Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 8th, 2017

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

You mentioned your hotline, and this is something of a concern for us because we've heard from a number of witnesses about the under-reporting of hate crime incidents. They said there is a barrier to building up trust, sometimes, because of people's perceptions about law enforcement and people in authority, etc.

Can you explain to us a little more about the hotline? Do you feel there could be some collaboration and co-operation between government officials, using civil society groups for the aggregation of this kind of data, for accumulating the data, for standardizing the data and how it's collected, etc.?

[Faisal Khan Suri]

For sure.

The hotline itself, as Abe said in his recommendations, was a mechanism to provide support to Muslims if they felt uncomfortable telling their parents, their friends, or their brothers or sisters, or depending on what cultural background they came from. We know there are some people in our society who come from backgrounds where the trust in law enforcement has not been the greatest; they come from corrupt societies and whatnot.

Those kinds of stories come to us on the hotline, and they email us or they call us when they have something to report. They don't want to give their names; they just want to get this off their chest. Sometimes they call just to talk to someone, to understand what they've gone through. We're very proud of the fact that we've given them the support and also of the fact that we work quite closely with law enforcement, in this case, the Edmonton hate crime unit, where certain cases that we know and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Suri, can you wrap up that sentence, please?

Thank you.

[Faisal Khan Suri]

—a lot of the cases go to law enforcement agencies in that sense.

Does that answer your question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to go now to Mr. Reid, for the Conservatives, for seven minutes.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you to all of the witnesses for being here today.

Just before I get to the questions, I want to make a suggestion to each of you. Two of the three groups of witnesses today indicated that they had written presentations. Professor, it's your power point presentation, and for the gentleman from Alberta, you said you'd be submitting something at a later date. We're getting pretty close to our deadline for getting evidence in, so you might want to ask the clerk about getting stuff in as soon as possible, as opposed to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I would like to start with Professor Achab. You made reference to Kathleen Harris having a series of definitions of Islamophobia that she had pulled, I guess, from different organizations. I was trying to find that online after you said it, and couldn't. Do you have a source that you can provide us with for that?

[Prof. Karim Achab]

Yes, certainly. The text is still online. I have the URL address, so I can provide it to you if you wish.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Okay. If you could provide that to the clerk, it would be distributed to all members of the committee. Thank you very much.

Professor, you talked about the term Islamophobia being problematic, I think, for the same reason.... You didn't say this, but I think it's true: it's a version of the Platonic theory of forms. We say there's something out there called “Islamophobia”, the same way that Plato says there's something out there conceptually called “table”, and then we see whether or not it is a table by seeing whether it conforms with that pre-existing perfection. It's a really bad way of trying to find useful concepts you can work with. Is that a reasonable, abstract way of describing what the problem is here?

[Prof. Karim Achab]

The problem here is that there is something wrong in the mental representation of Islam among Canadian citizens. It means it doesn't match what's happening in the real world. That's not the case. The fear is completely justified, and it matches what is happening in the real world. It's legitimate for people to be scared and afraid, but that's not phobia. That's not a form of phobia.

Also, one thing we tend to ignore, or to neglect a bit, is that there is some activism inside all this. In the Quran, Muslims are not only encouraged to be faithful and to have faith, but they are also encouraged to be more active—to be proactive and go to other places and travel and immigrate in order to spread this ideology. There is something to be done here in order to disentangle this ideology. This is being asked of the Muslims, and the source is taken directly from the Quran, which is considered the word of Allah. If Allah is asking them to go to places around the world and spread this ideology, and you as a member of Parliament are asking them to stop, who do you think they will listen to?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

There's nothing wrong with people who are Muslims wanting to go somewhere else and possibly convert others to their faith, any more than it would be for any member of any other faith to do the same thing. You'd agree with me on that, wouldn't you?

[Prof. Karim Achab]

That is true, but there is a continuum that goes from the jihadists on one hand, and on the other hand the activists in the political organizations or even non-government organizations—the politicians and human rights activists and all these words. There is something like a distribution growth. I'm not saying it is explicit, but it is implicit. Everybody's taking care of their own role.

A jihadist is here to kill, and the other one is here to justify—to wrap up in a very nice phrase what the killing is about, in order to find special circumstances. Then, if someone is put in jail when they're done with their job, their task is over and someone steps in. Now we know they're going to take care of this person who was put in jail because he did this crime.

There is this continuous chain, where the distribution of roles is perfect.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I have so little time. I'm sorry but I have to move on to another witness.

