Québec opposition parties don’t want no day against Islamophobia

Almost a year ago, a man with fringe-Right sympathies marched into a Québec City mosque and opened fire, killing six and wounding nineteen more. Now, a Muslim council is calling to for the anniversary to be made into a day against Islamophobia. Considering it commemorates the lethal violence against twenty-five innocent Muslims at the hands of an avowed Muslim-hater, it seems reasonable, and you’d think the proposal would pass easily enough, especially in a self-styled progressive stronghold like Québec.

You’d be wrong, at least if the two local populist political parties have anything to say about it.

Both the Parti Québécois and Coalition Avenir Québec, the province's two main opposition parties, have come out against a proposal made last week by the National Council of Canadian Muslims, taking issue with the idea that the day should be devoted to action against Islamophobia.

CAQ spokesperson Samuel Poulin said that, instead, the anniversary should be "dedicated to commemorating the memory of the victims of this terrible tragedy."

"It is the intolerable act of one person and not that of an entire society. Quebecers are open and welcoming, they are not Islamophobic," he said in a statement.

“[N]ot Islamophobic”. This, about a province that passed a law targeting Muslim women for their clothes, that attacked a Muslim group that had the gall to pray at a zoo, and that generally has a conniption whenever Muslims dare exist in public or request that they not be treated like second-class citizens. Oh, and a local shot up a mosque, in case that counts.

As a born-and-raised Québécois, I can say with first-hand knowledge that this place is Islamophobic as fuck. As evidence, I present to you the comments section beneath any news article in Québec media that mentions Muslims, and how many people there squawk and huff at the idea that Islamophobia may actually be a thing that exists and harms people. Lewis’s Law states that “comments on any article about feminism justify feminism”; similarly, the comments on any article about Islamophobia prove that Islamophobia exists.