discriminatory law in modern Canadian history, the article is remarkably moderate. It decries the “tyranny of the majority” and ends with an appeal to uphold “basic human rights and dignity” for all.
Elghawaby’s other supposedly offensive comments have also been twisted out of shape. As for being “anti-Jewish,” her appointment was welcomed by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the country’s leading Jewish organization, as well as by Irwin Cotler, Canada’s special representative on antisemitism. If she’d taken anti-Jewish positions, you’d think they’d have noticed.
I don’t agree with quite a bit of what Elghawaby has written, such as her view that Canada should abolish the monarchy. But so what? I haven’t seen a thing she’s written that goes beyond the bounds of reasonable debate (and no, I don’t include the occasional badly worded tweet).
As a human-rights activist she challenges Canadian complacency, but that hardly disqualifies her from serving (in the words of the government’s announcement) as a “champion, adviser, expert and representative” on fighting anti-Muslim hatred. On the contrary.
Some will argue that, regardless of all this, her appointment is “divisive” — the evidence being the reaction to it in Quebec. But the truth is that while hatred of all sorts knows no political boundaries, there is a particular problem with the way Quebec handles issues of religious tolerance and minorities.
The evidence for that is plain for all to see in Bill 21 itself, which is blatantly discriminatory and racist in effect if not in intent. Sure, there’s a complicated history behind all this. But if Islamophobia can’t be frankly confronted in Quebec, of all places, there’s no point in having a national representative on the issue.
On Monday, the prime minister said he’s satisfied with Elghawaby’s explanation of her past remarks and she will remain in place. That’s absolutely the right decision. In fact, the uproar around her appointment is the best possible demonstration of the need for putting someone like her in the job.
Valid contrast. One does have to question the Liberal’s vetting process and their political understanding of Quebec as this reaction among the Quebec commentariat and politicians was likely:
One of the more astonishing scenes in Canada’s recent political history occurred over the weekend as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his Quebec lieutenant and Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne took turns wagging their fingers at Amira Elghawaby. She had been installed only the day before as Canada’s first official representative to combat Islamophobia, on the eve of the anniversary of the 2017 massacre at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City.
Champagne said he was “worried.” He suggested Elghawaby should take time to reflect upon what she had done. From his fainting couch, Rodriguez declared himself “wounded and shocked as a Quebecer.”
“I certainly don’t agree with her words and I expect her to clarify them,” Trudeau tutted.
Elghawaby’s crime? Elghawaby’s campaigning against Islamophobia actually extends to Quebec.
The controversy began Friday when La Presse unearthed a 2019 op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen, co-written by Elghawaby and fellow Canadian Anti-Hate Network board member Bernie Farber, lamenting the recent passing of Bill 21 — the Quebec legislation, now in force, banning civil servants in certain positions of state authority (notably teachers) from wearing religious garb on the job.
“Unfortunately, the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment,” Elghawaby and Farber argued. “A poll conducted by Léger Marketing earlier this year found that 88 per cent of Quebecers who held negative views of Islam supported the ban.”
This is not a controversial statement — certainly not by the standards of those who campaigned against Bill 21, as any reasonable appointee to Elghawaby’s new position would have done, Bill 21 being the most Islamophobic thing going in this country.
The pointless 15-year “reasonable accommodations” psychodrama that produced the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, the Parti Québécois’ failed “values charter” and eventually Bill 21 had some Jewish content, particularly around the issue of kosher food at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital. The Supreme Court’s 2006 decision allowing Sikh students to wear kirpans at school is somewhere in the primordial ooze of this debate.
But no one can honestly deny that the vast majority of the angst was over Islam, and what some of its adherents choose to wear. The notion that the hijab (as opposed to the niqab or burqa) represents a radical, political and evangelical form of Islam is commonly heard in Quebec, and almost never anywhere else in Canada.
The aforementioned 2019 Léger poll found Quebecers’ “net positive” view of Catholics — i.e., positive minus negative – was 66 per cent; of Jews, 55 per cent; of Muslims, 37 per cent. Moving on to personal religious symbols, the net positive view of crucifixes was 59 per cent. The net positive view of kippas was 37 per cent. Of hijabs, 28 per cent. (Keep that in mind the next time someone tells you Bill 21 was a principled extension of the Quiet Revolution. It’s a neat trick, casting off the shackles of the Catholic Church while remaining resolutely pro-crucifix.)
When put on the defensive, Bill 21 supporters will often point out that the idea has support in the Rest of Canada. It’s true to a point: An Abacus Data poll last year found 30 per cent of Canadians outside Quebec liked the idea. But the figure in Quebec was 53 per cent. And rather crucially, Quebec is the only province where any politician in any party has even proposed such a law, never mind followed through on it to popular acclaim.
Elghawaby, an activist and journalist, has committed other rhetorical crimes, especially from the Quebec-nationalist point of view. In 2021, she declared herself nauseated by University of Toronto historian Joseph Heath’s contention that “the largest group of people in this country who were victimized by British colonialism, subjugated and incorporated into confederation by force, are French Canadians.” She has advocated for prayer rooms in public schools, and for including non-Christian holidays on official Canadian calendars. You could hardly pick two better positions to empurple a nationalist with a newspaper column or a seat in a legislature.
“One wonders how this person, with so many prejudices against Quebecers and clearly incapable of understanding the importance of secularism in the historical and social development of Quebec, could help improve the ambient climate and mutual understanding,” professors Nadia El-Mabrouk and François Dugré argued this weekend in La Presse.
She can’t. Almost certainly, no one can. Discussions in this country about Islamophobia, racism, minority rights and everything in that neck of the woods exist in two hermetically sealed chambers: One for Quebec, and one for everyone else. It’s basically impossible to speak to both worlds at once. But if anyone were capable of it, the minimum they would need is to be appointed by a government willing to support her when one world or the other got a bit offended.
As it stands, both the Quebec government and the opposition Conservatives in Ottawa are demanding Elghawaby’s resignation. The Liberals, having denounced her for no good reason, are making it easier, not harder, for them to do so. And they look as ridiculous doing it in Quebec as in the Rest of Canada. Asked Monday by reporters how he responded to the calls for Elghawaby to resign, Trudeau offered up some typically tawdry bafflegab: “She is there to speak for the community, with the community, and build bridges across. Obviously she has thought carefully over many years about the impacts that various pieces of legislation, various political positions, have had on the community. Her job now is to make sure that she’s helping the government and helping everyone.”
Not for the first time with the Trudeau gang, we are left with two simple but baffling questions: What the hell do they think they’re doing? And why haven’t they heard of the internet?
Le Devoir had three commentaries on the appointment, highlighting how this appointment and her comments on Bill 21 and anti-Muslim sentiment have resulted in a “cue the outrage” response, even if her comments were in line with what other commentators and public figures have and continue to state.
