Canada's Islamophobia Representative Warns of Resurgent Stereotypes Amid Gaza War
Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, says there has been a troubling return of anti-Muslim tropes reminiscent of post-9/11 rhetoric, particularly in the wake of protests related to the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Speaking to The Canadian Press, Elghawaby said recent discourse has unjustly framed Muslim Canadians and pro-Palestinian advocates as violent or hateful. “We’re constantly being viewed as engaging in... what some politicians and columnists and media folks will call ‘hate marches’ when involved in any type of protests for Gaza,” she said.
She described such portrayals as echoes of outdated narratives that painted Muslims as inherently radical and under state suspicion. “The same types of narratives that we had seen and we talked about post-9/11 have been resurfacing over the past two years,” Elghawaby noted.
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Referencing discussions with law enforcement, she stated that most demonstrations related to Gaza have been peaceful and free of hate speech. “There is consensus across the board that hate speech targeting any community... has to be taken fully seriously,” she added, while emphasizing that broad accusations against Muslims are “wholly unfair.”
She urged for open, good-faith dialogue about human rights in Gaza, arguing that avoiding terms used by credible organizations—like “occupation” and “genocide”—obstructs meaningful conversation.
“This is life-and-death for our communities,” she said, pointing to fatal Islamophobic attacks in Canada as the reason her office exists.
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The Muslim community in Canada has staged several protests in the past two years to slam the ongoing Israeli aggression and siege on Gaza. More than 59,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed by Israeli fire since October 2023 in Gaza where almost all of the 2.2 million population has been internally displaced.
The regime has also blocked the entry of food and medicine into the territory, causing extensive starvation among the civilian population.
Source: Agencies
