Manitoba Muslims counter hateful video with outreach

Manitoba Muslims say they're appalled by a video showing a self-proclaimed Nazi hurling insults at a visiting Muslim schoolteacher near Seven Sisters Falls — but they're not giving up on educating people about their faith.

Abdi Salam Adi was attending a community outreach barbecue at Winnipeg Central Mosque Friday and told CBC when he saw the video, his first reaction was fear.

"You basically realize that somebody who hates people is intruding on you, through your race or religion, and it's not good."

In an exchange captured on video, a man who described himself as a Nazi told Calgary teacher Kaniz Fatima to take her "head towel off" because it "supports Muslims." He also told her to "go back to your country." 

The exchange happened near Seven Sisters Falls in southeastern Manitoba in early July. Fatima stood up to the man, as did witness Alysha Goertzen, while it was being filmed by Fatima's husband. The man spit obscenities at Fatima as she defended herself from the onslaught.

Adi said he personally has not experienced intolerance while living in Canada, but said he knows others who have been harassed. 

"I don't know why they are doing that … Muslims are nice people. They are very welcome people, they respect people, they don't harm people."

People are confusing Muslims with religious extremists, Adi added. "Those are not Muslims."

Reading about the incident brought back memories of the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., said Raes Ahmed, who also attended Friday's outreach event.

"It brings back all that from Sept. 11 and everything. I grew up in Toronto where it's very diverse, but there have been attacks, physical attacks on women who have been [wearing] a hijab, who have been pulled out. There were doors [on] which people had written, 'Go back home.' So it brings back all of this stuff."

Despite that, he said he looks at some of the hateful rhetoric happening now in the United States and counts his blessings.

"We are very privileged in our country, to not have — although we have pockets of extremism on both sides — to not have those extreme pockets rise up so high."

He said the best way to combat extremism is to speak up. "I think we have to understand and appreciate this privilege and keep up this culture, where we're not letting it come to that extent.

"It's a test for us, as a Muslim Canadian, how we keep the positivity, the love, and the compassion of Mohammed and Jesus and Moses, because it's all the same."

Woman could press charges: Human rights lawyer

David Matas said he wouldn't call what the man in the video said to Kaniz Fatima hate speech, but would call it harassment. 

"I think in deciding whether something is hate speech, you have to look at both content and context," said Matas, a human rights lawyer.

"I think in terms of content it would be, but in terms of context I'm not so sure, because it wasn't publicly broadcast and it wasn't directed to somebody the speaker was trying to incite. It was a harassment or slur against a victim. And that sort of context probably wouldn't qualify it as hate speech."

He also said the incident raises some legal questions.

"The law doesn't say you can't utter hate speech, the law says you can't incite to hatred. In order to incite to hatred, you have to be inciting somebody. There wasn't anybody he obviously was inciting except the victim, who presumably was immune to the incitement."

Despite that, Matas said the victim may have some recourse if she wants to press charges against the man for uttering threats. 

"Saying you're a Nazi suggests that you're prepared to use violence in an act of racism, because the Nazis were murderous racists. And she … felt scared by what happened, and I think understandably so."

He said he was impressed by Fatima's reaction.

She did stand up, she said what needed to be said at the time … and I think certainly what she did was commendable.- David Matas

"She did stand up, she said what needed to be said at the time … and I think certainly what she did was commendable."

Matas said he's not surprised things like this are happening in Canada. 

"I would agree that we're getting more of this more recently than we used to before, and to some extent I attribute this to the Trump presidency. It's just become more respectable to speak out in public like this," he said.

But he also said it's not necessarily anything new.

"We're seeing a continuation of the problems that we have always seen historically. And I think that what it tells us is we have to remain continually vigilant against a fight that never ends and it's never going to go away. The best we can hope for is mitigation. "