Interestingly, there has also been some pushback by members of the Iranian Canadian community, partly driven by their visceral reaction to the hijab, given that the Iranian regime forced it on women and the recent protests against the mandatory hijab and regime. Kaveh Shirooz has been active on twitter pointing out that Elghawaby has argued that “People who are angry with the government in Iran are taking it out on Canadian citizens that are Muslims here,” rather than criticizing the Iranian regime for its repression (Google search does not show any other commentary on the Iran protests unless I missed it).
I suspect that her appointment may be more divisive within the Canadian Muslim community than might first meet the eye, between the more secular and more religious.
Will be interesting to see whether these reactions continue or fade out:
.@HonAhmedHussen: in 2021, I told the CBC that we need to distinguish between anti-Muslim hatred [obviously bad] and opposition to Islam as an ideology [which is everyone’s right]. This was Ms. @AmiraElghawaby‘s reply. Will she make that distinction in her new role? twitter.com/HonAhmedHussen…
.@HonAhmedHussen I note that as people were (and continue to be) slaughtered in Iran for the right to live free of religion, this was Ms. @AmiraElghawaby ‘s contribution. I’ve been close the protests in the diaspora: to suggest that targetting Muslims represents anything but the absolute most minor fringe in these protests is absolutely dishonest. And yet that’s what Ms. Elghawaby chose to focus on. This was a poor choice, Minister.
Lisée: “I want to puke”
Elle m’a eu au mot « vomir ». En anglais, puke. Je parle d’Amira Elghawaby, la nouvelle conseillère spéciale de Justin Trudeau en matière d’islamophobie et d’antiracisme. C’était il y a huit mois. Le Globe and Mail avait mis sur son fil Twitter le texte d’opinion d’un professeur de philosophie de l’Université de Toronto, Joseph Heath, affirmant que les concepts utilisés par les militants antiracistes canadiens, importés des États-Unis, ne pouvaient s’appliquer correctement à l’histoire canadienne du racisme.
Mme Elghawaby a commenté le tweet, choisissant et retranscrivant spécifiquement le passage qui suit : « Enfin, il convient de noter que le plus grand groupe de personnes dans ce pays qui ont été victimes du colonialisme britannique, subjugué et incorporé à la confédération par la force, sont les Canadiens français. » Au-dessus de cette citation, la militante a écrit : « I’m going to puke » (« Je vais vomir »).
Croyez-moi, j’ai tenté de trouver une autre explication. Mais la seule qui s’impose est la suivante. Mme Elghawaby était à ce point outrée que quelqu’un rappelle qu’en nombre, sinon en intensité, les francophones ont été les plus grandes victimes du colonialisme que sa réaction ne fut ni de contre-argumenter, ni d’affirmer Lison désaccord, ni d’ignorer simplement ce point de vue. Non. Elle a souhaité que tous ses abonnés sachent que la seule évocation de l’importance de l’oppression vécue par les Canadiens français lui causait une violente réaction, physique — au sens propre, « viscérale » — de rejet.
Justin Trudeau, qui était fier de présenter sa nouvelle recrue dimanche à la commémoration de l’horrible tuerie de la mosquée de Québec il y a six ans, a déclaré qu’elle était la personne choisie pour « bâtir des ponts avec les Québécois et les autres Canadiens ». Si c’est vrai, on aimerait avoir la liste de ceux qui n’ont pas été retenus. Don Cherry ? Amir Attaran ?
Pablo Rodriguez qui est, comme l’a dit récemment M. Trudeau au sujet d’un autre de ses ministres, un « bon Québécois », s’est déclaré « profondément insulté et profondément blessé » par un autre propos formulé par écrit par Mme Elghawaby. En effet, dans un texte, toujours en ligne, dans l’Ottawa Citizen, cosigné par l’ex-président de la section ontarienne du Congrès juif canadien Bernie Farber et s’opposant à la loi 21, on lit : « Malheureusement, la majorité des Québécois semblent influencés non pas par la primauté du droit, mais par des opinions négatives envers l’islam. Un sondage réalisé par Léger Marketing plus tôt cette année a révélé que 88 % des Québécois qui avaient des opinions négatives sur l’islam appuyaient l’interdiction. » (Je dois avouer que j’ai moi-même des opinions négatives envers le christianisme, l’islam et toutes les autres religions.)
Cela voulait-il dire que Mme Elghawaby estimait que les Québécois sont islamophobes, selon le mot désormais accepté à Ottawa et qui signifie à la fois sentiment anti-musulman et toute critique de l’islam, quelle qu’elle soit ? Mais non ! Qu’allez-vous chercher là ? Sur son fil Twitter, la dame nous a rassurés vendredi dernier : « Je ne crois pas que les Québécois sont islamophobes ; mes commentaires passés faisaient référence à un sondage au sujet de la loi 21. » Affirme-t-elle maintenant que ce sondage était fautif ? A-t-elle de nouvelles données ?
Si elle s’est trompée dans ce texte, elle a récidivé dans un autre, de 2020, du Toronto Star. Après avoir cité un membre de la communauté musulmane de Québec, Rachid Rafah, affirmant qu’« au Québec, les gens ne peuvent pas admettre qu’il y a des problèmes dans cette société. Je ne sais pas pourquoi ». Elle ajoute : « Il n’y a pas que la plupart des Québécois qui sont dans le déni », trop de Canadiens le sont aussi.
Si on prend le temps de lire ses écrits un peu plus vieux, on ne peut que déceler une constante dans son appréciation des Québécois, superbement étalée dans ce texte de 2013 du Star sur la charte des valeurs. Elle cite d’abord le livre A Fair Country, de John Ralston Saul : « Dans tout le monde occidental dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, les civilisations de la classe moyenne, enchaînées et obsédées par l’empire ont progressivement glissé vers les peurs paranoïaques du XXe siècle. Peur de quoi ? Peur de la perte de pureté — sang pur, pure race, purs traits nationaux et valeurs et liens. »
Son commentaire : « Il aurait pu écrire cela au sujet du Québec d’aujourd’hui. Les sondages favorables à la charte indiquent que [Pauline] Marois a puisé dans une paranoïa viscérale de l’autre qui hante parfois les communautés avec un effet tragique. » Elle se désole ensuite que certains se résignent à ce que « la province ne changera jamais, restant un bastion forcé et statique de la culture et de l’identité françaises ; un rêve partagé qui nie le rôle et la présence des Premières Nations au départ, et celles des minorités qui sont venues plus tard ? ».
Plus près de nous, son texte de l’Ottawa Citizen recèle une autre pépite. Elle y donne un avis bien senti, spécifiquement sur François Legault : « Le premier ministre de la province continue de nier l’existence de l’islamophobie, y compris les expériences des Québécoises qui disent avoir ressenti un racisme croissant au cours des derniers mois. Les politiciens qui flattent les tendances xénophobes doivent être appelés sur le tapis. » Bang !
Avis à ceux qui assisteront à leur première rencontre : apportez vos sacs à vomir.
