Juno News - February 23, 2023


Is Canada an Islamophobic country？ ｜ Ft. Raheel Raza and Rahim Mohamed ｜ Pt. 2

Topics
multiculturalism failure
Mentioned
Raheel Louis Farrakhan Professor Zine Sri Lanka B'nai Bred Kanye West Ilhan Omar Rahim
Trudeau won't take China's election interference seriously Legacy media pushed fake news about Freedom Convoy

Episode Stats


Length

23 minutes

Words per minute

158.68

Word count

3,772

Sentence count

231

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss Islamophobia and its role in Canadian politics. We discuss the role of the media and lobby groups in perpetuating an Islamophobic narrative, and the role that they play in stifling critical voices.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 And I think we have to be very careful with the influence that these lobby groups, not only in terms of the people they're sending to Ottawa to fill these kind of positions and check these boxes, but also what's going on within these lobby organizations that I think trend towards the extremes, trend toward more hardline positions.
00:00:19.700 Yes, you're absolutely right. And very rarely do any of these organizations reach out to people like you and me to say, let's sit down and have a conversation.
00:00:28.960 They feel so much more comfortable being cowards and speaking behind our backs.
00:00:33.320 But coming back to this whole Islamophobia bogeyman, it's not only the critique, but it's also when certain valid inquiries are termed as Islamophobia.
00:00:43.220 You know that the CRA was making some inquiries into Muslim charities because it's their job, not just them.
00:00:49.900 They do this for everyone. But immediately they were called Islamophobic.
00:00:54.360 And our prime minister picked up on this and, you know, said that this is not something they shouldn't be singled out.
00:01:02.020 So we have to understand that we are living in a country which is a democracy and we need to be able to live by the laws that this land.
00:01:10.560 In fact, Islam tells us live by the laws of the land in which you are unless it goes against your faith.
00:01:16.420 But unfortunately, many Muslims have forgotten all these rules.
00:01:22.560 You know, they are following an ideology which is based on a cult.
00:01:27.620 They are following an ideology that is a victimhood ideology, which is, you know, extremist.
00:01:33.300 And if anyone happens to ask a question, they are immediately are labeled an Islamophobe.
00:01:41.160 So this is not going to go well in the long run because, you know, it's not something that Canadians need right now, along with political correctness and the woke culture.
00:01:53.320 If you also have, you know, the Islamophobia, both women hanging over people's heads, Canadians by nature are a very peace loving, naive, trusting community.
00:02:03.020 They're not going to speak out. And this will then fester.
00:02:05.380 Yeah. So one of the questions I had for you, it's based on for both of you or for you, Rahim, actually, based on an observation that Raheel made, which is, you know,
00:02:32.380 we need to distinguish between these two things, racism, bigotry and ignorance.
00:02:38.460 And that's something that I myself have experienced many times.
00:02:41.460 I've had very similar experiences to Raheel, where, you know, someone says something, I think, you know, insensitive.
00:02:49.360 And I, you know, you know, upon further interrogation, it just is that they meant their well-meaning.
00:02:56.020 It's just that, you know, you know, the reaction, you know, most people would react to that as being racist.
00:03:03.080 But actually, if you engage in a dialogue with people, I think most folks are actually just want to be well-informed, I think, you know, and want to learn.
00:03:11.320 But why is it that we're hesitant? And by we, I mean, those people who are quick to label people Islamophobic,
00:03:22.260 why are they reluctant to criticize what's happening to the Uyghur Muslims in China, what's happening to the Ahmadiyyas in Pakistan?
00:03:31.020 For example, the Ahmadiyyas are not even considered Muslims by the Pakistani government, if I remember that correctly.
00:03:37.180 And the kinds of atrocities that take place committed against Muslims across the world, why is that not a priority to them?
00:03:46.940 Why is it that they don't react to that with the same kind of zeal as they do with, you know, everything else?
00:03:55.700 Well, I mean, I think the world is messy. 0.92
00:03:57.600 You know, you have situations where Muslims are oppressors.
00:04:01.900 You have situations where Muslims are being oppressed.
00:04:04.300 And I think one thing about the buzzword in higher education is intersectionality.
00:04:10.160 I think intersectionality, it poses a kind of racial hierarchy. 0.64
00:04:15.080 It's, you know, if you're white, you're an oppressor. 0.77
00:04:17.060 If you're not white, you're being oppressed. 1.00
00:04:18.440 You know, if you're Christian, you're an oppressor. 1.00
