{"id":573327,"date":"2023-05-05T21:16:56","date_gmt":"2023-05-05T18:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-rise-in-hate-crimes-has-left-muslims-terrified\/"},"modified":"2023-05-05T21:16:56","modified_gmt":"2023-05-05T18:16:56","slug":"the-rise-in-hate-crimes-has-left-muslims-terrified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-rise-in-hate-crimes-has-left-muslims-terrified\/","title":{"rendered":"#The rise in hate-crimes has left Muslims terrified."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n “This kind of horror stays with you”\n <\/div>\n
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\u201cYou hear about Islamophobia on the news<\/a>, but seeing that hate in your own community shakes you\u201d (photography by Brett Gundlock)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Ramadan, the month of fasting for Muslims that ended in late April, is a time of community. Families gather to break fast together, and the mosque is always full for night prayers. But there\u00a0was\u00a0a rise in hate crimes against Muslims in Canada\u00a0this past month. A man attempted to run over congregants at the Islamic Society of Markham.\u00a0At another Markham mosque, a\u00a0man yelled slurs at worshippers and was charged with three counts of assault. Yet another man broke into a Montreal mosque, shattering its glass doors while worshippers prayed inside. In New Jersey, an imam was stabbed while leading morning prayer. Mosques are spaces of peace and sanctuary.\u00a0Watching\u00a0these attacks has been terrifying.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This kind of hate isn\u2019t new. I\u2019m a chaplain at Western University but I was imam of the London Muslim Mosque for two years, between 2020 and 2022.\u00a0I used to receive all sorts of vile anonymous letters and voicemails attacking Muslims and peddling Islamophobic stereotypes. Muslims would tell me about their own experiences with hate. These are stories that don\u2019t leave you: one woman said that shortly after 9\/11, when she was still in school,\u00a0a classmate app<\/a>roached her in the cafeteria and told her that \u201cher people\u201d had attacked \u201cus.\u201d Mosque shootings at home in Quebec and abroad in Christchurch made us question if we\u2019re even safe in our own communities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was an early Monday morning in June of 2021 when the president of the London Muslim Mosque called me. He told me that the night before, a man drove into a Muslim family out for a walk on a busy London street. <\/span>Maybe no one died, <\/span><\/i>I thought. <\/span>Maybe they were just injured<\/span><\/i>. I rushed to the mosque. Our tight-knit Muslim community was already talking about what had happened\u2014I needed to find out for myself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I found the other imams in the mosque\u2019s foyer, next to London\u2019s deputy police chief and another constable. He confirmed our worst fear: the van attack was a targeted hate crime. We were in shock and, for a long time, no one spoke. We were scared and angry: how could this have happened? When it finally sank in, some people started crying. I didn\u2019t realize who the victims were until our custodian showed me a WhatsApp<\/a> picture of Salman Afzaal, whose smiling face I often saw in the congregation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I taught Yumnah Afzaal, Salman\u2019s daughter, Islamic studies at a local Islamic school when she was in Grade 8. She was smart and studious, always at the top of her class. She handed in her assignments on time and did her work diligently. As a teacher, you\u2019d be lucky to have a student like that. She was quiet and so talented: Yumnah once painted a mural for the school of a crescent moon with a star shooting out of Earth, next to the words \u201cShoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you\u2019ll land among the stars.\u201d It was beautiful and I was amazed by her creativity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Losing Yumnah and her family was devastating. There\u2019s no other way to describe it. You hear about Islamophobia on the news, but seeing that hate in your own community shakes you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Yumnah Afzaal\u2019s mural<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It was hard to find time to grieve. There was so much happening. Two days after the attack, on Tuesday, we hosted a vigil with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. On Friday, there was an interfaith march. The day after that was the Afzaals\u2019 funeral service. These events were nationally broadcast, and friends and family of the victims shared their stories with the media. We offered counselling to community members who needed it. There was an outpouring of support from the non-Muslim community too: people laid flowers at the mosque and where the Afzaal family was struck, wrote messages of support and walked with us while we grieved.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The attack changed so much. We wondered if we were safe in the streets we grew up in. Muslim women told me they were scared of wearing their hijabs outside, afraid it would make them a visible target for hate.\u00a0<\/span>The mosque hired a security guard for daily prayers and at night during Ramadan. There are surveillance cameras and gates and extra security for Friday prayers when a lot of Muslims come to the mosque. But there\u2019s only so much we can do, and only so many times we can ask police to patrol the area.\u00a0Hearing about hate crimes now opens up the grief of losing the Afzaal family all over again.\u00a0It\u2019s unnerving to feel like we\u2019re always looking over our shoulder.<\/span><\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago, during Ramadan, there was a person sitting in their car in the mosque parking lot. Everybody else was rushing into the mosque for night prayers, but this person looked like they were about to drive off. I stopped and stared at them, wondering what they were thinking and why they were just sitting there. I hate that I was suspicious of them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, nothing happened. But the terror we\u2019ve lived through stays with you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014As told to Sabra Ismath\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/div>\n