Interprétant de façon abusive un sondage sur l’attitude des Québécois à l’égard de l’islam, Amira Elghawaby a écrit en 2019 que « la majorité des Québécois semblaient influencés non pas par la primauté du droit, mais par un sentiment antimusulman ». Il est difficile de savoir ce qui est pire : que les Québécois s’opposent à la règle de droit ou qu’ils soient antimusulmans. On peut constater que la représentante spéciale, pur produit de l’idéologie multiculturaliste canadienne, a pris quelques libertés avec les faits. Le communiqué du premier ministre la décrit d’ailleurs comme une journaliste primée et une militante, comme s’il n’y avait pas là contradiction dans les termes.
Un passage d’une chronique publiée dans The Globe and Mail par le professeur de philosophie Joseph Heath, de l’Université de Toronto, lui a donné envie « de vomir », avait-elle écrit spontanément sur Twitter en 2021. Un passage où l’universitaire faisait observer que le plus grand groupe de personnes qui furent victimes du colonialisme britannique au Canada, c’étaient les Canadiens français.
La thèse de Joseph Heath est pourtant intéressante. Il relève qu’au Canada anglais, on utilise l’acronyme américain BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color), qui ne correspond à la réalité canadienne des relations raciales. Aux États-Unis, les Noirs représentent la minorité raciale la plus importante, et de loin, que ce soit en nombre ou en raison de son poids historique. Dans l’énumération, les Autochtones, qui représentent 5 % de la population canadienne, devraient venir avant les Noirs, qui sont trois fois moins nombreux, et les francophones avant les Autochtones en raison de leur nombre. Donc, au lieu de l’acronyme américain BIPOC, le professeur Heath propose l’acronyme FIVM (pour Francophone, Indigenous and visible minority) pour désigner les plus importants groupes minoritaires au Canada. Il souligne que contrairement aux États-Unis, où on analyse les conflits sociaux à travers « une lentille raciale », le Canada n’a pas cherché à « racialiser » les différences ethniques entre ses citoyens. L’idée qu’un immigrant débarquant au Canada en provenance d’Éthiopie a vraiment quelque chose en commun avec un descendant d’esclaves africains présents sur le continent depuis 300 ans est « non seulement une fiction : c’est une fausse représentation pernicieuse ».
Il faut croire que l’influence américaine est forte puisque, dans le communiqué du premier ministre, la description de tâches de cette nouvelle représentante spéciale amalgame la religion — la lutte contre l’islamophobie — au racisme systémique et à la discrimination raciale.
Certains voudraient qu’Amira Elghawaby s’excuse — c’est le cas du chef parlementaire du Parti libéral du Québec, Marc Tanguay — ou retire ses propos. Mais ce ne serait là que parfaite hypocrisie. La représentante spéciale du Canada incarne un courant de pensée fort répandu au Canada anglais, où l’on est viscéralement contre la conception québécoise de la laïcité et de l’équilibre recherché entre différents droits qui, dans une société, peuvent entrer en conflit.
Au débat des chefs en anglais, lors de la dernière campagne électorale fédérale, la question posée au chef du Bloc québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, dont la prémisse était que « le Québec a un problème de racisme » parce que le gouvernement caquiste a fait adopter la loi 21 sur la laïcité et la loi 96 sur la langue témoignait de ce consensus au Canada.
On peut être en désaccord avec des aspects de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État — c’est la position du Devoir, d’ailleurs —, mais ce n’est pas une loi xénophobe ni antidémocratique. Comme le soulignait le juge Robert M. Mainville dans une décision partagée de la Cour d’appel du Québec sur une requête interlocutoire demandant la suspension de la loi 21 (présentée par l’ancien employeur d’Amira Elghawaby, le National Council of Canadian Muslims), « la conception de la symbolique religieuse et sa place dans l’espace public ne sont d’ailleurs pas perçues de façon identique par chaque société, la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État en est un exemple frappant au sein du Canada ». Et encore : « On peut constater que la question de l’égalité des sexes en regard du foulard islamique ne se prête pas à des réponses simples ou évidentes. »
Justin Trudeau a dit que la nouvelle représentante resterait en poste. Soit. Mais puisqu’elle crache (ou vomit) sur la société québécoise, que, manifestement, elle méconnaît, qu’elle reste chez elle. Le phénomène de l’islamophobie au Canada anglais devrait amplement l’occuper.
Il serait absurde de nier que l’islamophobie, tout comme le racisme, existe au Québec, au même titre qu’ailleurs au Canada et un peu partout sur la planète. Le premier ministre Legault convient lui-même que nous ne sommes pas à l’abri de ces maux, même s’il réfute leur caractère systémique.
Cela dit, non seulement le raccourci pris par Amira Elghawaby pour affirmer que « la majorité des Québécois » est animée par un sentiment anti-musulman était insultant, mais il témoignait au surplus d’une malhonnêteté intellectuelle qui ne plaide pas en faveur de la nouvelle représentante spéciale du gouvernement Trudeau dans la lutte contre l’islamophobie.
S’il était vrai, comme l’indiquait un sondage Léger, que 88 % des islamophobes appuyaient la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État (loi 21), on ne pouvait pas inverser la proposition et affirmer que la majorité des partisans de la loi étaient islamophobes. Mme Elghawaby a parfaitement le droit de ne pas aimer la loi 21 et de la combattre, mais cela ne l’autorise pas à faire un procès d’intention aussi gratuit qu’injuste à ceux qui la soutiennent.
Même si on voulait lui donner le bénéfice du doute en invoquant un manque de disposition pour les mathématiques, elle a tenu dans le passé d’autres propos qui laissent peu de doute sur les sentiments qu’elle éprouve envers le Québec.
Le député péquiste des Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Joël Arseneau, s’est montré passablement indulgent en parlant d’une « incompréhension » de la société québécoise. Cela ressemble davantage à une détestation. Même le ministre fédéral du Patrimoine, Pablo Rodriguez, s’est dit « blessé et choqué comme Québécois ». C’est dire. • • • • • On ne peut pas s’opposer à la vertu. Toute mesure visant à lutter contre l’islamophobie et à faciliter l’intégration des musulmans à la société canadienne est assurément la bienvenue.
La question est de savoir pourquoi Justin Trudeau a choisi une militante « pure et dure » comme Mme Elghawaby pour occuper un emploi qui va exiger beaucoup de doigté pour favoriser les rapprochements, au Québec comme dans le reste du pays. Lancer des anathèmes n’est assurément pas la meilleure façon d’y parvenir.
Les « clarifications » qu’elle a apportées n’ont pas satisfait le gouvernement Legault, qui exige son départ, mais M. Trudeau est tout disposé à s’en contenter. D’ailleurs, il l’aurait nommée de toute façon, a-t-il reconnu. S’il a pu être agacé par la maladresse de sa recrue, le fond de ses déclarations ne l’a manifestement pas troublé.
Le premier ministre et Mme Elghawaby partagent la même aversion pour la loi 21. Dans l’exercice de ses nouvelles fonctions, elle persistera sans doute à dire tout le mal qu’elle en pense, avec la bénédiction de son patron. M. Trudeau aurait voulu jeter de l’huile sur le feu qu’il n’aurait pas pu faire un meilleur choix.
