Canadian Muslims see Islamophobia and racism in the actions and policies of Canada’s governments

As Canadian Muslims watch this country's leaders utter platitudes about helping Palestinians in Gaza, issue statements of support for a genocidal regime that is killing children, destroying mosques and churches, and desecrating Palestinian cemeteries, they see that there is a racial hierarchy in this country, and that the concerns of Muslims and Palestinians ranks low on the agendas of Canada's predominantly white political leaders.

 

By Fareed Khan

March 15th marked the fifth anniversary of the massacre of 51 Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the second International Day to Combat Islamophobia.  As Canadian Muslims observed this day, Muslim community leaders were calling attention to the insidiousness of this form of bigotry in the domestic and foreign policies of the Canadian government, as well as certain government actions and statements by politicians which have enabled an ecosystem of Islamophobia in this country.

 

This day was designated as an official day of observance by the United Nations following the New Zealand massacre.  This year, the celebration fell during the first week of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, a time when Muslims are acutely aware of their connections to others of their faith around the world, and were reflecting on their feelings of being under assault as Israel wages war on Palestinians in Gaza, with the support of many Western governments, including Canada.

 

Comments and actions by Canadian politicians over the past five months have shown Muslims across the country that their governments’ and political leaders’ antipathy towards their views concerning Muslims being persecuted and oppressed overseas (as in the case of Palestinians being subjected to atrocities by Israel), and are in fact enabling Islamophobia with certain government policies at home and abroad.  The fact that Canadian leaders have taken mostly symbolic actions to fight anti-Muslim hate at home – the designation of a national day to combat Islamophobia (January 29th) and appointment of a Special Representative to Combat Islamophobia – and have ignored the voices of Canadian Muslims when it comes to foreign policies that ignore Muslim persecution, says volumes about the mindset of Canada's political leaders and their commitment to human rights for Muslims whether at home or abroad.

 

Canadian Muslims have already witnessed a lack of political will to fight state-sanctioned Islamophobia with the refusal of the Canadian government to act against Quebec’s “secularism” law, which is based on anti-Muslim prejudice, the vehemence with which Conservative and Quebec nationalist politicians attacked the appointment of the Special Representative to Combat Islamophobia, and the proclivity of many Canadian politicians at all levels of government to back the apartheid state of Israel while it has been committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza (who are over 90 per cent Muslim) since October 2023.

 

  

The refusal of Canadian leaders to act at home when a provincial government implements anti-Muslim policies, and willingness to implement foreign policies that enables vilification of Muslims in other countries clearly demonstrates the appearance of Islamophobia and racism on the part of Canada’s political class.  This mindset has also become abundantly clear in their on-going support for Israel even as it commits the most horrific crimes imaginable under human law against an overwhelmingly Muslim population that is defenceless.  Add to this Canadian politicians of all stripes condemning Palestinian and Muslim Canadians who have been holding weekly pro-Palestine demonstrations since October, and their seeming deafness to appeals by millions of Canadians for a cease fire in Gaza, for an embargo on the sale of Canadian-made weapons to Israel, and for sanctioning Israel's leaders for enabling genocidal crimes, and it is no wonder that the Muslim and Palestinian communities feel that Canada's political class is hostile towards their views and harbours prejudice against them.

 

Fortunately, pro-Palestinian voices are finally making limited political headway with the passage of a watered-down NDP motion in the House of Commons on March 18th, which acceded to most of the demands being made by pro-Palestinian voices.  While the motion passed by a vote of 204 to 117 it was opposed by all but five Conservative MPs, by three Liberal MPs (who represent ridings with large Jewish populations) and one independent MP.  The main parts of the motion called for: an immediate ceasefire; stopping [future] arms exports to Israel; maintaining humanitarian aid funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA) which is key to the survival of Palestinians; unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza; and expanded access to Canada’s temporary refugee program for Palestinians in Gaza.  The fact that 117 MPs knowingly voted against a motion to save human lives and stop mass murder from being committed against a people experiencing genocide demonstrates a level of evil, malice and racist forethought that is incomprehensible to anyone with an ounce of compassion.

 

 

Israel's military assault, which was initially said to be an act of “self-defence” in response to the October 7th attack against Israel by Hamas, has instead become an all-out military campaign against all 2.3 million citizens of the Gaza enclave, where more than 50 per cent of the population are children.  As of March 14th more than 36,300 Palestinian civilians have been murdered by Israeli military forces with 14,861 of them being children and 9,273 of them women.  As Israeli forces have pulverized the civilian infrastructure of Gaza (homes, hospitals, schools, clean water facilities, etc.) more than 74,000 people have been injured, over 2,000,000 displaced, and more than 368,000 homes have been completely or partially destroyed.  One UNICEF official who has recently returned from Gaza described scenes of “utter annihilation”, with “nothing left” of what were once thriving and crowded cities in the territory.  James Elder, a spokesperson with the UN agency, said, “The depth of the horror surpasses our ability to describe it.”

 

 

Since October numerous Israeli cabinet ministers and religious leaders, as well as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, have used language in public statements that has promoted genocide against Palestinians, with one Israeli cabinet member even calling for the use of nuclear weapons on the people of Gaza.  The evidence of genocide is so overwhelming that the International Court of Justice has accepted South Africa's genocide case against Israel and has said there is a “plausible” case of genocide being committed in Gaza.

