Irresponsible? Catastrophist? Incendiary? We are hesitant about the right adjective to use to describe the report on Islamophobia that the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights (CSPDP) has just tabled.
The attacks at the mosques in Quebec and London deeply upset Canadians. All hate crimes mentioned in the report are unacceptable, and governments have a responsibility to combat them and must do everything possible to promote peaceful coexistence and the security of their citizens. But unduly amplifying the threat by portraying a climate of terror for Canadian Muslims can only do more harm. Statistics Canada figures also refute this alarmist thesis. Why keep silent, for example, that the black and Jewish populations are, by far, more victims of hate crimes?
This report, while it does suggest a few rare reasonable measures, prefers to paint a hideous and indistinct picture of the situation of Canadian Muslims. They would feel attacked, women and girls would be “afraid to leave their homes to go to work and school”, some would even experience Islamophobia every day.
Definition, secularism and ideology
This is because the proposed definition of Islamophobia is very broad in order to encompass as many cases as possible. For example, not giving Muslims premises and time for prayers in the workplace is considered Islamophobia, in the sense of anti-Muslim racism (p. 66). The intersectional approach, like the notions of systemic Islamophobia and unconscious microaggressions, also makes it possible to amplify the phenomenon.
The report also maintains a highly caricatured understanding of the Law on State Secularism. The witnesses interviewed, who confuse respect for people with absolute respect for the precepts of Islam, “all agree that Law 21 is discriminatory, that it has exacerbated Islamophobia and that it should be repealed » (p. 65). She is even accused of “dehumanizing people”. As we can see, the CSPDP did not hear as a witness a single one of the many Muslims who support Law 21.
The report also avoids thinking about the reality of violent Islamism and the legitimate fear it raises, including among Muslims. Only Rachad Antonius, among the 138 witnesses heard during the 21 public sessions, dares to address it expressly, but the report will pass it over in silence. According to the other witnesses, there would only be prejudices and stereotypes to combat with major media campaigns and compulsory training against unconscious bias for all civil servants and students.
The report only retains what supports a conclusion drawn in advance. Any statistical discrepancy, such as the under-representation of Muslims among civil servants or their over-representation in prisons, is understood as “proof” of systemic Islamophobia, without any search for a more plausible explanation. The report also confuses ideology and science by claiming, without justification, that “the greatest threat to national security comes from white supremacist groups” (p. 50). We will therefore silence a document on Canada’s anti-terrorism strategy which nevertheless specified that “violent Islamic extremism is the main threat to Canada’s national security”.
An offensive against the institutions responsible for security
It is certainly the authorities responsible for national security who haunt this report. Five of the 13 recommendations are devoted to this, but go in the opposite direction to that expected from a credible Senate committee. This is because the latter seems especially to follow the recommendations of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (CNMC), against which we were already warning here.
The CNMC calls for nothing less than the interruption of the national strategy to combat violent extremism and radicalization, and the suspension of the Division of Review and Analysis (DRA) of the Agency for Revenue Canada (CRA), which is responsible for identifying terrorist financing threats in Canada that are carried out through charitable organizations. He proposes instead that national security agencies, including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and Canada’s border services, be scrutinized, which he suspects of racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic practices and even of suffering the “penetration of white supremacy “.
The CSPDP endorses all of this and asserts that “national security laws, policies, and practices are deeply rooted in Islamophobia and continue to perpetuate bias against Muslims” (p. 51). The proof ? Seventy-five percent of the revocations of charities posing the greatest terrorist financing risk in Canada targeted Muslim organizations, even though they represent less than 1% of all charities (p. 57). Despite the testimony of Sharmila Khare (director general of the CRA Charities Directorate), that “DRA audits are only undertaken when there is a risk of terrorist abuse”, the report concludes nonetheless that the DRA “demonstrates a structural bias against Muslim charities” (p. 58).
The simple fact that the Ministry of Finance’s evaluation model is risk-oriented would even be, according to law professor Anver Emon, “an explicit declaration of Islamophobia”. Better, for a Canadian traveling to Gaza and fighting for Hamas to become suspect for the government would be, he adds, an “example of systemic Islamophobia”! Should we really note that the CSPDP thus loses all credibility by “forgetting” that Hamas is on Canada’s list of terrorist entities? That by conflating Islam and violent Islamism under the umbrella of Islamophobia, it undermines the sense of security of its citizens?
How can we explain such irresponsible intoxication? Part of the explanation may lie in the fact that the chair of this Senate committee, Salma Ataullahjan, is still an advisor to the NCMC. Finally, let us recall that this organization is one of the plaintiffs who are before the courts to invalidate Law 21.