Toute attaque contre la loi 21 provoque maintenant une réaction épidermique chez M. Legault, comme on l’a vu encore dernièrement quand son homologue canadien a réitéré son intention de la contester et de limiter l’utilisation préventive de la disposition de dérogation.
Dimanche, il brillait par son absence lors de la commémoration du massacre de la grande mosquée de Québec. Il n’avait sans doute pas très envie d’entendre les porte-parole du Centre culturel islamique lui reprocher une loi qui « vient chambarder tout ce qu’on fait comme travail pour le vivre-ensemble ». • • • • • L’indignation provoquée par la nomination de Mme Elghawaby rappelle celle qui avait accueilli, en janvier 2021, la nomination de la géographe Bochra Manaï au poste de commissaire à la lutte et à la discrimination systémiques à la Ville de Montréal, Mme Manaï ayant été précédemment porte-parole du Conseil national des musulmans canadiens.
M. Legault avait aussi qualifié cette nomination d’« erreur » en raison de la « croisade personnelle » de Mme Manaï contre la loi 21 qui, selon elle, avait fait du Québec « une référence pour les suprémacistes extrémistes ».
Le chef du Parti québécois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, avait déploré que la mairesse Plante utilise des fonds publics pour « imposer son idéologie » et prédit que la nouvelle commissaire allait semer la division. Manifestement, ses propos étaient insultants. Depuis deux ans, on n’a cependant entendu personne se plaindre de son travail.
Il est sans doute de bon ton de réclamer le départ de Mme Elghawaby, mais il est clair que M. Trudeau ne reviendra pas sur sa décision. Dès lors, la meilleure attitude à adopter est peut-être celle du chef du Bloc québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, qui a réclamé une rencontre avec la représentante spéciale.
Sans se faire trop d’illusion sur son acte de contrition, le chef du Bloc se dit prêt à entendre de plus amples explications. Qui sait, lui-même pourra peut-être lui expliquer certaines choses qu’elle ignore sur le Québec. Il sera toujours temps de déchirer sa chemise si elle ne veut toujours pas comprendre.
In contrast to the overly sympathetic article on efforts to rehabilitate ISIS returnees, a needed counterpoint from the experience of Yazidi women who were raped, tortured and otherwise abused by ISIS men and women. Not sure if Justice Brown and the court considered this context in his ruling:
The looming return of alleged ISIS members to Canada has brought trauma, worry and fear to people who were invited to Canada as a safe haven after the terrorist group all but destroyed their ancient community in northern Iraq.
“When I first heard the news, I felt the strength leave my body,” Huda Ilyas Alhamad told CBC News in her Winnipeg apartment. She is one of 1,200 survivors of the Yazidi genocide who were resettled in Canada; she spent years as a slave of ISIS members.
“I had to sit down right away. I was heartbroken and terrified at the same time because on one hand they had promised to protect us and bring us here and give us safety, and on the other hand they’re offering that same entryway for these very people who raped and tortured us on a daily basis.”
The Yazidis are members of an ancient Kurdish-speaking farming community in northern Iraq who practice their own monotheistic religion. They were victims of one of the worst atrocities of the 21st century at the hands of the Islamic fundamentalist terror group, which set out to eradicate the Yazidi people in a brutal campaign launched on August 3, 2014.
‘Heartbroken and betrayed’
Earlier this month, the federal government agreed to repatriate 19 Canadian women and children from northeastern Syria, where they have been held in Kurdish-run detention camps for suspected ISIS members and their families.
Jamileh Naso, president of the Canadian Yazidi Association, said Yazidis feel grateful to Canada. Many have settled in Winnipeg.
“Canada was one of the first countries to respond to the plight of the Yazidis,” she said. “And they couldn’t be any more happy or grateful that they would come to a country like Canada where they could feel safe and protected, in a country that stood for all these great values of freedom, of rights, of justice, of accountability and all these things the Yazidi community wanted to see.”
Naso praised the work of Winnipeg’s Jewish community to help reunify families and privately sponsor Yazidi refugees, but she said others in the city have helped as well.
“This has really been a grassroots local community effort to reunite these families and this is what Canada is about,” she said.
The ISIS repatriation order, she said, has left Yazidi families feeling “heartbroken and betrayed.”
“A lot of them just broke down into tears because they thought this news was completely unbelievable. It can’t be true,” she said.
“We have submitted applications for family reunification to reunite with our family members who were in ISIS captivity. And here they are bringing the perpetrators of these crimes of genocide to Canada. And they know in most cases that these folks will not face trial. The evidence is not here and the witnesses aren’t here. They are giving a free pass for their part in genocide and terrorism.
“It’s really disappointing, not just for those in the Yazidi community, but for those across Canada who believe in liberal values, and that we should be a country that’s standing up for victims and survivors.”
A peaceful community destroyed
“Before ISIS arrived, we were very happy. We had 13 people in my family,” Huda Alhamad told CBC News at her Winnipeg home. She was 17 years old in August, 2014, when ISIS attacked.
“It was always loud and noisy in the house, but I loved it. We would go to work, we would come home, we would have dinner as a family.”
As ISIS closed in, Huda’s family and thousands of others sought refuge on the slopes of the Yazidis’ traditional refuge of Mount Sinjar. But they were captured, along with thousands of other Yazidi civilians. ISIS members then began to separate them by age and gender.
Huda said she believes the gunfire she heard as she was driven away after the initial separation of family members was the start of the massacre of older community members.
ISIS had different plans for different segments of the Yazidi population. The youngest boys were taken from their families to be converted to Islam and raised as jihadi fighters and suicide bombers. Thousands of older boys and men were murdered. Young women and girls, like Huda and her three sisters, were separated for sale to ISIS members as slaves.
The ISIS slave market
“They went around taking down names, ages, family members, who was connected to who, and then they started separating by looks,” Huda said. “They came in like we were cattle, what looked good, what didn’t look good. Who was too old, who had kids, how many kids they had.”
“My sisters and I were taken to a separate room with a lot of the other young women and we were all sold.
“About 100 ISIS members came into the room. There were about 200 of us, and they all came in and started just grabbing us for themselves. And I, along with another young Yazidi girl, was taken by one of the ISIS members.”
Girls as young as 10 were taken as slaves by ISIS members. After raping them for a time, members would often sell them on. Many girls were sold multiple times.
Huda’s sisters were taken by other ISIS members. Years would pass before she learned they had survived.
Huda’s parents and older brother were never seen again. “Other than the four family members I’m with here, and then my two sisters and my brother who are in a refugee camp now, I’m not sure what happened to the others,” she said.
Yazidis told CBC News there is a misconception that the women of ISIS were less culpable or less violent than the men.
“The women were worse than the ISIS fighters. The women would beat us constantly,” said Huda. “They would refuse to feed us. I would usually get beaten with a cable by the wives of the ISIS fighters, and they would laugh at me, they would spit at me, they would kick me, and that was on a daily basis. And then when their husband would come, he would rape me.”
