Trigger Warning: this article mentions race-based violence and hate.
For Huda Khan, her hijab represents an act of worship. But when she started wearing it in September of 2022, it also put a target on her back. The first-year Carleton University biomedical and mechanical engineering student had never received any religious-based discrimination until she put it on.
A frequent flyer, Khan started getting singled out by airport security in Canadian airports.
“Actually, I started getting pulled over right after I started wearing the hijab. Before, that never happened. I never got pulled over, never checked my bags, but since I started [wearing] the hijab and I was flying, they would check my bags,” Khan said.
A mere expression of her religious identity subjected her to harassment.
Khan is not alone in this. According to a report released by Statistics Canada, hate crimes against the Muslim community increased by 71 per cent in 2021. According to research conducted in 2016 by the Environics Institute, approximately one third of the Muslim population in Canada experienced discriminatory treatment during the previous five years. In March, a Toronto mosque was vandalized with hateful messaging.
A history of hate
When a Quebec City Mosque was attacked on Jan. 29 of 2017, Carleton University student Abdellatif El Badri felt as if the voices of his Muslim community went unheard. The 19-year-old has been living in Canada for 11 years, but when this attack took place across the border, he felt targeted and helpless.
“There isn’t much we can do, they [government officials] will never hear our voices,” El Badri said.
The Quebec City Mosque attack took place when a shooter opened fire in a mosque during Isha (evening prayers) leaving six worshippers dead and nineteen others wounded.
Amran Mohamed, a first-year Carleton University student, also remembers the attack. As a woman and a hijabi, Mohamed said her experience during the attack had several layers of disturbance. She was in Grade 8 when the attack happened. She said she remembers a meme circulating on the internet promoting a “Punish a Muslim Day,” after the attack.
“Word got around,” she said. “Obviously, a lot of hijabis and Muslims did not feel safe after that.”
For the Muslim community at Carleton University, the mosque attack impacted individuals in ways that threatened their livelihoods. For many, the mosque attacks challenged their safety.
Karim Haiderali Karim is a former director of the Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam and the Institute of Ismaili Studies in the United Kingdom, and current professor at Carleton’s School of Journalism and Communication. He said the targeted killing of fellow Muslims in a mosque was a horrendous event that deeply affected many Muslims.
“There was enormous fear that your Muslim neighbour was out to kill you,” he said, recalling the 2017 mosque attack. “I may be exaggerating but… there were cases in which innocent people were targeted and jailed.”
He said the discrimination and tension experienced by Muslims have not followed a linear pattern, but rather fluctuate in response to global events. For example, the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001.
For many Muslims in Ottawa, the reality of Islamophobia is intersectional. The Muslim community is all too familiar with the alienation that comes with being a Muslim in the western world, from dirty looks and microaggressions on the street to more obvious acts of discrimination.
For Khan, who only started wearing the hijab recently, suddenly being singled out for her religion was jarring.
“Now, when I’m visibly Muslim, [I have] very different experiences,” Khan said. “[People] always assume things … the way they talk to you is a lot more rude compared to before.”
Some Muslim men report they have not experienced any forms of discrimination in Ottawa or on Carleton’s campus. If they do, it’s in the form of dirty looks or things said with racist undertones. Many attribute a difference in discrimination to the fact that many Muslim women choose to wear a hijab.
According to Karim, increased discrimination against Muslim women is often associated with harmful stereotypes about the Muslim community. Stereotypes include the false suggestions that all people who wear a hijab are not intelligent, are subservient or are forced to wear it by men.
Discrimination against hijabi women can also be attributed to pre-existing gender discrimination.
“People will feel bold enough to speak out against women as opposed to men,” Karim added. “The tendency will be to bully women, to speak in a very abusive way and to treat them abusively.”
The hijabi exerience is unique to the Muslim community. While many Muslims have not been discriminated against, the ones who behave in ways that express their religious beliefs are familiar with the feeling of being targeted for their religious views.
Anti-Muslim hate across Canada seeps between provincial borders. The 2017 Mosque attack had an impact on communities outside of Quebec. For Muslims at Carleton, this means rates of Islamophobia in other provinces carries weight in Ottawa.
In Quebec, hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise. Statistics Canada reports the number of hate crimes registered in Quebec has increased by 50 per cent from 327 to 489 between 2016 and 2017. Following the 2017 attack in Quebec City, reports of hate crimes against Muslims peaked, making up a quarter of all occurrences against Muslims reported in Quebec that year.
Quebec passed Bill 21, An Act Respecting the Laicity of the State, in 2019. The bill placed a ban on public employees or people in places of authority from wearing religious symbols. This bill has been a topic of dispute amongst academic circles, with some arguing that it is a necessary step to preserve secularism, while others believe that it is a clear manifestation of Islamophobia.
The bill states public employees “are prohibited from wearing religious symbols in the exercise of their functions.”
Karim said the passing of Bill 21 was primarily motivated by a fear of cultural threats.
“The hysteria that was whipped up by successive governments against newcomers, including Muslims but not only Muslims, so that the so-called “secular law” does not allow for the wearing of the hijab, the Sikh turban or the Jewish kippah as well as large crosses in the public sphere,” Karim said.
Whilst Canada is a land of multiculturalism and immigrants, there is another side of deep-rooted hypocrisy, according to Karim.
“[The Quebec government] wants people to come from other countries because they have a low birth rate but they want to ensure they maintain the hegemony of the pure laine,” Karim said.
Karim also believes that there is another reason for the bill, which is to break away from the control of the Catholic Church.
“In previous decades until the mid-20th century, the Catholic Church dominated the life of the majority of Quebecers. This was strongly resented by people who wanted to be progressive; who wanted to break away from the control of the church. So, they promoted secularism,” Karim said.
However, this push for secularism has been criticized for being discriminatory towards religious minorities.
Jan. 29 is Canada’s National Day of Remembrance of the Québec City Mosque Attack and Action against Islamophobia. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Amira Elghawaby as the country’s first special representative on combating Islamophobia in Canada in January. On a global scale, the United Nations established the International Day To Combat Islamophobia for the first time on March 15, 2021.
Elghawaby’s appointment was met with mixed reactions from the Muslim community at Carleton.
“I don’t think it’s enough,” Ramla Ahmed, a first-year neuroscience student at Carleton, said. “I think it’s the first step. Which is a positive thing because I feel like it shows that Trudeau cares about it a little bit.”
Elghawaby’s appointment was met by resistance. Many social media users took to their platforms to spread hate about Islam and Elghawaby. Several people accused her of “painting all Quebecers as racist.” While Trudeau maintained his support for Elghawaby, some say it wasn’t enough.
Nada Abouziab, a first-year double major in communications and business law, said she was concerned Elghawaby’s appointment might be nothing more than a symbolic gesture.
“You’re appointing someone that’s Muslim just to show the population like, ‘We have a Muslim representative,’” Abouziab said. “What is that really going to do?”
Featured graphic by Sara Mizannojehdehi.
