It is this Sunday evening that we will mark the sixth anniversary of the attack perpetrated against the great mosque of Quebec, in the presence of the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, but in the absence of François Legault.
On January 29, 2017 — it was a freezing Sunday evening — an uneventful young man entered the mosque at prayer time and opened fire. The carnage left six people dead and twenty injured.
That evening, Ibrahima Barry, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Khaled Belkacemi, Abdelkrim Hassane, Azzedine Soufiane and Aboubaker Thabti fell under the bullets of the shooter. They left behind their wives and 17 orphans.
The commemoration will take place, for the very first time this year, in the prayer room of the Grand Mosque, between 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will speak there.
This return to the prayer room to honor the memory of the victims is “very significant”, according to the organizing committee, which, at a press conference last Thursday, spoke of a place “charged with emotions and meaning”.
Law 21
Deputy Premier Geneviève Guilbault and Minister responsible for the Capitale-Nationale region, Jonatan Julien, will represent the Government of Quebec.
Prime Minister François Legault will not participate in the ceremony, since he has “family obligations”, indicated to The Canadian Press his press officer, Ewan Sauves.
“We are disappointed that he must miss the first commemoration which is held inside the mosque, reacted one of the organizers, Nora Loreto. We understand the importance of family obligations, of course, but it’s still a shame. »
Mr. Legault usually goes on site to deliver a speech; however, in 2021, in the midst of a pandemic, “when nothing was normal”, he had sent a video, recalled Ms.me Loretto.
Last Thursday, the organizing committee had once again strongly denounced the Legault government’s law 21, which was adopted in 2019, because it would have uninhibited Islamophobia.
“This law has upset everything we do as work for living together,” lamented in particular the president of the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec, Mohamed Labidi.
“Our brothers and sisters all feel targeted by this law,” he added.
Law 21 prohibits state employees in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols. Friday, on the sidelines of the caucus of his deputies in Laval, Mr. Legault again defended it.
He said it was “wrong” to claim the law had made Islamophobia easier.
“It’s a law that is reasonable,” said Mr. Legault at a press conference. It’s a compromise. There are political parties that proposed to go much further than that. »
“I think it meets the will of a majority of Quebecers, […] and for me it is wrong to say that it has an impact on people who choose not to like Muslims,” he added.