Naso said Huda’s experience with the women of ISIS is common among survivors.
“Almost all of them can tell you that when they were in captivity, the women played as much of a role as the [ISIS] fighters did in torturing them, in keeping them captive, in keeping notes on them and saying what they were doing, constantly beating them,” she told CBC News. “The females had just as much to do with the inhumane treatment of the Yazidis as the men did.”
Stolen children
Yazidis continue to arrive in Canada as individuals struggle to reunite the surviving members of families torn apart by ISIS.
Ayad Alhussein is just 13 years old. He spent five of those years in ISIS captivity and three more in a displaced persons camp. He arrived in Winnipeg only two months ago, rescued by two older sisters he had forgotten he even had.
“I’ve only been told now how hard my sisters worked with organizations here in Winnipeg like Operation Ezra (a reunification program sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg) and the Canadian Yazidi Association,” he said. “How they submitted paperwork three years ago and went back and forth with the government and different people to try to get me here.”
Ayad was young enough to be spared by ISIS when his family was captured. Twelve members of his family have not been seen since August 2014.
ISIS raised the youngest Yazidi boys to be jihadi fighters and suicide bombers. Ayad forgot his native Kurmanji and learned to live in Arabic. He doesn’t remember his life before capture.
Forgotten identity
“I was five years old when I was captured, so I didn’t really have an idea of who my community was or who my family was or anything like that,” he said. “And like the other little boys around me, I just kind of did whatever they did. At first I was scared, but then it just became normal.”
Normal, he said, included almost daily beatings (the boys were told they would make them tougher), military training, weapons drills and religious indoctrination.
“And that continued on until I met some others [slightly older Yazidi captive boys] who told me that I wasn’t a part of this. I had family elsewhere,” he said. “And then I started learning more and more as the years went by. And when I finally reached the camp after five years of captivity, that’s when I started to learn my mother tongue.”
Today, Ayad is in school in Winnipeg, learning English with the help of cousins. He said he’s happy in Canada and hopes to become a doctor.
But recent developments have rocked the teenager.
“When I heard the news that they would be bringing ISIS members here, I was terrified. That had not been that long since I came here,” he said. “The whole point of coming to a country like Canada was to be offered safety and security. If they’re bringing those people here, those terrorists, how am I supposed to feel safe?”
‘We don’t believe the government understands’
Huda said the news has brought on anxiety and panic.
“If I see somebody who semi-resembles one of the [ISIS] members, my heart starts beating really quickly,” she said. “Sometimes I cry, sometimes I just have to drop everything I’m doing and go home right away. And that’s been the case for the past five years. This news has just doubled that and I feel that all the time now.
“I’m scared to send my kids to school. What if they recognize some of us?”
Huda said it hurts to see ISIS families being reunited while her own sisters are still living in dangerous refugee camps.
“That’s all I could really ask for, if I could be reunited with my sisters here. We’ve worked on their paperwork, we’ve submitted for family reunification,” she said. “But for the past almost three years now, we have yet to hear anything about how their file is going.
Like many Yazidis, Huda said she believes the federal government and rights organizations working on behalf of suspected ISIS detainees are naive about the nature of the people they’re helping.
“We don’t believe the government truly understands. I mean, we’ve tried to share our story multiple times. We told them about the atrocities we faced,” she said.
“The government was the one who recognized it as genocide. They’re the ones who said yes, what they were doing to the Yazidi community constitutes genocide. They are raping women. They are separating families. They’re trying to annihilate this community off the face of the earth.
“And yet here they are, bringing these very members, these individuals who chose to leave this country, this security, these freedoms, and go there and join this group that is committing these crimes. And so it doesn’t make sense to us.”
‘No repercussions’
Although talking about her captivity is wrenching, Huda said “it’s more important than ever that people know exactly what types of monsters they are, and we’re inviting them into the country with no repercussions.”
If the Canadian government or anybody has questions about what ISIS was doing in Iraq and Syria,” she added, “you can come talk to me.
“If you have questions about what women and girls had to face, how they were tied up and treated like slaves, how were they were sold, how 10-year-olds were raped, how girls were ripped from their mothers’ arms and taken into separate rooms and they could hear them being raped. If you want to hear about why we should keep people like that out, you can come talk to me.
“I feel like I could talk for days about what had happened to us and share stories of the horrors I saw. But with this decision to bring in those very people who caused all this pain and suffering, does it even matter if we tell our stories anymore?”
It all strikes me as a bit too trusting and naive. Money quote:
“The women “all seem pleased to be back home,” the report noted, but there were “worrying reports that the majority of women refuse or are unable to take responsibility for their decision to travel to Syria, to have exposed their children to life in a war zone.””
They started disappearing a decade ago.
Slowly and mysteriously, then in a growing wave, young Canadians left behind their homes and families to join fellow Muslims fighting in Syria and Iraq or to experience the radicalized utopia of an Islamic caliphate promised by the Islamic State terrorism group.
Five or so years ago, psychologists such as Michael King and Ghayda Hassan began preparing for their imminent return — one that is expected only now, with a judge’s ruling last week that the federal government must bring Canadian citizens home from overseas detention camps.
“When the caliphate kind of crumbled and lost all its territory,” said King, of Alberta’s Organization for the Prevention of Violence, “there was this massive fear that everyone was going to come back to their countries of origin and charges wouldn’t be laid because it was hard to collect evidence in foreign countries.”
Like surfers in a strange sea, psychologists, social workers, police and radicalization experts waited in vain for that wave of returning male ISIS fighters, female adherents and their children.
Now it is taking shape. Six women, between the ages of 27 and 40. Among them are 13 children between the ages of two and 14.
Separately, there are four Canadian men who range in age from late 20s to early 40s. They have been detained for years in makeshift Syrian prisons on suspicion they fought with or supported ISIS, but they have never been charged with a crime.
One of them — Jack Letts, the 28-year-old son of a British mother and Canadian father — was reportedly being held with up to 30 other men in a cell built for six. Claiming to have been tortured, he is seeking the protection of the Canadian government after the U.K. revoked his citizenship.
“None of them have been heard from since 2019,” Justice Henry Brown noted in deciding that Ottawa was violating the men’s right to return to Canada by not negotiating their repatriation.
The government has already struck a deal to bring home the Canadian women and children. The fate of the men is unclear; meanwhile, officials have also offered repatriation to 10 other Canadian children, though not to their mothers — the primary caregivers — because they do not have citizenship.
In the long wait for this mass repatriation, those tasked with helping them reintegrate and rehabilitate have been preparing by studying other countries’ successes and failures in dealing with citizens who went to fight or live with terrorist groups active in the region. Countries such as Kazakhstan and Kosovo have become the unlikely proving grounds for the theories and techniques used to handle those who, in the academic lingo, are referred to as foreign fighters.
In Canada, this knowledge has been put to work in a handful of cases of radicalized individuals: People who travelled to the lands controlled by the Islamic State and returned under the radar. People who were caught and prevented from committing the crime of leaving to join the overseas terror group. People who have served jail sentences for terrorism offences and participated in court-ordered counselling as a condition of their release.
