“It’s important to share our pain,” said Samaa Elibyari, a member of the board for Muslim Awareness Week, which organized the event. “It’s important to show that other people care.”
“It’s important to share our pain,” said Samaa Elibyari, a member of the board for Muslim Awareness Week, which organized the event. “It’s important to show that other people care.”
In 2017, a gunman walked into the Quebec City Islamic cultural centre after evening prayers and shot six Muslim men dead.
Nineteen other worshippers were wounded.
It’s something that’s seared into the memory of those gathered at the Montreal rally, like Elibyari.
“We want the public to know that we have always at the back of our mind this tragic incident,” she told Global News, “every time we hear about something happening related to Islamophobia.”
Some fear that it could happen again.
The Montreal commemoration rally was just one event Sunday marking the second National Day of Rememberance of the Quebec City Mosque Attack and Action Against Islamophobia.
In Quebec City, for the first time, a commemoration ceremony was held inside the prayer room of the mosque where the shooting took place.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a number of cabinet ministers attended.
Those gathered at the Montreal rally stressed that though the mass murder happened six years ago, remembering it is a way to make sure it never happens again.
“Because if the problem is not solved in society, if we don’t become a better, more cohesive, more understanding society as a whole, it will happen again and again,” said Ehab Latoyef, Muslim Awareness Week co-founder. “If not to us, some other group.”
He and others pointed out that politicians have a responsibility to help.
Wearing an anti-Bill 21 button at the rally to protest the province’s religious neutrality law, Latoyef highlighted the Legault government policies that he believes work against cohesion.
Some say Bill 21, which forbids public servants from wearing religious garb, disproportionally targets Muslim women who wear a hijab.
“The way they govern in general sets ‘an us’ and ‘a them’ all the time,” he argued, “and makes people believe that they either belong to the ‘us’ or the ‘them.’ It creates a rift between the two and from that rift comes fear.”
Despite the concerns, some at the Montreal rally said that in the six years since the shooting, some things have changed.
“We have so many groups now going into schools, organizations, making sure we understand what Islamophobia is and what it is to be Muslim,” noted Montreal city councillor, Alia Hassan-Cournol.
The federal government has also appointed a special representative to combat Islamophobia.
Still, those at the gathering caution against becoming complacent.
Get Best News and Web Services here
