Thank you for that question.
I think if people believe there is a civilizational war between Islam and—quote, unquote—“the west”, having problematized those categories, I think it's not enough when people believe that to say that's not happening. That is something that needs to be demonstrated. One of the ways, of course, is to have integrated schools where people are interacting. We know that in contexts where people are interacting with people of different groups, they are less likely to maintain prejudices, biases, and stereotypes against those groups. Also it's recognizing that things like Islamophobia, racism, and sexism end up tearing our communities apart. They really do weaken our democratic institutions. For example, if one in two Canadians has a bias against Muslims and Islam, then I wonder what happens to the process of standing trial before a jury of your peers. What does that do to that process?
This is a systemic issue that expresses itself in all these different contexts. I don't think we need one counter-narrative for it; I think we need many counter-narratives for it. Again, I would resist the idea that one narrative or one voice speaks for all. If one voice dominates, we all lose. If one of us wins, we all lose.
One of the things that I was trying to do in my statement today was to offer a different narrative of being Muslim in Canada, a narrative that I think we don't hear all the time but is important to listen to alongside other narratives of being Muslim in Canada, because there isn't only one experience of that.