{"id":440262,"date":"2026-01-29T06:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T06:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/440262\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T06:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T06:26:09","slug":"quebec-mosque-attack-anniversary-renews-call-to-end-anti-muslim-hate-islamophobia-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/440262\/","title":{"rendered":"Quebec mosque attack anniversary renews call to end anti-Muslim hate | Islamophobia News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Montreal, Quebec, Canada \u2013 Canadian Muslim leaders are calling for an end to Islamophobic rhetoric and fearmongering, as the country prepares to mark the nine-year anniversary of a deadly attack on a mosque<\/a> in the province of Quebec.<\/p>\n

Stephen Brown, CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), said Thursday\u2019s anniversary is a reminder that Islamophobia in Canada \u201cis not benign\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s something that unfortunately kills people,\u201d Brown told Al Jazeera. \u201c[The anniversary] forces us to remember that there\u2019s real consequences to hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n

Six Muslim men were killed when a gunman opened fire at the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City on January 29, 2017, marking the deadliest attack<\/a> on a house of worship in Canadian history.<\/p>\n

The assault left Quebec City\u2019s tight-knit Muslim community deeply shaken<\/a>, spurred vigils and condemnation across Canada, and shone a spotlight on a global rise in anti-Muslim hate and radicalisation.<\/p>\n

The Canadian government denounced the shooting as a \u201cterrorist attack\u201d against Muslims and pledged to tackle the underlying issues.<\/p>\n

In 2021, it announced it was designating January 29<\/a> as the National Day of Remembrance of the Quebec City Mosque Attack and Action against Islamophobia.<\/p>\n

But Brown said he was not sure whether the lessons learned after what happened in Quebec City were being fully remembered today, nearly a decade later.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight after the Quebec City mosque massacre, there really was a desire in society to try to mend some of the wounds and build some bridges,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, what a lot of people are seeing 1769667968 \u2013 and especially for Muslims that live in Quebec \u2013 \u2026 is a massive return to using Islamophobia and spreading fear of Muslims for political gain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photos[Al Jazeera]Laws and rhetoric<\/p>\n

Brown pointed to a series of measures put forward by Quebec\u2019s right-wing Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government that human rights groups say target Muslim Quebecers.<\/p>\n

In power since 2018, the CAQ passed a law in 2019 to bar some public servants from wearing religious symbols on the job, including headscarves worn by Muslim women, Sikh turbans and Jewish yarmulkes.<\/p>\n

The government justified the law, known as Bill 21<\/a>, as being part of its push to protect secularism in the province, which in the 1960s underwent a so-called \u201cQuiet Revolution\u201d to break the Catholic Church\u2019s influence over state institutions.<\/p>\n

But rights advocates said Bill 21 discriminated against religious minorities and would have a disproportionately harmful effect on Muslim women, in particular.<\/p>\n

As the CAQ\u2019s popularity has plummeted in recent months, it has passed and put forward more legislation to strengthen its so-called \u201cstate secularism\u201d model in advance of a looming provincial election later this year.<\/p>\n

Most recently, in late November, the CAQ introduced a bill<\/a> that would extend the religious symbols prohibition to daycares and private schools, among other places.<\/p>\n

Bill 9 also bars schools from offering meals based exclusively on religious dietary requirements \u2013 such as kosher or halal lunches \u2013 and outlaws \u201ccollective religious practices, notably prayer\u201d in public.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe attack on Quebec City\u2019s largest mosque lasted less than two minutes [File: Jillian Kestler-D\u2019Amours\/Al Jazeera]<\/p>\n

\u201cQuebec has adopted its own model of state secularism,\u201d said<\/a> the provincial minister responsible for secularism, Jean-Francois Roberge.<\/p>\n

Roberge has rejected the idea that the bill was targeting Muslim or Jewish Quebecers, telling reporters<\/a> during a news conference on November 27 that the \u201csame rules apply to everybody\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) \u2013 which is involved in a lawsuit against Bill 21 that will be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada later this year \u2013 said Bill 9 \u201cmasks discrimination as secularism\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese harmful bans disproportionately target and marginalize religious and racialized minorities, especially Muslim women,\u201d Harini Sivalingam, director of the CCLA\u2019s equality programme, said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to Brown at NCCM, the Quebec government\u2019s moves have sent \u201cthe message to society that there\u2019s something inherently dangerous or wrong with being a visible, practising Muslim\u201d.<\/p>\n

He warned that, when people in positions of authority use anti-Muslim rhetoric to try to score political points, \u201cit gives licence to those who already hold a lot of these Islamophobic views or hateful views to actually take it out on people\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hate continues to threaten\u2019<\/p>\n

At the federal level, Amira Elghawaby<\/a>, Canada\u2019s special representative on combating Islamophobia, said the Canadian government has shown a continued commitment to tackling the problem.<\/p>\n

That includes through an Action Plan on Combatting Hate, launched in 2024, which has devoted millions of dollars to community groups, antifascism programmes and other initiatives.<\/p>\n

But Elghawaby told Al Jazeera that Islamophobia has nevertheless been rising in Canada, \u201cwhether it\u2019s through police-reported hate crimes [or] whether it\u2019s Canadians sharing that they\u2019re experiencing discrimination at work [and] at school\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"AThree black stone plinths stand in a memorial to the victims of the attack, outside the Quebec City mosque, in 2022 [File: Jillian Kestler-D\u2019Amours\/Al Jazeera]<\/p>\n

According to Statistics Canada<\/a>, 211 anti-Muslim hate crimes were reported to police in 2023 \u2013 a 102-percent jump compared with the previous year. There was a slight increase in 2024 \u2013 the most recent year for which the data is available \u2013 with 229 incidents reported.<\/p>\n

Elghawaby, whose office was established after another anti-Muslim attack<\/a> killed four members of a single family in London, Ontario, in 2021, said the figures underscore \u201cthat hate continues to threaten Canadians\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada, despite a global reputation of being a country that welcomes people from around the world, does struggle with division, with polarisation, with the rise of extremist narratives,\u201d she said, adding that remembering the Quebec City mosque attack remains critical.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The families of the men killed] don\u2019t want the loss of their loved ones to be in vain. They want Canadians to continue to stand with them, to continue to stand against Islamophobia, and to do their part in their own circles to help promote understanding,\u201d Elghawaby said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory can sadly repeat itself if we don\u2019t learn from the lessons of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Montreal, Quebec, Canada \u2013 Canadian Muslim leaders are calling for an end to Islamophobic rhetoric and fearmongering, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,2169,43,37472,21750,44,714,41,39,42,40,1690],"class_list":["post-440262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-canada","tag-crime","tag-headlines","tag-human-rights","tag-islamophobia","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}