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CIC - January 18, 2007
Canadian Muslims ask for country wide
help to stop racism
Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) and Canadian Muslim Forum (CMF) call on schools, media, governments and academia to do their share specially in Quebec. The Canadian Islamic Congress and the Canadian Muslim Forum are voicing dismay at the results of recent surveys suggesting Canadians are becoming more racist.
A Sun Media poll has found that out of all visible minorities in our multicultural society, Arabs / Muslims are held in the lowest esteem. And a Léger Marketing survey released Monday (Jan. 15) in Quebec suggests that 50% in that province have a poor opinion of Arabs / Muslims. The same survey indicated that 59% of Quebecers -- almost two-thirds -- are racist to some degree. The survey findings are doubly discouraging, coming not long after the release of a 2006 Canadian Labour Congress report that found unemployment rates across the country are highest among the Arab and West Asian population, at 14%.
Today's CIC - CMF statement warned that "findings like this are inevitable when public education and genuine intercultural dialogue are replaced by media stereotyping, law enforcement racism, and political prejudice ... Canadians have had their viewpoints distorted rather than nurtured by these forces and the result is told in the marginalization of an entire group.
Sadly, we are not surprised." In the wake of the ongoing Maher Arar case and the "Guantanamo North" incarceration of three Arab-Muslim men for more than five years, the CIC and CMF are concerned that Islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim stereotyping and hate crimes are on the rise, both in words and actions. The two organizations are urging influential speakers such as media commentators, politicians and clergy to refrain from inflammatory, suggestive, or racist language when describing Muslims and/or Arabs.
Similarly, the organizations are also calling for government intervention in so-called "security"-motivated firings and layoffs of workers born in Arab or Muslim countries, such as happened recently at Bell Helicopter in Montreal. CIC and CMF are continuing to monitor sporadic but disturbing acts of violence against Muslim properties, like the attack Monday night on a Muslim school in Montreal, in which vandals shattered windows and damaged a private bus. It is not the first such rampage to take place in Quebec, or even at the same school. "Instead of denying that anti-Islam racism openly exists in Quebec society, the provincial government should be working with Muslims to solve the problem," CIC and CMF emphasized, adding, "all Canadians need to look beyond the negative profiling they are being fed about the Arab and Muslim citizens in their midst."
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