The House of Commons has recently been hearing testimony on M-103, MP Iqra Khalid’s private member’s motion, which is aimed at combatting Islamophobia and other unnamed forms of religious discrimination. Disturbingly, some who have endorsed M-103 publicly have asserted that anti-Semitism in Canada is limited to the edges of society, in supposed contrast to Islamaphobia.
As the chief executive officer of B’nai Brith Canada, this country’s oldest national Jewish organization and a staunch defender of human rights, I feel obligated to set the record straight.
Of course, every Canadian Jew, along with every decent Canadian, recoils from the gruesome anti-Muslim crimes that we have seen in recent years, including the deadly January 2017 attack on a mosque in Quebec City. Still, many members of our community remain wary of M-103 and its possible implications — and justifiably so.
In 2015, Statistics Canada reported that, in a trend that goes back at least nine years, Jews were the most targeted religious group for hate crimes. This, despite the fact that, in 2011, there were more than three times as many Muslims as Jews residing in Canada.
These findings are consistent with our own Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, which concluded that 2016 was the worst year for anti-Semitism in Canada since the inception of the audit in 1982. Worse yet, the 2016 numbers were not an anomaly, but rather the continuation of an elevated trend in anti-Semitism dating back to 2012.
In previous decades, anti-Semitism in Canada stemmed largely from a toxic mix of white supremacy and the aristocratic pretensions of Canada’s old moneyed classes.
The elephant in the room is that, in 2017, many anti-Jewish incidents have been the handiwork of Canadian Muslims, sometimes even claiming to act or speak in the name of Islam. In the past 12 months, no fewer than four Canadian mosques — two in Montreal, and one each in Toronto and Vancouver — have been exposed as sites of vile anti-Jewish hatred, including for making claims that Jews are “filthy,” “people of treachery and betrayal,” and even “the worst of mankind.”
Just a few weeks ago, Quebec prosecutors decided not to lay charges against a Montreal imam, Sayed al-Ghitawi, who called on God to “destroy the accursed Jews,” to “kill them one by one” and “not to leave any one of them alive.” Imagine the outrage if a priest or pastor were caught on video making similar comments about Muslims at a Canadian church.
Unfortunately, M-103 risks exacerbating the already lackadaisical public attitude toward these anti-Semitic outrages.
Recently, B’nai Brith drew attention to an official guidebook published by Ontario’s largest school board that condemned Islamophobia and defined the term to include “dislike directed... towards Islamic politics or culture.”
While the Toronto District School Board quickly realized its error and pledged to replace this absurdly broad definition, it must be noted that the guidebook was prepared with the support of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), a group that has campaigned strongly in favour of M-103. One would assume that the NCCM is an authority on the proper definition of Islamophobia.
To be clear, banning or even discouraging any “dislike” of “Islamic politics” would make it nearly impossible to combat the virulent Jew-hatred that we have seen emanating from some Muslim institutions in Canada.
Canada cannot become a haven for anti-Muslim bigotry. But, by the same token, we cannot allow a misguided reluctance to criticize anything dubbed Islamic to stymie the protection of Canada’s most targeted religious minority — Canadian Jews.