00:04:20.480 If you're a non-Christian, you're being oppressed.
00:04:22.520 But the world, you know, is messy and doesn't always conform to those types of binary.
00:04:27.700 I mean, you look at Syria.
00:04:31.160 I mean, you had these, you know, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, I forget the name of the community, but the sort of Christian community in Syria that was, you know, being subject to genocide.
00:04:41.760 I mean, I think it's tough to have within this framework of grievance culture a vocabulary for kind of one set of minorities, Chinese people.
00:04:53.060 By the way, you know, there's a ton of Sinophobia as well in North America.
00:04:56.840 There's been a ton of Sinophobia surrounding, you know, surrounding COVID.
00:05:00.860 So it's tough to, you know, have a framework for one set of people who, you know, we view as victims, we view as oppressed, you know, oppressing another set of victims.
00:05:11.360 We don't have a vocabulary for that, you know, we don't have an intellectual framework for that.
00:05:15.780 And I think that's why a number of people would rather, you know, turn a blind eye to the weaker situation.
00:05:21.640 Because I think one of the truly, I think, regrettable things about this kind of advent of intersectionality and this intellectual movement of intersectionality is it forces people to view a very complicated world through this binary of oppressor versus oppressed, this color-coded binary.
00:05:45.960 Yeah, absolutely, that's well said, I mean, a lot of this goes back to this stuff that they teach in schools.
00:05:57.220 And so, Raheel, what do you make of that?
00:05:59.700 Why are, you know, why do you see this reluctance to call out the atrocities committed against Muslims around the world?
00:06:10.000 Because it takes away the attention from them being the victims.
00:06:14.440 So this whole drama is about the fact that they want to present, let's say, Muslims in Canada as being victims of racism, bigotry, discrimination, Islamophobia.
00:06:28.020 So if they were to talk about another community that is being oppressed, then it takes that attention away from them, you know.
00:06:34.440 But this is what is so badly needed is, you know, for us to speak out about the others and see what is happening to them.
00:06:41.780 But you never hear of these organizations making statements about what is happening, not only to other Muslims, but minorities in Muslim lands.
00:06:51.220 And, you know, some of it is really atrocious stuff.
00:06:54.380 So, you know, Raheem is at that wonderful young age where, you know, he can give this intellectual sort of touch to this whole conversation.
00:07:04.240 You know, I just look at it very basically as being selfish and being self-centered and pursuing an ideology and an agenda which is entirely focused on this whole idea of getting into where policies are made and to, you know, to influence Canadian policy, to influence Canadian political structure.
00:07:26.240 And they're succeeding while it seems that our prime minister and the rest of the leadership is blind to what is happening.
00:07:33.440 And it's not as though we haven't said this before, you know, this is not the first time I'm saying it.
00:07:38.340 Just, you know, see what is happening around.
00:07:40.600 You'll be aware of what is happening and look at the agenda behind it.
00:07:44.220 Nothing happens without an agenda.
00:07:46.800 And so, you know, obviously they're not that concerned about what's happening in the rest of the world right now.
00:07:54.460 Speaking of agenda, Raheel and Raheem, you know, in Canada, there seems to be a game where every community claims there's a phobia against them.
00:08:02.820 So recently, a liberal backbench MP here in Ottawa is making the claim that Canada suffers from Hindu phobia.
00:08:11.020 As a Hindu myself, I find this claim rather preposterous.
00:08:14.080 And yet it's evidence we're increasingly a society built on grievances and identity politics rather than coming together as Canadians with shared values and shared identity.
00:08:26.120 How did we get to this point?
00:08:27.780 What do you make of this unfortunate turn in Canada?
00:08:30.620 Let's start with you, Raheem.
00:08:32.460 Sure.
00:08:32.840 So I think we're at a point where we're bringing in half a million immigrants per year.
00:08:36.600 And I'm pro-immigration.
00:08:38.700 My parents are immigrants.
00:08:40.220 I'm first-generation Canadian.
00:08:41.420 But, you know, when you're bringing in that number each year, it is very difficult to make them feel Canadian, to inculcate them with Canadian political institutions and, you know, Canadian civil discourses.
00:08:54.720 So I think you have an increasing number of immigrant communities here in Canada who feel more attached with their diaspora communities back home than they do with Canadian civil society here in Canada.
