The Prime Minister of Canada appointed Amira Elghawaby a few weeks ago as Canada’s first Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia. According to the Prime Minister, the Government of Canada stands with and supports Muslim communities across Canada and reaffirms its commitment to take action to denounce and tackle Islamophobia, hate-fueled violence, and systemic discrimination whenever and wherever it occurs.
The words of the Prime Minister sound good, especially the last part when he says, “and systemic discrimination whenever and wherever it occurs.” However, we need to go back to the definition of phobia; we need to identify the real problems that Muslims face in Canada, the Canadian Government’s agendas, laws, and the court system regarding not only Muslims but Canadian citizens in general, in order to understand the bitter reality.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, -phobia (in nouns) means a strong unreasonable fear of or feeling of hate for a particular thing, for example, xenophobia means strong dislike or fear of people from other countries. So, Islamophobia refers to an unreasonable fear that people have of Muslims. For example, when a person who is walking down the street, who is identified as a Muslim, because of clothes they wear, beard or worshipping rituals, and people show fear of him or her, that is Islamophobia. It is an unreasonable fear. In other words, it is not an organized war against Muslims, but unreasonable fear expressed publicly, such as “Go back to you country, you Mozlem!”
When the Prime Minister of Canada speaks of Islamophobia, and he even takes measures to tackle this problem, he is implying that there is no organized war against Muslims in Canada. It is just some idiots on the streets who could sometimes unreasonably express their hate.
The truth of the matter is that Muslims are not threatened by people on the street and their hate. On the contrary, people are reasonable and naturally good. They don’t hate others because of their outfit or skin color or because of the way they worship God. Historically speaking, the antagonism towards religion is always organized and supported by the political establishment because only they understand the power of ideas.
I would say that the Prime Minister of Canada is at best dishonest and propagandist. Muslims in Canada are threatened not by people on the street. Muslims – as Canadian citizens – in Canada are threatened by the Canadian anti family and anti human rights laws; they are threatened by the control of the Government on population; they are threatened by the Canadian judges who push ahead political and anti human rights agendas. Ruining families, controlling people, controlling finances of people, limiting their opportunities to work and live freely, turning the population into agents and spies, that is the true Islamophobia, if you wish, which is organized by the government, not people.
Sabri Lushi
