Mr. Speaker, my wife and I have two boys, and like many racialized families, we try to teach our sons to be proud of their South Asian heritage.
We encourage them to wear traditional clothing, so on religious festivals like Eid, the kurta pajamas come out. I often thought that the worst outcome for parents like us would be that our kids might grow up ashamed of their heritage.
However, after the attack in London, I realize that the worst fear is that our kids might actually be scared about their heritage. At the vigil this week, after a terrorist filled with Islamophobic rage killed members of a Muslim family simply because of their faith, we heard about young kids who were now asking, “Mom, do I look too Muslim?” No Muslim should be afraid to dress how they choose, to fear that visibly manifesting their religion makes them a target for lethal violence, yet this is the legacy of the London attack.
We need to call out anti-Muslim sentiment by name: Islamophobia. We need to call out politically motivated violence for what it is: terrorism. We need to work to address the root cause of this hatred: radicalization online. That is the work I am committed to, and I urge all my colleagues in the chamber to join me.