00:09:07.360 And I think a fascinating example of that is Sri Lankan diaspora politics here in Canada.
00:09:15.680 So as many of you know, I think Tamils in Canada outnumber Sinhalese in Canada 6 to 1, 7 to 1, you know, by some astronomical margin, a very large margin.
00:09:25.400 And you're seeing Tamils, you know, in places like Brampton and the 905, be very strategic in, you know, how they pursue grievance politics. 0.99
00:09:34.780 Not so much here in Canada, but even in terms of how Canada orients its forward policy towards Sri Lanka.
00:09:43.140 You know, do we use the G word to characterize massacres of Tamils during the Civil War?
00:09:52.300 You know, you know, do we do we take the Tamil Tigers off of our list of known terror organizations?
00:09:56.780 So I think, unfortunately, we have for economic reasons and out of economic necessity, you know, we've decided to take in hundreds of thousands of new Canadians each year, but we don't have the infrastructure on the educational side and on the social side to really make those new Canadians Canadian.
00:10:15.440 So I think it's, you know, one, I think, drawback of our set of policy choices and one symptom of that set of policy choices that I think is only going to become more intense in the decades to come.
00:10:30.320 Yeah, well, one of the failures of multiculturalism, actually, something I've written about quite a bit. 0.99
00:10:38.800 I mean, we're Canadians first and everything else after, not the other way around, right?
00:10:43.820 And and that's been a failure of multiculturalism.
00:10:48.160 Raheel, do you want to jump into this?
00:10:51.660 To put it in very simple words, this is happening because we have allowed it to happen.
00:10:55.880 And multiculturalism being at the top of the list of the problems, you know, this idea that you have to force people to like each other.
00:11:03.760 No, you don't have to. It's organic.
00:11:06.580 People don't have to like each other as long as they live in respect of each other.
00:11:10.120 You know, which brings me back, you know, back to the idea that if somebody holds negative views of another person, it's not a crime.
00:11:17.580 You know, we are human beings and we are allowed to have that.
00:11:21.060 And having said this, Raheem talked about the immigrant communities and, you know, I'll put it in very grassroots terms that immigrant communities bring with them a lot of excess baggage. 1.00
00:11:30.820 Some of it, which is very political and they don't know when to drop that.
00:11:34.500 So they continue with that while they're here.
00:11:37.380 And, you know, Canada has been soft on this.
00:11:40.340 They have allowed these international politics to play out on Canadian soil where people feel safe.
00:11:46.040 But it's not in the interest of the larger Canadian diaspora.
00:11:50.360 It is not in, you know, the idea that some people feel it's a sin to tell their children that they need to be Canadian first and whatever it is next.
00:12:01.000 You know, they tend to still live by the laws and the politics of the lands that they've come from.
00:12:07.020 And therefore, we see it playing out here and we see it playing out in many different communities.
00:12:13.240 So, you know, when the leadership is soft on this, then it just grows and grows until it becomes a problem.
00:12:22.520 Yeah.
00:12:23.500 All of this noise around Islamophobia disguises the fact that violence and hatred are also directed towards some of the founding communities of modern Canada.
00:12:33.020 So in 2021, for example, Canada saw, I believe, a 260% increase in hate crimes against Catholics.
00:12:40.080 This is according to Statistics Canada.
00:12:42.240 And this represented the largest increase in crimes against any religious or ethnic group.
00:12:47.720 But hate crimes against Catholics have no consequences.
00:12:51.340 They don't even rate a mention by the political class.
00:12:54.620 And there's some suggestion that this increase in violence against Catholics may reflect anger against the history of residential schools.
00:13:01.300 But this is just hatred, just the same, and isn't being called out by our progressive elites.
00:13:07.120 Do you think there's a double standard at work here?
00:13:10.860 Absolutely.
00:13:11.760 I have always had an issue with this.
00:13:14.060 You know, the white man has now turned into the so-called enemy.
00:13:18.100 You know, it doesn't matter what the white man does. 0.99
00:13:20.340 They are the enemy. 0.97
00:13:21.380 And this idea of pulling down statues and trying to erase history.
00:13:25.140 No, let's learn from it.
00:13:26.500 You know, so this is very, very important.
00:13:31.100 And, you know, the fact that Christians or Catholics, the abuses against them or the atrocities against them don't ever get counted is really troubling.
00:13:43.320 And then coming back to statistics, when you look at the police statistics, we see that the communities that have faced the largest amount of hate crimes have been the Jewish community, the LGBTQ community, the Black community, and then somewhere along the line, Muslims, like other communities.