British Columbia’s Kimberly Polman, Montreal’s Oumaima Chouay and Chouay’s two children were repatriated from a Kurdish-run detention camp in northeastern Syria. They touched down in Montreal and there, along with the RCMP national security investigators, was an expert team of health professionals to start the complex and delicate process of reintegrating and rehabilitating the returned Canadians.
“It was the first time that this plan, which had been developed, was put in motion,” Hassan said.
The police were there to look for breaches of the law committed on Canadian soil or abroad.
Upon her arrival in Montreal, Chouay was arrested for terrorism offences and arrested. She was released on bail after a Jan. 6 hearing with several conditions, including that she wear a GPS tracking bracelet, not use social media and not contact several potential witnesses who could testify in her eventual criminal trial.
For others, the legal reckoning can take years.
Hussein Borhot, a Calgary man, was only in arrested in 2020, seven years after he travelled to Syria to join ISIS. He pleaded guilty last year to two charges, including participating in a terrorist group and a kidnapping for the purposed of a terrorist group, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
A spokesperson for the RCMP did not say how its national security investigators were specifically preparing for the return of the six women and 13 children who were part of the Federal Court case, or whether any of those returning will face criminal charges here.
“The RCMP conducts criminal investigations to the fullest extent that they are able, with a view to ensure public safety, to determine if a criminal offence was committed and to gather evidence,” Cpl. Kim Chamberland in response to questions. “The RCMP will lay criminal charges when there is supporting evidence and when it is deemed in the public interest to proceed.”
The health professionals providing psychosocial support — there are teams in Montreal, Edmonton, Toronto and Vancouver — operate in concert with, but separately from, law enforcement. Upon arrival back in Canada, they will examine the physical and mental health of the adults and assess the needs of young children whose life experiences may be limited to the brutality of ISIS or the squalid conditions of the detention camps, which hold tens of thousands of individuals, most of whom are Syrian or Iraqi.
“The person who left is coming back with a different set of experiences,” Hassan said. “Of course, there is the euphoria of reuniting, but things can be challenging.”
“We all have some experience with people returning from overseas, so that’s a good thing,” says King. “It’s no one’s first rodeo, but it’s going to be everyone’s biggest rodeo.”
However, the returnees have varying experiences, beliefs and needs. King suggests discarding any assumptions that adults being repatriated to Canada, having joined the Islamic State, now stand behind the atrocities — including beheadings, crucifixions and other violent executions — that the terror group committed and used as tools of recruitment.
“Some of these people will have disavowed the ideology a few hours after arriving in ISIS-controlled territory all those years ago and probably said, ‘This is the biggest error of my life,’ but it was unsafe to leave,” King said.
“Others, however, will still espouse that ideology.”
Therapists take the view that an individual’s extremism is an outward symptom of deeper problems. To resolve the grand issues, they start by tackling the smaller challenges in the hope of rebuilding people’s lives one concrete step at a time.
For example, steps are taken to ensure the individual has a place to live and the necessary documents, like health cards or social insurance numbers, to access public services. Children are enrolled in schools and granted the necessary educational supports to help them bridge the divide the likely exists between them and their Canadian peers.
Another urgent issue, and a longer-term one, is ensuring returnees obtain medical treatment for post-traumatic stress or mental-health problems that may have gone untended or worsened for years while living in a war zone and in the camps.
A 2021 report looking at the reintegration of women and children from Kosovo who were repatriated from Syria found “clear signs of PTSD, characterized by sleeplessness, anxiety, depression, panic triggered by loud noises such as airplanes flying overhead or firecrackers.”
A second report looking at the reintegration of people from across the western Balkans said that children also showed similar signs of traumatic stress, including screaming in panic and running for shelter at the sound of approaching planes, parental separation anxiety and selective mutism — refusing to speak in certain environments and situations despite being physically capable.
The women “all seem pleased to be back home,” the report noted, but there were “worrying reports that the majority of women refuse or are unable to take responsibility for their decision to travel to Syria, to have exposed their children to life in a war zone.”
King said the psychosocial teams try to work with individuals, rather than confronting them on matters of ideologies or religious belief.
“If you take an argumentative or adversarial stance where you’re trying to convince them that they are wrong or the ideology they espouse is wrong … it’s going to elicit some sort of reaction,” said King. “No one wants to be told they are wrong, so you might be entrenching them in that world view.”
Deprogramming someone who holds or espouses radical views does not enter into the equation.
“It’s not that we don’t do (deradicalization). It’s just that it’s not the top priority,” said Hassan. “For me, deradicalization is more the end outcome of the process. The person ends up being deradicalized and ends up giving up their ideologies … but it’s not because we’ve sat and spent hours discussing ideology.”
None of it is expected to be simple or comfortable.
Returnees are coming back to a secular western society that they once rejected and fled and that they may still believe is sinful, evil and corrupted. Beyond that, there’s the harsh reality that many in this country may have little sympathy for their current plight.
“They will come back to face a society here that stigmatizes them because they’re still being considered by many people — sometimes quite wrongfully, actually — as terrorists,” Hassan said. “Many of them have been kind of drawn into this and mostly been victims, actually. Some may have been perpetrators, of course. I’m not denying that.”
In Quebec, there have been more than 100 cases involving people who have been or are at risk of radicalization, and Hassan said the majority of their interventions have had successful outcomes, which she measures in terms such as improved mental health conditions, reduced post-traumatic stress and the establishment and maintenance of long-term relationships.
“Many of our clients may be socially disconnected from work, school or family, so success looks like they are improving this,” she said. “For example, managing to get a job and to keep it or improving relationships with family members.”
Some countries, particularly Muslim-majority ones, have placed an emphasis on theology and the need for radicalized individuals to adopt more tolerant and inclusive religious views. But all recognize the need to prioritize the social reintegration of repatriated citizens.
“I think the model that we are watching, because it may be problematic, is the French model, where they were systematically detained and children are systematically placed in foster care, which is not, fortunately, the model we use here,” said Hassan.
Being a violent extremist, or having espoused radical views, does not automatically mean the person is a bad parent, said King.
“I know that’s a paradox, but they can still be a warm and loving parent, and provide emotional and psychological safety to the child,” he said.
But Hassan added that health professionals would not hesitate to contact child welfare authorities if they believe that the well-being of a young person is threatened by the radical beliefs or extremist behaviour of a parent.
“If we removed children from their parents because of their history of beliefs or behaviours,” she said, “then most of the Mafia parents would have their children removed.”
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder or more depressing on the U.S. book-ban front comes this plot twist from Manatee County, Fla. The school board near Sarasota recently issued an edict that prompted teachers to remove all books from classrooms in response to new rules from the Florida Department of Education.
