Carleton takes pride in the multiculturalism within its student body. However, acts like the defacement of the Palestine mural in the tunnels reveal the intolerance underlying our campus community and greater society.
Many of us dream of a harmonious society where we accept one another and our differences. While there’s no doubt we have made progress, there is still work to be done. We don’t all need to share the same political and religious views, but our differences should be respected. Defacing a mural that symbolizes home and identity for many students on campus is disheartening and creates an unsafe environment.
Associating the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem, with ISIS is racist and Islamophobic. To see this on our campus, and on a mural painted by the Palestinian Students’ Association, instills anger and fear in many. This is not only true for Palestinian students, but also Muslim students, as the Dome of the Rock was the first direction of prayer in Islam and is considered a symbol of the religion.
This act is a display of cowardice and ignorance, not to mention sexism. Part of the mural said, “Jerusalem is ours.” The defacement included adding to it, “ . . . And your sister is ours.” To make a claim of ownership based on the sexual domination of a female is nauseating. Suggesting that women are objects of ownership is contrary to the values of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and humanity in general.
Mark Hargreaves, Campus Safety’s community liaison officer, was quoted in The Charlatan referring to the vandalism as graffitti. This is a euphemistic substitution to something that was hate-motivated.
We should not confuse graffiti, an art, with vandalism which targets the identity of many students on our campus. I am confident that Campus Safety will take this act seriously, but it’s important that it does not get dismissed as another act of mischief.
This vandalism is part of a wider pattern of Islamophobic attacks across Ottawa. Islamophobia is the fear, hatred, and marginalization of Islam and Muslims, or people perceived to be Muslim. Islamophobia uses the same logic as other forms of racism: it creates a world where people are deserving and undeserving, civil and barbaric, citizen and outsider, and so on.
Islamophobia is often experienced at the intersection with other systems of oppression, meaning that Muslim students who are also women, Black, disabled, or queer experience multiple layers of discrimination. In an institution of higher education, the defacement is a frightening reminder that there are people who hold onto such ideas.
The vandalism should be recognized as hate-motivated, and we should all take steps to make our campus safer for all students.
