Quebec is split over Islamophobia one year after the mosque attack
For Fariha Naqvi-Mohamed, it was a heartening moment.
Four days after a gunman entered a Quebec City mosque and killed six people, the Muslim blogger and columnist was at a memorial in Montreal. Joining the thousands of mourners who filled the Maurice Richard Arena were the Prime Minister and Quebec's premier Phillipe Couillard, who addressed the crowd in Arabic.
They were the words Naqvi-Mohamed needed to hear.
"I want to tell Muslim Quebecers: you're at home here, we are all Quebecers," the premier said as mourners applauded. "We feel your pain, we share your pain. When one of us suffers, we all do."
"Those words resonated with me so profoundly. I felt a sense of optimism, of hope that maybe out of this horrific tragedy that had taken place, perhaps some good could come out of it. Perhaps we could turn a corner."
Her optimism did not last. Hate crimes against Muslims in Quebec City doubled in the year since the attack. In October, the province passed a religious neutrality law that many saw as discriminatory because it singled out Muslim women.
"Mere months after the attack we saw Bill 62 and all sorts of rhetoric that I was just stunned to hear," Naqvi-Mohamed says. She says she felt the premier had betrayed her.
"This was the same man that stood in front of thousands of Canadians and addressed the Muslim community next to the bodies of the men who were shot in Quebec City."
A temporary empathy
"I call it political amnesia," journalist Martin Patriquin tells me on Day 6. He's a columnist with iPolitics who writes on Quebec politics and society.
"There was a gigantic pause and everybody had a lot of empathy — rightfully so — for this group of human beings who were killed in cold blood. And that empathy lasted, I would say, probably two or three news cycles, and then it was back to the status quo."
Lise Ravary, a columnist and blogger at le Journal de Montreal, thinks that outside the political classes people in the province are still deeply shocked.
"You talk to ordinary Quebecers, they will still say that they feel a great deal of empathy," she says.
But Patriquin argues Quebecers take their cues from their political leaders. "And I think the way that the political class has behaved on this specific question as disgusting," he says.
When someone reacts viscerally to something, it suggests to me that they are afraid of even looking at the issue.- Martin Patriquin
"I've written a lot about La Meute, which is one of the main, sort of, far right groups here in Quebec. They almost feel emboldened by the fact that they can talk about this, moreso now than ... a year ago."
Patriquin doesn't think the killings of Jan. 29 have led to more tolerance.
"I think the dialogue and the discourse that I've seen has actually gotten worse."
"Ils ne sont pas islamophobes"
The National Council of Canadian Muslims have called for Jan. 29, the anniversary of the Quebec killings, to be commemorated as a day against Islamophobia. But the leaders of the province's political parties, including premier Couillard, united against the idea.
"This intolerable action was that of a single person, and not of an entire society," the opposition party Coalition Avenir Québec argued in a statement. "Quebecers are open and accepting, they are not Islamophobes."
Ravary agrees.
I'm afraid if you're going to bring Islamophobia — which is a divisive word in Quebec ... that it's a way to shut people up.- Lise Ravary
"There's so much we don't know, the trial hasn't even started. We may find out that the alleged killer is somebody who is deeply mentally disturbed and it has nothing to do with Islamophobia," she says.
"And besides, I'm afraid if you're going to bring Islamophobia — which is a divisive word in Quebec ... that it's a way to shut people up."
"I agree with Lise that I don't think it's necessarily something that you solve within a year," Patriquin says.
"My issue with it was the full stop, absolute 'No' that came from Quebec's political class."
"When someone reacts viscerally to something, it suggests to me that they are afraid of even looking at the issue. And that's my problem."
A reluctance to change
Nicolas Lacroix, a blogger with le Journal de Quebec, sees a stigma in Quebec when it comes to acknowledging Islamophobia.
In a column earlier this month he wrote that he hadn't decided if it was appropriate for Quebec to commemorate Jan. 29 as a day against Islamophobia. But he said he was certain Quebec has a deep fear of Muslims.
"You need to look in the mirror to grow and change," he wrote.
His column was so controversial that Lacroix declined an invitation to discuss it on Day 6.
If six men being gunned down in their place of worship is not enough to have a direct change from our elected officials, then I honestly don't know what it would take for us to effect change.- Fariha Naqvi-Mohamed
Ravary explains why change is not easy in Quebec.
"Quebecers are afraid of one thing," she says. "They are afraid that their little French Island in North America is going to be taken over, that they will lose their language and lose their identity. And it's a fear that's been alive for the last 250 years, so you're not going to get rid of it like overnight."
But some of Quebec's Muslims have a more immediate fear. They want change and they say it's urgent.
"If six men being gunned down in their place of worship is not enough to have a direct change from our elected officials, then I honestly don't know what it would take for us to effect change," Naqvi-Mohamed says.
"It worries me; it scares me. I worry about the safety of my children; I worry about my safety."
To hear the full interview with Martin Patriquin and Lise Ravary, download our podcast or click the 'Listen' button at the top of this page.