Last month, Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s special representative for combating Islamophobia, came under pressure from the Quebec government to resign after suggesting universities hire more Muslim professors, Arabs and Palestinians. According to the Quebec Minister of Higher Education, Pascal Déry, the recommendation of Mr.me Elghawaby showed a blatant lack of respect for Quebec’s secular values.
It is up to politicians to say whether Mme Whether or not Elghawaby resigns following these comments. At B’nai Brith Canada, we believe that the special representative is not fit to assume her role since she took office in January 2023.
Our concerns were recently confirmed by comments made by Mr.me Elghawaby during a round table organized by the Montreal Women’s Council, where we had two panelists.
Mme Elghawaby and I were supposed to focus on ways to combat “racism and hate speech” in Canada. Instead, the special representative used the event to shield those expressing Islamist extremist views, excusing or outright denying any form of anti-Semitism in anti-Israel protests on Canadian campuses.
However, in Toronto, B’nai Brith Canada and other organizations documented multiple anti-Semitic incidents associated with such an encampment last spring, including one involving a man who allegedly made Nazi signs to Jewish passers-by. Despite this, Mme Elghawaby said — incorrectly — that the Ontario Superior Court judge who granted the injunction stopping the encampment found “no evidence” of anti-Semitism. In fact, the judge wrote that there was not enough evidence to conclude beyond a doubt that the named defendants in this case had engaged in anti-Semitism.
This nuanced distinction is important. Its ruling does not mean that the encampment was deemed devoid of anti-Semitism. Rather, it means that, in a case complicated by the fact that many encampment participants wore masks to hide their identities, it was not possible to gather enough evidence to rule in court that the named defendants had indulged in anti-Semitism.
Ironically, Mme Elghawaby also emphasized the idea that Muslims, Arabs and pro-Palestinians have not been able to express their concerns about the war in Gaza. In camps across the country, however, students have loudly expressed their opinions on the conflict. Across Canada, thousands of anti-Israeli protesters have regularly occupied city streets with virtually no restrictions, even when they would have been appropriate. In Montreal, for example, protesters gathered every weekend in front of the Israeli consulate, shouting chants and diatribes over loudspeakers into the night without regard for neighboring residents.
Our disappointment with him is not new. In public remarks (since deleted) made last November, Mr.me Elghawaby had condemned what she called an “outbreak of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and Islamophobic sentiments since October 7” without mentioning Hamas or atrocities against Israeli civilians or anti-Semitism.
It should be possible for a person in M’s positionme Elghawaby to simultaneously denounce Islamophobia while condemning the regular and vocal support of demonstrators for terrorist entities such as Hamas, Hezbollah or Ansar Allah (the Houthis). It should be logical and natural for her to speak out against anti-Muslim bigotry while strongly rejecting anti-Semitism and those who continue to use Islamic doctrine as a weapon to fuel their dogmatic political views.
Unfortunately, what I noticed during last month’s panel was that Mme Elghawaby still seems unwilling to use her position to help draw lines of reason in such delicate public discourse. This not only illustrates the fact that her role is useless, but it also confirms that she is not fit to carry out the position she occupies and that she must resign.