What makes a good Canadian? A Muslim 'parental rights' marcher speaks out
Mohammad Bakhash calls the Syrian community’s participation ‘top-level integration,’ but it sparked a backlash
Mohammad Bakhash thought he was being a good Canadian.
The Syrian-born economist, who was welcomed to Fredericton in 2016 amid a wave of refugees from his war-torn country, took a major step toward civic engagement last year.
He lost a friend over it and felt the sting of a backlash against the views he was expressing peacefully.
"That was the hardest part of the story, to be honest," he said. "We did not expect such a reaction."
Last Sept. 20, Bakhash was among dozens of Muslim New Brunswickers who took part in the One Million March for Children on the front lawn of the legislature.
He was there to oppose policies on LGBTQ issues in provincial schools — something he insisted was not "anti" anyone but an expression of his values, his faith and his culture.
"We are not here to encourage hate against anyone," Bakhash told Radio-Canada during the march.
"Everyone has the right to do what he or she wants. But we also have the right to raise our kids in a safe environment."
The march was one of several held across Canada under the slogan of "parental rights" — a label that critics say ignores the rights of LGBTQ children.
The marches in New Brunswick had extra meaning because of Premier Blaine Higgs's changes to Policy 713 in June.
It now requires school staff to get the consent of parents before letting LGBTQ students under age 16 use the names and pronouns they choose in classrooms.
Higgs greeted the marchers on Sept. 20 but not the counter-protesters across the street.
Both crowds were loud and often angry as they tried to out-shout each other with competing slogans, but the two events were peaceful and ended without incident.
The reaction, however, left Bakhash shaken and unsettled, testing the boundaries of Canadian values of tolerance, diversity and inclusion.
One unidentified woman supporting a pro-LGBTQ counter-protest across the street was overheard saying the Arab marchers were "not even from this country."
Gail Costello, whose group Pride in Education has championed LGBTQ education policies, posted on social media that the marchers were an example of Muslim religious extremism.
In Saint John, where a similar march was marred by a handful of participants grabbing Pride flags and stomping and spitting on them, and trying to light them on fire, Coun. Brent Harris posted that some participants could barely speak English.
Costello took down her post after University of New Brunswick professor Casey Burkholder responded online that "there's no space for anti-Muslim rhetoric and bigotry in the work of making New Brunswick schools and society safer for queer and trans folks."
Costello explained online that she had been "triggered" by the march and felt attacked.
Harris was also criticized on social media and deleted one of his posts.
In an interview, he said some people "freaked out" about what he said.
"It's like, guys, I'm sorry, I can't nuance a proper tweet in 150 characters," he said.
Those reactions — and others — prompted Bakhash to reflect on what kind of values longtime Canadians expect him to embrace.
"It hurts us a lot when it comes from those who claim that they are supporting diversity, they are calling for multiculturalism, they call for respect for everyone — [except] when it comes to topics that they do not agree with you," he said.
"They will try to say first of all, 'They are not educated people' and when they see well-educated people, they will say, 'Look, they they were not born here.'"
Harris found it jarring that a community he considers marginalized — people of colour who are recent immigrants — was part of a march that he believes was endorsing discrimination.
"Man, you guys, don't forget how hard it was to work, how hard you had to work to be accepted here, and to have the same opportunities that you have today here," he said in an interview.
"Don't trample over these people over here now who are just trying to carve out the same space."
Bakhash arrived in Fredericton in 2016 with his wife and children. His brother also came to the city as a refugee from Syria.
The two brothers joined a local soccer league and befriended a teammate, a Canadian citizen originally from Europe, who wore a Pride logo and was a longtime supporter of LGBTQ causes.
Bakhash said that despite his religion's view of homosexuality, he never questioned his friend's world view or looked askance at him.
But when he and his brother promoted the march ahead of time on Facebook, his friend messaged them.
"He wanted us to answer some questions," Bakhash said. "'Do you believe in this? Do you consider this?' We told him, 'Look, let's wait till we meet together and we can discuss anything on the table. We are friends.'"
As they tried to find a mutually convenient time to meet, the exchange of messages took a turn. His teammate told Bakhash he'd been "fooled" by a hard-right movement hostile to the interests of immigrants.
LGBTQ rights "are principles I fought for tirelessly all my life," he said his friend wrote. "We told him, 'OK, we totally respect that.' And again, 'Let's meet and discuss.' And he said, 'if you are not answering my questions, there is no need for this meeting.'"
The friendship was over.
Bakhash's experience is a reflection of tangled perspectives on diversity and integration, according to Abdie Kazemipur, a University of Calgary sociologist who studies how Muslim immigrants adapt to life in Canada.
Many Muslim immigrants bring with them culturally conservative, religious beliefs that are at odds with the prevailing wisdom about sexual orientation and gender identity, he said.
"I think there is not enough of discussion about this, that people feel forced to accept the values that are in conflict with their upbringing," he said.
"They feel that they are being pushed into accepting something that they're not prepared for."
Kazemipur likens immigrant integration as a social contract.
"The two sides of the contract have to be very clear. Otherwise it will be sort of constantly evolving. And this is much more realistic view of society. It is a living organism. It is constantly changing, and people have to change."
Harris considers himself a supporter of immigration and diversity, but he worries that some progressive-minded activists may become Islamophobic if they see Muslim newcomers disagreeing with them on LGBTQ rights.
Blurring the question further is the fact that some of the Muslim marchers from Sept. 20 have been part of protests against Israel's military response in Gaza — alongside some of the same left-wing activists who disagree with them on trans rights.
"And you think, like, how?" Harris said. "How can you be shoulder to shoulder in one week and vitriolic and hateful and aggressive the next?"
Bakhash sees it from another angle: that some activists apply a double standard about the proper place of new Canadians like him.
"When I participate in Black Lives Matter, in a protest for the Ukrainian people, local people will say, 'Look at these well-integrated people. They are so cool.'
"However, when I participate in a protest that doesn't meet their expectation of me, doesn't meet their beliefs, they will say 'Where did these Muslims come from?'"
Kazemipur said more genuine social interaction can help people with different views see each other not as abstractions but as fellow citizens in the same community.
"To have immigrants that are perfectly aligned with everything else in that society, that would be a very ideal situation. But the reality is that this might not happen and you have to allow for that," he said.
"When we try to over-regulate this and sort of intervene too much and try to sort of enforce them through some sort of top-down approach, then that is where resistance is created."
To earn his master's degree at UNB, Bakhash studied the integration of Syrian students into the New Brunswick school system.
He applied a model with three levels of integration: individual, family and community.
A large part of the Syrian community taking part in the Sept. 20 march was "the top level of integration," he said — their entry into the political and civic discourse of their new home.
"It represents that this community now is well adapted and well integrated," he said. "We followed the law. We didn't break the rules. Everything there was subject to respect.
"Being a citizen is not just reading the citizenship book and passing the exam. It's applying what you have read and what you have learned."
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