Ms. Mohammed, I've read parts of your book that were online. Initially I wasn't sure. In fact, I stopped to ask this question. It read as if it was a fictionalized account of your life, but it's actually the real story of your life. Is that correct?

[Yasmine Mohammed]

That's correct.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Okay. Wow. Thank you.

Motion 103 starts with the assertion that there is an increasing public climate of hate and fear. Forget about the StatsCan stuff, but if we measure it by the fact that the worst case of religious-based murder in this country in 30 years took place earlier this year, there would be a case for that. You're presenting something that is quite different in your comments. I wonder if you could explain that.

I'm aware that now you are not wearing a hijab anymore, so that may change how people perceive or see you. Anyway, could you elaborate on that comment you made earlier about Canadians being welcoming?

[Yasmine Mohammed]

Canadians are incredibly welcoming, sometimes to a fault. I mentioned my being from the Muslim world and the fact that none of this is new to me. In the Muslim world, we have a lot of laws against the niqab, for example. There are a lot of restrictions on the niqab in Egypt, Qatar, Morocco—all over the Muslim world. It would never be an issue over there because everybody understands right away that this is a safety issue. When that same issue is brought up in the western world, in a western country, then the question becomes, “Are we being racist? Are we being Islamophobic?” All of a sudden, everybody is really careful not to offend anybody.

That's what I mean when I say it's to a fault. Safety comes first. We have been very comfortable over here, but over in the Muslim world they're not. They deal with Islamists—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Yasmine Mohammed]

There are Muslims, there are Islamists, and there are jihadis. There is no confusion among those three groups if you speak to anybody from the Muslim world. The confusion happens here, in the western world, where people see all three groups as Muslims.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

That is the problem with the word “Islamophobia” in a nutshell, then.

[Yasmine Mohammed]

Correct. The word “Islamophobia” is dealing with the religion itself; it's not talking about the different kinds of people. Muslims, of course, are just average Muslims. Within Muslims, you're going to have Islamists and jihadis, who are also Muslims. Islamists, as Karim was describing, are people who are more political, like the Muslim Brotherhood, for example. The Muslim Brotherhood is deemed a terrorist organization in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and many other Islamic countries, because it is a terrorist organization, but it is not deemed a terrorist organization in the west, because we don't see it that way. We have to catch up over here.

We can look at how the Muslim world has been dealing with this problem for so many years. We can look at the mistakes they've made and the good things they've done, and learn from what they have been doing and how they have been dealing with this problem, because none of this is new. What's happening is that we are trying to reinvent the wheel, and we are trying to reinvent the wheel from a place of open hearts and open minds. We are so over-concerned about offending people—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

[Yasmine Mohammed]

—that we are losing sight of the fact that safety is more important.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I'm sorry. Thank you very much.

We go to Jenny Kwan, for the New Democrats, for seven minutes.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you to all the witnesses.

My question is for the representatives of the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council, if I may begin there.

In your presentation, you gave us a very stark example of an incident that occurred. From that perspective, I am interested to see how we can address these issues—the issue around reporting and the hotline issue that was touched on—in a more practical way. Others have come to this committee to suggest that perhaps utilizing NGOs on the ground, which are close to the community, might create a comfort zone for people to come forward. I'd like you to expand on that, if you could, in terms of recommendations for action.

Related to that piece, I am also very aware of the situation of women, in particular, and how difficult it is for them to come forward. We had other presentations, from other witnesses, on that score. I wonder if you can expand on that issue.

Lastly, on the question around a national strategy, if you will, to address the issue of racism, discrimination, and religious discrimination, would you see, within that plan, the importance of government-funded strategies for NGOs to work in collaboration with all levels of government to address the issue of discrimination?

[Aurangzeb Qureshi]

I'll start with our hotline, which you alluded to. That served as a major tool for us to see what's really going on, on the ground. We can talk about Islamophobia and we can talk about discrimination, but we don't really know until we actually measure it. This has served us well in terms of how much of it is happening and with what frequency it is happening, as well as what kind of discrimination has been occurring in the province. The two examples I gave you were just mere examples, two trends, but in terms of what we can offer you as a deliverable, we can parse out those 400 calls and provide you with qualitative trends as to what has been happening. Women are being targeted, which is an obvious one that you mentioned, as well as newcomers, but there are other trends as well that we can take from that and provide to you, as a committee, to give you a good sense of what types of discrimination are occurring and how they can be addressed.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Can I just pause there and ask you a question? Of the 400 calls that you've collected from the hotline, how many have been successfully prosecuted?