00:14:00.780 But these reports and this appointment of an Islamophobia czar suggests to the rest of the world that the largest rate of crimes in Canada is against Muslims.
00:14:13.740 You know, maybe Muslims walking on the streets are being abused.
00:14:17.940 And it gives a very, very different picture.
00:14:20.580 So what kind of an image are we presenting to the rest of the world?
00:14:25.160 When Canada, to me, is one of the most tolerant countries in the world, it has its share of problems.
00:14:30.760 Yes, but which communities don't have a problem?
00:14:34.400 You know, look at the past.
00:14:36.300 Look at the first immigrants that came, the Irish and the Italian.
00:14:39.820 If you hear their stories and the amount of discrimination that they faced, but, you know, there was not an appointee to protect them.
00:14:47.360 They dealt with it, you know, over a period of time, they dealt with it till they came to a point where they were able to be fully integrated.
00:14:55.260 So every community has to go through those steps.
00:14:59.280 The Muslim community is relatively new, but they have to learn to reach out to others.
00:15:04.520 If they're going to ghettoize themselves, they're never going to be able to be a part of the mainstream.
00:15:09.720 So we'll move on to the next question then.
00:15:11.340 What is the, to both of you, what is the state of Islamic radicalization in Canada today?
00:15:18.920 Is it better?
00:15:20.160 Has it worsened or improved compared to, say, about a decade ago?
00:15:27.900 You know, this is something that we were tracking.
00:15:32.200 And a decade ago, it was easier to hear the stories and get the statistics and find out what's happening.
00:15:39.540 It's gone very quiet.
00:15:41.260 It's gone underground.
00:15:42.440 But I think the ideology is still there.
00:15:45.380 It is, you know, I've always said that radicalization is not a physical manifestation.
00:15:50.900 It is an ideology.
00:15:52.240 It is a brainwashing to embrace the values of the Muslim Brotherhood, their 10-point plan. 1.00
00:15:58.900 And, you know, when I talk to the communities, that is still there, you know, a non-violent ideology.
00:16:10.060 But you don't see so many, you know, so many overt examples of violence.
00:16:15.800 People think that it's gone away.
00:16:17.500 But Islamists, who are the people who are promoting and presenting this ideology, are absolutely delighted with political correctness, the whole culture, the cancel culture, because it plays right into their hands. 0.97
00:16:31.520 This is exactly what they were looking for, is to be able to shut people up, to shut free speech, to not have people express their opinions.
00:16:41.040 And so, you know, in many subtle ways, it just does exist.
00:16:49.420 But I would say that, sorry, I would add to this, that people are much more aware.
00:16:55.340 You know, those last 10 years, that awareness that has been created, they are much more aware of it.
00:17:00.360 So, I would add, I have a unique perspective on this.
00:17:08.440 I, you know, came of age, grew up in the early part of the 2000s.
00:17:12.060 I was a teenager of the high school when 9-11 happened.
00:17:15.440 And, you know, growing up, when you saw a Muslim on television, you know, was either a terrorist on a show like 24 or a show like Homeland or a taxi driver. 0.99
00:17:24.560 And I think, you know, now in sort of the 2010s, 2020, I think we have a substantially greater amount of representation of Muslims, you know, in things like sports, in things like popular culture, you know, in the media.
00:17:39.000 You know, you have these beautiful Palestinian models, the Hadid sisters, that are all over the place in the United States, you know.
00:17:45.160 Comedians.
00:17:46.060 Yeah, comedians as well.
00:17:47.780 Asis Ansari.
00:17:48.440 You know, so you have people presenting, you know, a template of what it's like to be an observant Muslim, but a modern Muslim in the 2020s that, you know, wasn't available.
00:17:59.980 That imagery wasn't available in the early part of the century.
00:18:03.180 And I think that actually explains a lot of what's going on in Iran right now.
00:18:07.380 You know, I think it was always going to be a matter of time, you know, before social media caught up with the regime in Iran.
00:18:14.440 It's kind of people through social media, people through Instagram, you know, they're sharing kind of more modern interpretations of Islam that don't jive with the regime's hard line.
00:18:25.580 So for me, I can't speak to the big picture of radicalization because I'm sure there are also, you know, digital communities, you know, where these kind of disaffected young men maybe are being radicalized.
00:18:40.340 But as, you know, a 30-something Muslim, you know, today I see a much more modern representation of my faith all across popular culture.
