Muslim groups say governments needs to do more to address Islamophobia

As Muslims prepare to mark the end of the month of Ramadan on the Islamic calendar, many Canadians say federal and provincial governments are not doing enough to address Islamophobia.

According to Canadians United Against Hate (CUAH), there’s been a recent series in hate crimes targeting Muslims and mosques in different communities.

“Since the end of March, when Muslims started observing Ramadan and going to pray at mosques in large numbers every day, there have been at least six incidents of anti-Muslim hate crimes that have been reported to police in Ontario and Quebec, and there are likely more in other communities that haven’t been reported. This is not only a clear sign of virulent Islamophobia in Canada, but it also shows that whatever governments are doing to counter anti-Muslim hate is insufficient,” said CUAH founder Fareed Khan in a statement.

“These incidents have spread fear and heightened the vigilance of Canadian Muslims, particularly when they are going to and returning home from praying at their local mosque during this holiest of months on the Islamic calendar. Unfortunately, this hasn’t prevented Muslims from being targeted by hateful elements in their communities.”

Khan adds, “In one of the incidents that occurred in Kitchener, Ontario on April 12, two Muslim women heading home after early morning prayers were stopped by a man in a car who pointed a gun at them, and then followed them when they drove off. This could have turned tragic, and shows that Canadian Muslims are not safe whether it is in their places of worship or out in public.”

On April 9, the Canadian Muslim Forum shared a video on Twitter showing someone seemingly breaking into the front entrance of the Al Oumma Mosque in downtown Montreal, with worshippers inside, amid Ramadan.

Three worshippers who were inside at the time during morning prayers are said to have tried to subdue the man, but he fled. No one was physically hurt.

“It was 5 in the morning here, we are already praying, because prayers when the Adan called, we pray, so one minute after the beginning, we hear big noise, boom, we didn’t know what was going on,” said Mostafa Maghrawi. “After there is a guy with big stone, he has something in his hand, imagine if he has a weapon to shoot people you know like in Quebec [City] a few years ago.”

The suspect charged in connection to the violent break-in was in court on April 12.

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“Any of these incidents could have ended in tragedy, and these are only the ones we know of. Unfortunately for every reported hate incident, there are many more that aren’t reported to police because those who are verbally or physically assaulted don’t think that justice will be done,” Khan stated.

In a recent report from Statistics Canada, police-reported hate crimes were up by 27 per cent in 2021 overall, hate crimes targeting Muslims were up by 71 per cent during the same period.

“The numbers in the StatsCan report, and the recent spate of attacks against the Muslim community, show a very disturbing trend of increasing numbers of hate crimes across Canada and demonstrate that federal and provincial efforts to fight hate are not effective. All governments need to rethink their approach to tackling hate and put additional resources in place to address it before someone else is killed in one of these hate incidents,” Khan said.

-With files from Farah Mustapha, OMNI News