 

The seeming antipathy and disdain that Canadian politicians have for Muslim and Palestinian lives was evident in the Canadian government’s votes against several UN resolutions since October calling for a cease fire in Gaza, and Canada's refusal to show the level of compassion to Palestinian victims of Israeli atrocities the way they did to the victims of Russia's war on Ukrainian.  The refusal to sanction Israeli leaders and condemn them for Israel’s violation of basic humanitarian law when compared to how Canada sanctioned and condemned Russia and its leaders is hypocrisy and prejudice at its finest.  In its actions the Canadian government has demonstrated not just Islamophobia but also a deep-seated racism against the Palestinian people, which has existed for decades according to confidential sources who have worked at Global Affairs Canada for years.  This begs the question, is it because Ukrainians are white and predominantly Christian that Canada has provided overwhelming political, economic and military aid totalling more than $10 billion to Ukraine, while nothing similar has been done for Palestinians?

 

 

 

The huge disparity in the way refugees from the two communities have been treated can only be accounted for due to Islamophobia and racism according to leading voices within the Canadian Muslim community.  In the case of Ukrainian refugees Canada opened the doors wide, eliminated paperwork and processing fees so that they could arrive in Canada quickly, resulting in more than 250,000 Ukrainians landing here as of February 2024.  With Palestinians Canada has looked the other way and done practically nothing to help them even as tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have been murdered by Israel, and more than 2,000,000 have been displaced, trying to survive under conditions pushing them into “the most intense famine since the second world war” according to international experts who work in the field.

 

 

The lack of action by the Canadian government to help Palestinians facing genocide has demonstrated the most blatant case of racism against a foreign refugee population since Canada's refusal to accept Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s.  This is clearly evident in Canada's cap of 1000 Palestinian refugees, and only for those who have relatives in Canada, its refusal to remove application fees or eliminate the onerous application process, unlike what was done for Ukrainian refugees.  Whether the recent vote on the NDP's parliamentary motion to call for an immediate cease fire and provide unhindered access for humanitarian aid will change things remains to be seen considering that such motions are non-binding, and Canada is only one of the international players that would be involved in any such actions.

 

Many Palestinian and Muslim Canadians feel that this country (along with the US and other Western nations) has enabled genocide against Palestinians through its actions and polices for decades.  While Palestinians have been dying by the thousands under Israeli bombardment over the past five months the Canadian government continued to authorize the sale of military hardware to Israel (until recently), and even cut funding to UNWRA based on unproven Israeli allegations that a dozen out of more than 13,000 employees might have helped in the initial Hamas attack on October 7th, before eventually restoring it when no evidence was forthcoming.  Canada and other nations did this while Palestinians were starving, and were condemned for their knee-jerk reaction to Israel's unproven allegations.

 

The cause of justice for Palestinians has been close to the heart of Canadian Muslims for many years.  And now as the community watches while Canadian leaders utter platitudes about helping Palestinians in Gaza, as they contemplate the statements of support made for a racist and genocidal regime that has killed children, destroyed mosques and churches, and desecrated Palestinian cemeteries, they see that there is a racial hierarchy in this country where the concerns of Muslims and Palestinians ranks low on the agenda of Canada predominantly white political leaders, who enthusiastically put the resources behind white Christian victims of aggression (like Ukranians), while they seem to harbour racism in their hearts against people who are brown and predominantly Muslim.

 

Canadians should not be surprised by the evident Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism within Canada's political class considering that this is a nation founded on Indigenous genocide, slavery, and white supremacy.  Racism and bigotry are baked into the history and DNA of Canada and its major institutions, and the people who lead those institutions can't help but be slowly seduced by these ideologies (even though they would deny it).  So the refusal of Canadian leaders to stand on the right side of history (again) with regard to fighting bigotry and racism, this time against Muslims and Palestinians, at this moment in history should not come as a shock. 

 

They are behaving the same way that Canadian leaders of the 1930s did when they refused to accept Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.  “None is too many“, were words uttered by a top immigration official in the government of Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie-King when asked by reporters how many Jewish refugees Canada would accept.

 

The recent and past actions of Canadian politicians  should show Muslims, Palestinians Canadians (as well as other racialized minorities) that this country’s leaders, whether at the federal, provincial or municipal level, while they say they oppose hate, racism and bigotry, in reality they are not fully committed to supporting communities like Muslims and Palestinians that are targeted by those who engage in these hateful ideologies, which have been enabled by the very governments that are supposed to protect them.  The unwillingness of governments to take aggressive action to fight hate and provide the necessary funding for this endeavour makes this evident.

 

Canadians need to decide what kind of people it wants leading this country.  Is it those who pay lip service to defending human rights and fighting hate and racism, who say what voters want to hear, make promises for the sake of political expediency, but then refuse to follow through with aggressive action on those promises?  Or do they want leaders who are truly committed to eliminating hate and racism from Canada, and show their conviction to this cause through actions to defend human rights and fight hate at home and abroad, and especially so when they see the crime of genocide taking place in front of their eyes.  For the sake of peace and stability in our society and in the world the vast majority of Canadians would prefer the latter.

 

Fareed Khan is a human rights activist and founder of Canadians United Against Hate.

 

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