00:18:49.680 I mean, even a player on the Stanley Cup winning hockey team, you know, last year, Nazem Qadri, is an observant Muslim from Southern Ontario.
00:18:58.760 So for me, you know, as a young-ish, still a young-ish Muslim, I see more templates out there for how to be observant, how to be true to my faith, but do so in a modern context.
00:19:11.380 Yeah, no, that's a point well made.
00:19:15.120 And certainly times have changed quite a bit since those days, you know, since 9-11 for sure.
00:19:22.380 And there are many such prominent Muslims in popular culture.
00:19:26.980 And I think that's also very important when you talk about reform happening within Islam, right?
00:19:32.500 That that's sort of an important path towards reform as well.
00:19:40.140 Raheel, just one last question to the two of you.
00:19:44.600 Raheel, you made a point that one source of, you know, that attracts the ire of your critics is your staunt support for Israel.
00:19:53.740 And I kind of, I identify with this because I happen to be a staunt supporter of Israel myself, and I often face flack from the so-called progressives for that reason.
00:20:04.720 Is part of the Islamophobia narrative, you know, is there a subtext of anti-Semitism here?
00:20:10.680 In other words, is anti-Semitism the ugly underbelly of those who hold forth on Islamophobia?
00:20:17.420 To a large extent, yes.
00:20:19.440 There is a lot of anti-Semitism there.
00:20:21.440 In fact, Professor Zine, you know, picked some names for us morningly, all of us who are supporters of Israel.
00:20:31.680 And then B'nai Bred published a press release and a report on her anti-Semitic remarks.
00:20:36.760 So, you know, she has a history of having made some anti-Semitic remarks. 1.00
00:20:42.120 So anti-Semitism is rife in certain parts of the Muslim community.
00:20:46.800 And definitely those who support Israel face a backlash on that.
00:20:50.940 And, you know, I am one of them.
00:20:53.860 I'm unashamedly a supporter of the right of Israel to exist. 0.99
00:20:57.740 Again, having said that, it doesn't stop any kind of healthy criticism of government policies like, you know, for any other country.
00:21:07.820 But this definitely plays a very strong role in this.
00:21:12.940 Yeah.
00:21:13.460 Raheem, any thoughts?
00:21:14.860 Sure.
00:21:15.220 So I, as you know, I lived in the United States for a number of years.
00:21:18.980 And I think in the United States, there's a much stronger connection between Islam and kind of black nationalism.
00:21:25.860 And you look at individuals like Louis Farrakhan.
00:21:28.280 You look more recently at kind of what people like Kanye West, you know, have been saying about Jewish people.
00:21:34.000 I think, you know, that kind of ugly undercurrent of, you know, kind of these kind of nationalistic kind of staunch, you know, pro-black movements, some of which have gravitated towards Islam. 0.76
00:21:47.260 You're seeing the anti-Semitism that underpins a lot of this type of political activism come more to the surface.
00:21:56.320 And in the United States in particular, you know, you've seen a substantial uptick of sort of black nationalists, either associated with Islam or not, expressing more openly anti-Semitic rhetoric, not just targeting Israel, but targeting Jewish communities within the United States.
00:22:14.620 Sort of perpetuating tropes about, you know, Jewish Americans involved in entertainment, you know, Jewish Americans involved in finance.
00:22:21.460 And, you know, I've seen that.
00:22:23.860 Unfortunately, I've seen that type of thing on the rise in recent years.
00:22:28.360 Well, anti-Semitism is on the rise globally.
00:22:30.600 I mean, you take a person like Ilan Omar, you know, very openly anti-Semitic in a position like hers, prestigious, where she could have built bridges.
00:22:38.440 So it's unfortunate that many people who are in leadership positions where they can build bridges, you know, where they can talk about coming together on commonalities, you know, and respecting the differences, but they tend to then perpetuate hate instead.
00:22:55.240 And that is not something that I am ever ready for, you know, for me, Canada is not a place where we talk about hate.
00:23:03.860 We don't have to like each other, but we definitely need to respect each other and the differences that we have.
00:23:09.500 We are definitely not all alike, but, you know, in the work that we do, it's not just about myself.
00:23:15.240 It's about supporting others who are persecuted, about others who are oppressed, about others who are facing racism and discrimination.
00:23:24.360 And that's a great way to end the show, Raheel.
00:23:27.420 Thanks to you.
00:23:28.220 Thanks to you, Raheem.
00:23:29.940 Thanks to both of you for coming on the show.
00:23:33.580 Keep fighting the good fight.
00:23:35.420 And I hope to have you both again sometime soon.
00:23:38.260 Anytime.
00:23:38.780 Thank you.
00:23:45.240 Thank you.