It must be believed that it was with full knowledge of the facts that Justin Trudeau appointed activist Amira Elghawaby as “Canada’s first special representative in charge of the fight against Islamophobia”. Even if he had known what she had written, he would have named it anyway, he argued.
Misinterpreting a survey of Quebecers’ attitudes toward Islam, Amira Elghawaby wrote in 2019 that “the majority of Quebecers seem to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment. It’s hard to know which is worse: that Quebecers oppose the rule of law or that they are anti-Muslim. We can see that the special representative, a pure product of Canadian multiculturalist ideology, took some liberties with the facts. The Prime Minister’s press release describes her as an award-winning journalist and an activist, as if there were no contradiction in terms.
A passage from a column published in The Globe and Mail by University of Toronto philosophy professor Joseph Heath made her want to “throw up,” she said. tweeted spontaneously in 2021. A passage where the academic observed that the largest group of people who were victims of British colonialism in Canada were French Canadians.
Joseph Heath’s thesis is nevertheless interesting. He notes that in English Canada, the American acronym BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) that does not correspond to the Canadian reality of race relations. In the United States, blacks are by far the largest racial minority, either in number or in historical weight. In the enumeration, the Aboriginals, who represent 5% of the Canadian population, should come before the Blacks, who are three times less numerous, and the Francophones before the Aboriginals because of their number. So, instead of the American acronym BIPOC, Professor Heath proposes the acronym FIVM (for Francophone, Indigenous and Visible Minority) to identify the largest minority groups in Canada. He points out that unlike the United States, where social conflict is analyzed through “a racial lens,” Canada has not sought to “racialize” the ethnic differences among its citizens. The idea that an immigrant landing in Canada from Ethiopia really has something in common with a descendant of African slaves who have been on the continent for 300 years is “not just a fiction: it is a pernicious misrepresentation” .
We have to believe that the American influence is strong since, in the Prime Minister’s press release, the job description of this new special representative combines religion — the fight against Islamophobia — with systemic racism and racial discrimination.
Some would like Amira Elghawaby to apologize — this is the case of the parliamentary leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, Marc Tanguay — or withdraw her remarks. But that would only be perfect hypocrisy. The Special Representative of Canada embodies a current of thought very widespread in English Canada, where we are viscerally against the Quebec conception of secularism and the balance sought between different rights which, in a society, can come into conflict.
During the leaders’ debate in English during the last federal election campaign, the question put to the leader of the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, whose premise was that “Quebec has a problem with racism” because the CAQ government has adopting law 21 on secularism and law 96 on language, testified to this consensus in Canada.
We can disagree with aspects of the law on the secularism of the state — this is the position of the To have to, moreover — , but it is not a xenophobic or anti-democratic law. As Justice Robert M. Mainville pointed out in a split decision by the Quebec Court of Appeal on an interlocutory motion to suspend Bill 21 (and brought by Amira Elghawaby’s former employer, the National Council of Canadian Muslims) , “the conception of religious symbolism and its place in the public space are not perceived in the same way by each society, the Act respecting the secularism of the State is a striking example of this in Canada”. And again: “We can see that the question of gender equality with regard to the Islamic headscarf does not lend itself to simple or obvious answers. »
Justin Trudeau said the new representative will remain in office. That is. But since she spits (or vomits) on Quebec society, which she clearly ignores, let her stay at home. The phenomenon of Islamophobia in English Canada should keep him busy.