It was June 6. I had just finished my daily Duolingo dose and was allowing myself to mindlessly scroll through social media. Curious to learn of any updates on the news out of Palestine, specifically the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, I decided to switch apps to my Google News page. The headline that appeared at the top of my screen was one I won’t forget:
“Muslim family in Canada killed in ‘premeditated’ truck attack.”
A family of four had been killed in London, Ont.; a young boy was also seriously injured.
I stared at my phone for a long minute. I didn’t know what to say or do or how to react. I desperately wanted to read the article to understand what happened, but I was hesitant. I like to keep up with the news, but this moment brought mixed feelings.
I wanted to read the article to find out what happened to the family, but I was scared to learn the details of such an Islamophobic, barbaric act. I did not want to suffer again from the emotional spikes that I had after previous attacks on Muslims like myself: sadness, helplessness, disgust and fear.
I decided to give the article a quick read, with many questions flooding my mind, the most daunting of which I’ve been asking myself for years.
I asked myself these questions after the Quebec mosque shooting in 2017, the Christchurch mosque shooting in New Zealand in 2019 and I found myself asking them again now: Was this family related to any of my friends that may need consoling? I am a hijabi, what if it was me instead of that family?
Later that evening, the story of the London family resurfaced in my mind, taking over my thoughts. I was hurt by what I read earlier and my heart was shattered again, just as it had shattered when the Quebec and Christchurch shootings took place.
My brain could not comprehend what had happened, yet somehow I felt as if I was supposed to find an explanation for this attack to at least resolve some of the feelings that I had.
I still can’t.
All I can think of are 46-year-old Salman Afzaal, his 74-year-old mother Talat Afzaal, his 44-year-old wife Madiha Salman, and their 15-year-old daughter Yumna Salman. Four family members dead. Three generations gone. One nine-year-old survivor. Many amazing memories and lots of fun times, all gone in the span of a few minutes because a man in a truck decided it was his right to take away those four innocent lives.
Friends message me to see how I am holding up, protests are organized to demand protection of Muslims from Islamophobic acts and vigils are held to make space for grief and love. I remembered the support the Muslim community on campus received after the Christchurch shootings when students distributed kind messages and created posters to hang on the walls of our prayer area.
Those things might seem like small gestures, but they go a long way for Muslims like me. They make us feel a little bit safer. They provide us with opportunities to reconnect and meet new people, and they make us stronger through the knowledge that there are people who stand with us in ending Islamophobia.
I am now slowly recovering from the London incident, but I have a gut feeling that this might not be the last act of hatred against Muslims. Islamophobia is still real and present. If I could hope for only one thing, it would be that Islamophobic hate crimes do not become a regular occurrence in Canada. When people get desensitized to such attacks, they stop sympathizing and standing up for members of the threatened community, and that is a terrifying thought.
For now, I will pray that we never get there, and hope that the rest of Canada is praying with me too.
Featured image by Isabel Harder.
