A Ryerson University student running in student union elections was a victim of Islamaphobia when his campaign posters were defaced with hateful messages.
Obaid Ullah, a vice-president (operations) candidate from the Transform RU slate, found a poster Jan. 29 which said, “ISIS 4 life.”
“I didn’t really care when I saw the poster. I thought it was just someone trying to be funny and I didn’t think about the message behind it,” he said.
On Jan. 31, Ullah called security at Ryerson after he came across another one of his posters that said, “Fuck Muslims.”
“When I saw the second poster it was really upsetting because I recognized the same handwriting and I knew it was the same person who had done it,” he said. “It could have been someone making an attack towards Muslims or it could have been personal. It’s sad and unfortunate in these times that people have such narrow views of the world.”
Karim H. Karim, director of the Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam, expressed his alarm at the defacing of Ullah’s posters.
“There seems to be a general negative impression against Muslims,” he said. “This is creating a very negative atmosphere that’s distorting human relationships.”
Karim said he believes Islamaphobia and other forms of prejudice can begin in schools as children are not thoroughly taught about different cultures and religions.
“It doesn’t help that political leaders are talking about terrorism and extremism and attaching the word Islam to them. People are automatically being associated with the actions that are happening abroad. Even people who aren’t Muslim are being affected by this kind of ignorance,” Karim said.
Smita Bharadia, the equity advisor at Carleton University, said there would be zero tolerance for Islamaphobia or other forms of prejudice if this were to happen at Carleton.
“It’s always difficult to know why someone would act this way, but our policies are clear that we do not put up with any form of discrimination. We’ve worked closely with the Muslim Students’ Association and we encourage students to speak out and raise awareness when something like this happens,” Bharadia said.
Ullah said he’s not angry at the person who defaced his posters.
“I’d honestly forgive the person. They might have had a bad experience with one Muslim person in the past, but that isn’t representative of all Muslims. I would just tell them that I hope they learn and that society learns,” he said.
Ullah said the messages did not ultimately impact his campaign and ended up having a positive outcome.
“As soon as people heard about what happened I received a lot of messages of support. People were making comments on how this shouldn’t happen and it showed me how united the students at Ryerson are, even during elections,” he said.
