Canada Muslims Fear Quebec Backlash

“We must be very careful not to point the finger at mosques and instead see them as allies against this kind of phenomenon, because it is they who can alert police,” Haroun Bouazzi, a spokesperson for Association des Musulmans et Arabes pour la Laïcité du Québec (AMAL-Québec), told Montreal Gazette.

“The main victims, other than the people who died yesterday, are Muslims themselves because more and more, they are seen as an enemy from inside,” Bouazzi added.

Bouazzi was voicing concerns of Canadian Muslims after this week's incident in which Martin Couture-Rouleau, who had reverted to Islam last year and took the name Ahmad Rouleau, rammed his car into two Canadian Forces members.

The 25-year-old Couture-Rouleau, a resident of the town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, near Montreal, was shot and killed after a car chase by Quebec police.

The chase ended when the driver lost control of his car, flipping it into a ditch. Officers shot him dead in a confrontation after he wielded a knife, according to police.

The incident took place in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, around 40 km (25 miles) southeast of Montreal.

Rouleau was on an RCMP watch list and may have been motivated by a violent extremist ideology.

Condemning this week’s incident, Bouazzi raised fears that Muslims are being "scapegoats" because of the negative media coverage of several events.

He also stressed that radicalized Canadian youth are victims of deceptive foreign websites that deviate them form the moderate teaching of the local mosques and Islamic organizations.

"I think it’s important to point out that people who are radicalized are not being radicalized in Muslim institutions like associations and mosques. They are really being radicalized through international networks, mainly on social media,” Bouazzi said.

Proactive community

According to Canadian Muslims, their community has been "proactive" in fighting terrorism in Canada since 9/11 attacks in the US.

“I think the Muslim community has been working consistently since 2001 on this issue, the issue of radicalization, the issue of drawing clear red lines of what is acceptable and what is not,” Sameer Zuberi, a law student at the Université du Québec à Montréal and board member of the Canadian Muslim Forum, said.

A new project named "Communitas" has been recently launched by the Canadian Council of Muslim Women in a bid to promote social interdependence, active citizenship, dialogue and youth leadership through its various activities.

Muslims make up nearly two percent of Canada's some 32.8 million people and Islam has become the number one non-Christian faith in the country.

A poll has showed that the overwhelming majority of Muslims are proud to be Canadian and are more integrated and better educated than the general population.

For several Muslim youth like Zuberi, extremism is not about religion, instead it is highly related to "social deviance".

“I think at the core of it it’s a psychological problem, it’s a social deviancy issue and it should be looked at through that lens," Zuberi stated.

"I think that we’re not ever going to get to the root of the issue unless we actually look at it from that perspective."

Pointing to the high risk of anti-social behavior that may be committed by radicalized person, Zuberi warned that: “they would get into trouble in one form or another — it just so happens that this person for some reason latched onto these sort of ideas.”

Digging into the problem of Radicalization, some faith experts attributed the increasing in the number of extremism cases to the hardline policies of the Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

According to those experts, the biased polices of the new government left Muslims feel "stigmatized".

“We all love Canada, but the government policies are going against us,” Bashir Hussain, co-chair of Jewish-Muslim Dialogue and president of the Quebec chapter of the Council of Muslim Communities of Quebec, said.
/SR