That policy states that all books in schools must be approved by a librarian (called a “certified media specialist”), or staff risk third-degree felony charges. With some classroom libraries too large to dispose of quickly, teachers have had to physically cover them up, with construction paper in some cases – or risk possible jail time. Teachers are not allowed to choose books for their classrooms. And only vetted books are allowed, to ensure they are free of pornographic material, age-appropriate, and don’t contain “unsolicited theories that may lead to student indoctrination.” It’s effectively leading to negative-option reading, and that’s led to the removal of such dangerous books as Sneezy the Snowman and Dragons Love Tacos.
Imagine a classroom without books. This is a scene cooked up by fools – who are somehow in charge of education – trying to create a nation of more fools. And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who signed the bill into law, has presidential aspirations. Imagine edicts like this being issued nationally.
Is the Sunshine State also the most ignorant? There’s stiff competition for the title – led by Texas, according to a report released in November by PEN America.
And if it’s sex these censorious anti-intellectuals are worried about, they may want to have a seat while we break the news to them: Kids don’t need to learn this stuff from banned-book queen Judy Blume, or from Robie Harris’s It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health, another frequently censored volume. They can learn it from the internet, from sources far less trustworthy and much more graphic.
Canadian Margaret Atwood is another targeted author; The Handmaid’s Tale is among the most frequently banned books in the U.S. This month, it was among 21 titles banned by the school board in Madison County, Va. Four books by Toni Morrison also made the list, along with three by Stephen King.
Mr. King, a vocal opponent of censorship, tweeted this month: “Hey, kids! It’s your old buddy Steve King telling you that if they ban a book in your school, haul your ass to the nearest bookstore or library ASAP and find out what they don’t want you to read.”
In the new documentary Judy Blume Forever, which just had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, the Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret author calls the resurgence of book bans – which often target her novels – shocking. It’s “as if time stood still and we’re back in the eighties.”
We’ve had a few book censorship controversies in Canada, too. Last year, the removal of three books from libraries in the Durham District School Board just east of Toronto, including David A. Robertson’s The Great Bear, was reversed after public outcry.
But book bans in the United States are becoming so rampant that they are now likelier to elicit heavy sighs rather than shock. Still, seeing the statistics in black and white is alarming. According to that PEN report, from July, 2021, to June, 2022, there were 2,532 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,648 individual titles. The two categories most frequently banned in schools were books with LGBTQ themes or prominent LGBTQ characters, and books with protagonists or prominent secondary characters of colour.
Students aren’t going to stop being gay – not that any right-thinking person would want them to – because a book that reflects their experience is no longer available in their classroom. Racialized children aren’t going to stop noticing they are racialized.While books are powerful, they are not so powerful that they can change a child’s identity. Their magic isn’t quite that literal. But they can help kids feel better, less alone.
This is not just about misguided parents. Book banning is a strategic political act, and well-connected advocacy organizations have been pushing it. PEN America has identified at least 50 such groups that are actively seeking these bans. And it is certainly a political choice to devote effort to protecting children from books, rather than guns.
Where does an anti-book culture lead? A recent essay in The Atlantic pointed to two prominent figures who have denounced books: Ye, the former Kanye West, who has called himself “a proud non-reader of books,” and Sam Bankman-Fried, who has said he would “never read a book.” A proud antisemite and a fallen tech bro facing multiple fraud charges, respectively.
I get asked a lot these days about misinformation, by people worried that youth are buying into lies about important issues and historical events. My answer always revolves around making sure young people have access to reliable information – the kind most easily found in books. The library over YouTube, always.
Kids, keep reading. Especially the books you’re being told not to read by villainous higher-ups. You’re the protagonist of your own story – and information is power.
Apart from some of the over the top framing and language, Jivani raises valid concerns about the NAC, as a government institution, having such an exclusive approach. While in some circumstances, such as discussions concerning trauma of particular groups (e.g., residential schools), an exclusive approach is warranted, don’t see that being the case here:
Racial segregation is not a sign of progress.
I can’t believe this needs to be said in 2023. But, apparently, it does.
For years now, Canadian institutions have surrendered to the demands of critical race theorists and other so-called progressives who argue Canada is a “systemically racist” country.
A result of this capitulation is that the Trudeau-led federal government is now funding racial segregation.
It sounds ridiculous, circular, confusing and obviously wrong. Ten years ago the federal government wouldn’t dare endorse racial segregation.
Yet the National Arts Centre (NAC), a Crown corporation, is holding a black-only showing of a play at Babs Asper Theatre in Ottawa. They are excluding non-black people from attending the event in February, including non-black people who might be married to black men and women.
Imagine what this does to families. A growing number of married couples in Canada are interracial. And they’re having a growing number of kids with complex identities.
I’m a black man with a white mom. Am I supposed to accept that part of my family can attend a play in the nation’s capital while another part cannot, simply because of skin colour and ancestry?
The underlying assumption made by the NAC is that black people want to be in racially-segregated spaces. Where is the evidence for that? Who told the NAC this is true?
None of my black friends or family members asked our federal government to fund racial segregation. I haven’t seen a single survey or poll that suggests other black Canadians want segregation, either.
Black people across the political spectrum fight for inclusion in Canadian society, not segregation. Isn’t that the whole point of “diversity and inclusion” in the first place?
Progressive activists and academics will call a black man like me a sell out for refusing to keep my mouth shut while they misrepresent our community. I have been called every racial slur you can imagine by so-called progressives.
But this is precisely why I cannot be silent.
Black Canadians are being betrayed by institutions that claim to do our bidding but could care less what we actually believe or want. Black Canadian writer Samuel Sey recently made this point on his blog when he said, “Black Canadians are arguably the most culturally conservative group in the country.”
You wouldn’t know that from how we are represented in Canadian politics or media, would you?
If the voices of the majority of black Canadians mattered, then the federal government would be striving to understand what working and middle-class families need in our country today. Tax dollars should not be going to please a small fraction of activists and academics who want to feel like they’re “fighting the man” while watching plays with their friends.
Regressive political ideas are being sold to us as progress. Our country, and its diverse communities, deserve better.
On February 17, the evening’s performance of Is God Is will introduce the first of two Black Out nights that will be at the NAC this year. A Black Out is an open invitation to Black-identifying audiences to come and experience performances with their community. The evenings will provide a dedicated space for Black theatregoers to witness a show that reflects the vivid kaleidoscope that is the Black experience.
Creating evenings dedicated to Black theatregoers will allow for conversation and participation to be felt throughout the theatre and open the doors for Black-identifying audiences to experience the energy of the NAC with a shared sense of belonging and passion.
Long overdue (rejected under the Trump administration):
A Middle Eastern and North African category could be added to U.S. federal surveys and censuses, and changes could be made to how Hispanics are able to self-identify, under preliminary recommendations released Thursday by the Biden administration in what would be the first update to race and ethnicity standards in a quarter century.
The federal government’s standards haven’t been changed since 1997, two decades after they were created as part of an effort to collect consistent race and ethnicity data across federal agencies when handling censuses, federal surveys and application forms for government benefits.
Questions about race and Hispanic ethnicity are asked separately using the 1997 standards. They would be combined into a single question under the initial proposals, which were made by a working group of representatives from different federal agencies convened by the Office of Management and Budget.
