Muslims facing intolerance in Canada

Abul Fadl

Safar 06, 1419 1998-06-01

Special Reports

by Abul Fadl (Special Reports, Crescent International Vol. 27, No. 7, Safar, 1419)

At first glance Canada appears an ideal place to live in. With an international reputation as a country that takes extra care in protecting and promoting the rights of minorities, it seems like a haven where fairness thrives and equality prospers. Yet despite the loud clamor for human rights, intolerance remains a fact of life for many Muslims living in or visiting Canada. Muslims continue to fall victim to systemic intolerance, mistreatment, bias, discrimination and stereotypical portrayals.

The ongoing saga of Imam Michael Abdulrashid Taylor, who has been locked in an arduous struggle with the Canadian legal system for about five years, is a case in point. While attending the trial of Dudley Laws, one of Toronto’s leading black activists, on November 15, 1993, Imam Taylor and several other Muslim men were ordered by the presiding judge, Arthur C. Whealy, to leave the courtroom. Their ‘offense’ was wearing a kufi, a Muslim men’s head-covering, while in the courtroom.

Three days later, a notice of application was filed requesting the judge to permit those wearing headgear due to religious reasons to attend the court hearings. Judge Whealy issued a ruling that was even more offensive than his earlier act. He stated that ‘a public trial does not include offensive or intrusive costumes.’

The dress protocol laid down by Judge Whealy is brazenly discriminatory. That is especially so in the light of the fact that male adherents of other religions, such as Sikhism and Judaism, are usually allowed to wear their head-coverings in Canadian courtrooms.

Imam Taylor filed a complaint about the discriminatory behaviour of Judge Whealy to the Canadian Judicial Council which found ‘nothing wrong’ with the judge’s decision. Subsequent complaints to both the Ontario and Canadian Human Rights Commissions did not fare any better. Both Commissions ruled that the issue falls beyond the scope of their jurisdictions.

Imam Taylor is now fighting a legal battle at the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal against Judge Whealy’s discriminatory behaviour. If nothing comes out of it, he is determined to go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Muslims are also singled out for harsh treatment by Canadian immigration and security officials under the all too convenient and malleable pretext of ‘counter-terrorism.’ For instance, in early January, Egyptian Shaykh Wagdy Ghoneim was arrested while trying to enter Canada, with a valid visitor’s visa, from the US. During his 24-hour ordeal, Shaykh Ghoneim, who suffers from hypertension and heart problems, was humiliatingly handcuffed, strip searched, interrogated and jailed without an opportunity to get legal counsel on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist groups. Immigration officials also confiscated his blood pressure pills and sinus medication.

Only a few hours before his arrest, Shaykh Ghoneim, who had just finished an American speaking tour sponsored by the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), was issued a visitor’s visa at the Canadian consular office in Detroit, Michigan. The efforts of MAYA’s Canadian chapter to get an apology from the Canadian government for its officials’ outrageous behaviour toward Shaykh Ghoneim have so far gone in vain.

Canadian Muslims also suspect that racial hatred and xenophobia have motivated a spat of acts of vandalism against their community institutions last March amid the shrill calls for an American-led military strike against Iraq. In one such incident, three school buses belonging to the Ottawa Islamic school were set on fire. This was not the first or only attack against the school premises or property. Community members had earlier complained of an increasing number of break-ins and acts of vandalism at the school. Seventeen school computers were stolen and the phrase ‘we hate you’ scrawled on a blackboard in one classroom during a break-in last year.

A host of factors contribute to the travails of Muslims in Canada. Some of these are rooted in a growing anti-immigrant trend that sees immigrants as a burden on Canada. Composed mainly of first-generation immigrants, the Canadian Muslim community feels intensely the mean-spirited pressures of this scapegoating trend. The recession-induced backlash against immigrants and refugees has expressed itself in policies such as the slapping of heavy user fees on new arrivals and tightening family reunification procedures.

The continuous stigmatization, demonization and even dehumanization of Muslims in the media provide fertile grounds for the growth in racism, intolerance and harassment confronting the Muslim community in Canada. Local media reinforce existing negative stereotypes about Muslims in a variety of ways. A striking episode of the irresponsible negative portrayals of Muslims in the Canadian media unfolded last November when The Gazette, a Montreal-based daily, published an editorial cartoon showing a snarling dog wearing a kaffiyah, an Arab headdress.

The cartoon’s headline read: ‘In the Name of Islamic Extremism;’ while its subheading read, ‘With Our Apologies to Dogs Everywhere.’ It took a full-fledged protest campaign by the local Muslim community to convince the daily to issue a mild apology several weeks after the publication of the offensive cartoon.

A similar example involves an episode of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s comedy show ‘Air Farce’ aired in April which featured an ‘Arab terrorist’ named Omar working as a taxi driver in Canada.

Needless to say that such negative portrayals and stereotypes contribute immeasurably to the psychological distancing that facilitates bigotry, resentment and heavy-handed treatment toward Muslims. They are reminiscent of the crass and virulent propaganda images employed by warring countries during the second world war, such as the portrayal of Jews as rats and vermin by the Nazis, and that of the Japanese as simian, rodent or primitive creatures by the Allies.

The arbitrary and unfair treatment of Shaykh Ghoneim by immigration and security officials epitomize the pervasiveness of the west’s double standards in its dealings with Muslims. The officials’ anti-Muslim bias here becomes crystal clear when the case is compared to the gentle treatment shown to certain non-Muslims with established connections to terrorist groups.

For instance, last September, Baruch Marzel, an Israeli who had earlier served as a leader of the outlawed Kach movement, was allowed to enter Canada on a fund-raising tour for a new group that shares the same racist values as Kach. Founded by the now-deceased notorious rabbi Meir Kahane, Kach latched on to a peculiarly nefarious and virulent anti-Arab racist ideology that advocated the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and Ghazzah Strip. It was outlawed as a terrorist organization by the Israeli government after one of its members, Baruch Goldstein, massacred 48 Palestinians while praying at al-Khalil Mosque in Hebron on April 25, 1994.

Obviously, in the eyes of Canadian officials maintaining links with such terrorist groups as Kach does not disqualify someone from entering Canada and collecting tax-deductible donations, but giving a few speeches critical of governmental corruption in the Muslim world does.

Muslimedia: June 1-15, 1998