This morning, the first news I read is about the American government’s plans to ban visas to citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, all predominantly Islamic countries, and many containing high numbers of refugees seeking asylum. When the rallies and protests against this Islamophobia begin, will the same support from Jan 21 turn up?
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Last night in Toronto, I attended a town hall on Roncesvalles hosted by MP Arif Virani, on the topic of racism and intolerance. A six person panel had been organized, including Leila Sarangi, Yasmeen Persad, Todd Ross, Anthony Morgan, Raina Younes, and Shaheen Azmi representing intersectional gender and racial parity, racialized LGBTQ visibility, Ontario Metis, anti-black racism through a legal lens, Muslim refugees, and Muslim Canadians working against Islmophobia, who are currently experiencing the highest rates of hate crime in this country.
The town hall was a series of short educational statements, followed by an hour of questions from the floor. Quite quickly, an outburst from an older white man raging against Islam took over the event. He came with a woman, who earlier stood up to denounce her Muslim upbringing and who couldn’t stop talking or standing. She was carrying documents she needed somebody else to see. She had proof that there were Imams supporting violence against women and children. She also held a copy of a very worn copy of the Quran. The man was filming the whole event with his or her camera phone. He had been sitting and shaking his head throughout most of the presentations. The more he heard the sound of his own voice, the louder his shouting became against Islam. Some of us started to boo him down. A crowd of people, including Virani, ended up having to physically surround him to move him out of the building. We could still hear him shouting outside for a while longer. A few minutes later, a white woman who had sat placidly throughout the evening asked without any irony how she can be a better ally.