Some advocates have been pushing for combining the race and Hispanic origin questions, saying the way race is categorized often confuses Hispanic respondents who are not sure how to answer. Tests by the Census Bureau in the 2010 census showed that combining the questions yielded higher response rates.
Using the 1997 standards, U.S. residents from Middle Eastern and North African countries were encouraged to identify as “white.” Under the new proposal, there would be a separate category for people often referred to by the “MENA” acronym. The Census Bureau recommended adding a MENA category to the 2020 census form, but the Trump administration dropped the idea.
“Research suggests that many MENA respondents view their identity as distinct from White, and stakeholders have, for over 30 years, advocated for collecting MENA information separate from White,” the Biden administration said in a Federal Register notice that will be published on Friday.
Among the countries of origin that would get a check for the MENA category would be Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Morocco and Israel, the notice said.
The proposals encourage the collection of more detailed race and ethnicity information by allowing respondents on government forms to list their country of origin when answering a question about their race or ethnicity. They also recommend striking from federal government forms the words “Negro,” “Far East” — and the use of the terms “majority” and “minority,” saying they can be considered pejorative or outdated, and that the standards need to be “respectful of how people refer to themselves.”
The need to update the standards was driven by increasing racial and ethnic diversity, a growing number of people who identify as more than one race or ethnicity, and changing immigration and migration patterns, according to the Federal Register notice.
The working group said their proposals were preliminary and that they don’t yet reflect the official standards of the federal government since they will continue to be hashed out with input from the public. The goal is to ensure that that “the standards better reflect the diversity of the American people,” Karin Orvis, the U.S. chief statistician, said in a blog post.
“As we consider these recommendations, we want to hear directly from the American people,” Orvis said.
Of interest and relevance given the demographics. Will be interesting to see the performance measures that assess the effectiveness of the strategy:
Six years ago, a school board west of Toronto was making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Security had to be stepped up after racist outbursts at board meetings, a man was filmed tearing pages out of a Qur’an during discussions about religious accommodations, and Muslim students were told they would have to choose from sermons approved by the board for their Friday prayers.
Today, the Peel District School Board (PDSB) is the first in Canada to adopt a strategy aimed at dismantling Islamophobia and affirming the identity of Muslims students, who comprise the largest reported faith-based identity at the board — about a quarter of its student population.
And the timing isn’t without significance, said the National Council of Canadian Muslims.
“The PDSB has set a tremendous example with this anti-Islamophobia strategy that other school boards across the country would be wise to study, examine and follow,” the council’s education director, Aasiyah Khan, said in a news release.
‘Historic step forward’
“It’s really fitting that this announcement is being made in the lead-up to the sixth anniversary of the Quebec City shooting, which really changed this country,” she added. “This is a historic step forward.”
The announcement comes after a 2020 review by Ontario’s Ministry of Education found anti-Black racism to be a significant challenge at the board. The board also noted “blatantly Islamophobic resources and teaching materials” had been used in classrooms, affecting the well-being of Muslim students and staff, in a report dated Wednesday.
The anti-Islamophobia strategy sprang from a motion put forth by former PDSB trustee Nokha Dakroub in September 2021 that proposed, in part, anti-Islamophobia training for all board staff members.
The strategy relies largely on the definition of Islamophobia created by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, namely: “stereotypes, bias or acts of hostility towards individual Muslims or followers of Islam in general. In addition to individual acts of intolerance and racial profiling, Islamophobia leads to viewing Muslims as a greater security threat on an institutional, systemic and societal level.”
“These systemic attitudes foster an unwarranted culture of suspicion and surveillance of Muslims and the Muslim community,” the board says, pointing to the example of a cash reward being offered to surveil Muslim students at Friday prayers in schools.
Strategy outlines 6 key pillars
The board’s plan also notes Islamophobia often intersects with other forms of oppression including racism, such as anti-Black and anti-Palestinian racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ hate and systemic oppression.
The strategy, developed with input from the NCCM, the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians and the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, lists six key pillars for the board to work on:
Building capacity to implement the strategy.
Affirming and celebrating Muslim identities, including using resources that acknowledge Muslim contributions across subjects like math, science, history and the arts to “counter the erasure of Muslim identity in the historically Eurocentric curriculum.”
Creating learning and working environments to intentionally disrupt Islamophobia, including annual mandatory anti-Islamophobia training for staff and establishing prayer or contemplation spaces for staff or student use.
Foster meaningful engagement with Muslim communities, including partnerships with community agencies and ensuring culturally appropriate referrals to services.
Supporting the mental health and well-being of Muslim students and staff, such as by recognizing Muslim beliefs and practices can differ between individuals and groups and creating “safe spaces” for groups such as Muslim Students Associations.
Implementing responsive hiring and supportive measures, including supporting the advancement of racialized employees into leadership roles.
‘Calls almost every day’ over Islamophobia in schools
In a news release, Khan added anti-Muslim hate is an issue that endures in schools even today.
“We’ve gotten calls almost every day for the last few weeks about horrific issues relating to Islamophobia in our schools, some violent, and some systemic.”
Samya Hasan, executive director of the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians, experienced that kind of anti-Muslim discrimination firsthand as a student and said it can lead to Muslim youth questioning their identity having low self-esteem.
“We’ve heard from hundreds of youth, and their parents, about stories of things like being called a terrorist, or girls, having their hijabs pulled off from their heads, or being dismissed by teachers in the school system … And not to speak of tons of microaggressions that happen on an everyday basis.”
That, in part, is why the strategy also commits to collecting data to measure its success.
Those metrics will measure the percentage of Muslim students who feel their school is a safe and inclusive environment, for example, as well as the number of human rights complaints made to the board’s human rights office, hate incidents and Muslim staff members’ well-being.
“The development of a strategy to affirm Muslim identities and dismantle Islamophobia is only the first step in an ongoing journey,” the board said in its strategy document.
“Fostering an environment that is free from Islamophobia will require the efforts of all members of the PDSB community to meaningfully engage in this important work”
News of the strategy comes as Canada marked another first.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the appointment of Amira Elghawaby as Canada’s first special representative on combating Islamophobia. Elghawaby will advise the federal government on how to better fight discrimination against the Muslim community.
Of note, she has recently been a regular commentator at the Star:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced the appointment of Canada’s first special representative to combat Islamophobia.Amira Elghawaby, a journalist and human rights advocate, will serve as an advisor and expert as the federal government works to fight religious intolerance and systemic racism.
In a news release today, Trudeau says he is looking forward to working with Elghawaby, and calls her appointment an “important step” to combat Islamophobia and build a country where everyone is respected.
Speaking at an event to mark her appointment, Elghawaby says she is deeply honoured and humbled to serve the Muslim community in the new role.
She says the position was created to address a “painful, even deadly reality of Islamophobia in this country” and that despite the ideal of multiculturalism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism continue to be present in Canadian society.
Ahmed Hussen, the federal Diversity and Inclusion minister, says the special representative will be supported by staff.
Multicultural Meanderings 