To talk about the saga of Amira Elghawaby, sugar breaker on the back of the Frogs, let’s turn back the clock, let’s go back in time, if you don’t mind.
There has always been a double standard in this country, a right-thinking where it was taken for granted that the shortcomings of Quebec are always worse than elsewhere in Canada.
The world champion in all categories, in this case, was Mordecai Richler. The author of Barney’s World, earthy Montrealer, was a genius of Anglo-Saxon literature. Richler was also a racist who hated Francophones and who tarnished Quebec’s nationalist aspirations by equating the PQ with the Nazis, for example.
Richler was not the only Anglo to draw a little mustache for René Lévesque, but coming from him, it hurt more: he was celebrated from New York to London via Canberra. Think Amir Attaran, but with real talent in anything1.
Let me quote an extract from a portrait of Richler published in the Globe and Mail a year after his death2. Ray Conlogue gave the floor to professor of Quebec literature, Ben Shek, who had raised several reservations in the concert of praise which had greeted the death of Richler:
“Shek, who has spent most of his academic career in Quebec, does not deny anti-Semitism in Quebec, but he wonders why Richler insisted that it was worse in Quebec. “We who grew up in Toronto remember the rules that prevented Jews from buying or renting property there.” He also notes this double standard, according to which Richler always trivialized the intolerance of Anglophones, “whom he never describes as racist, a term reserved for Quebecers.” »
I think this passage from 2002 shines a bright light on the Elghawaby saga in 2023, a lady particularly obsessed with Quebec when it comes to the fight against racism. You don’t have to have a doctorate in archival science, it seems, to come up with statements that ooze generalization about Quebec.
In the last few days, we learned that Mr.me Elghawaby considers that:
– Quebecers are mostly anti-Muslim (based on a single poll that she misinterprets)
– Raising the fact that historically, French Canadians were ostracized by the English in this country makes her “vomit” (tweet conveniently since deleted)
– Quebecers are afraid to see the purity of their “race” diluted (she said in reaction to the reflections of the thinker John Ralston Saul on the Westerners of… XIXe century.)
In short, the word “obsession” comes to mind.
Mme Elghawaby surely has other qualities, perhaps she is the best soup kitchen volunteer in her neighborhood. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. The State has just entrusted him with the mandate to speak of intolerance…
And she seems quite intolerant of Quebecers herself.
Is there Islamophobia in Quebec?
Of course, like everywhere in the West.
Are there Islamophobes in Quebec?
Of course, like everywhere in Canada.
Should we denounce this form of intolerance?
Yes. And I’ve been doing it for years in this column3.
But making Islamophobia a specifically Quebec problem is an obsession, beyond what ONE poll can say, always coming back to Quebec to decry problems that exist across the country, in other forms. , is to imitate Mordecai Richler…
Formerly, it was the nationalist aspirations of Quebec that deserved us to be assimilated to the Nazis, as Richler did.
Today, the flirtation with sovereignty being over, it is the Quebec vision of secularism that poses a problem, which earns us comparisons with segregationist Alabama which lynched African-Americans.4 or with a paradise of white supremacy5 and which earn us injunctions to “educate ourselves”.
I don’t know if M.me Alghawaby smokes cigars and drinks scotch like Richler, but she shares her old white-man-from-another-time view of Quebecer “racism”: still worse than in the ROC.
I am against law 21, I have written it several times. I find that it is not a huge problem, the religious signs6. I am in this outside the consensus in my society. I assume. Of course, Islamophobes supported this law. But not ONLY Islamophobes, and that’s what activists like Mme Elghawaby refuse — or are unable — to see.
Is Guy Rocher, one of our great humanists, an Islamophobe? No. Memo for Mme Elghawaby: Guy Rocher is not the creator of Ferrero Rocher chocolates, look it up.
There is a rejection of religion in Quebec (anchored in recent history) which seems totally incomprehensible in the ROC… It is not for nothing that the constitutional amendment which deconfessionalized the school boards was piloted by Pauline Marois. And it is not for nothing that there is still, in the ROC, this laughable anachronism: denominational school boards.
But this difference of view on the religious, it is not admitted, in the circles of Mrs.me Elghawaby. This difference has irritated anti-Law 21 activists since its gestation, with the excesses of language that are the lot of activists.
In this, M.me Elghawaby reminds me a bit of…
Michel Brule.
Yes, the late publisher.
Michel Brûlé was an ultranationalist and a primary anti-Anglo, obsessed with English. For example, the equivalent of the pronoun “I” in English, “I”, is written with a capital letter and it was for him the sign that the English believe themselves to be superior… Delirium, excess.
Has anyone thought of appointing Michel Brûlé Federal Commissioner of Official Languages? I’m asking the question in jest, as we say in Toronto. But the fact remains that for the activist Elghwaby, who multiplies anti-Quebec declarations, we did not ask ourselves the question…
Weird !
Justin Trudeau therefore gives his full support to Ms.me Elghawaby, which gives me two flashes.
One, this storm was hyper-predictable: in Mr. Trudeau’s team, is there anyone who understands Quebec? And I mean by “Quebec” all the territory that extends beyond the McGill ghetto.
Two, Mme Elghawaby should google this phrase: “Preaching in the desert.” »
For Quebec, she will need it.
And as for the polls, which she erects in the word of the Gospel, here is one, from 2019, which shows that Bill 21 is popular, outside Quebec7.
(1) https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2021-03-20/mordecai-attaran.php
(2) https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/oh-canada-oh-quebec-oh-richler/article1336135/
(3) https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/chroniques/2021-06-11/la-haine-est-un-orage.php
(4) https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1777855/amir-attaran-racisme-quebec-universite-ottawa-twitter-controverse
(5) https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/593817/la-nomination-de-bochra-manai-fait-encore-des-vagues
(6) https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/chroniques/2021-09-11/accuse-blanchet-levez-vous.php
(7) https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/national/2019-04-29/laicite-plusieurs-canadiens-support-le-projet-de-loi-du-quebec-dit-un-sondage