LOVE, HATE LOSS AND
Still reeling from grief and shock a year after a gunman killed six and wounded 19 in a Quebec City mosque, families and survivors are reaching out to build bridges with the wider community ‘so that it doesn’t happen again.’ Marian Scott reports.
One year later, the massacre at a Quebec City mosque haunts those who lived it — and those left to mourn. They share their pain with us today, driven by the hope for healing. Marian Scott reports in
It isn’t easy for Megda QUEBEC Belkacemi to talk about the “night of horror” that was Jan. 29, 2017.
First there was the news alert on her phone about a shooting at the Quebec City mosque that her father, Khaled Belkacemi, a professor at Université Laval, attended regularly.
Then the hours she and her brother spent frantically searching local hospitals for their missing father, hoping against hope that he had been admitted somewhere, perhaps under a mistaken identity.
And the growing dread that the search was in vain, that the unthinkable had happened.
“Yes, the memories are painful, but I will tell you about them,” says Belkacemi, 28, a lawyer for the city of Quebec and the eldest of three children.
“It was really a night of horror. We went to all the hospitals. We thought maybe he was under the wrong name, because he didn’t bring his ID for the quick trip to the mosque.
“In the end, it was only at 4 o’clock the next afternoon that we got the confirmation that he had died.
“And it was as if our lives turned upside down.”
Belkacemi shares her memories because she wants people to understand who Khaled Belkacemi really was.
Not just a Muslim — although his faith was central to his life.
Not just a name in a list of victims. But a human being with a rich, multi-faceted life.
The professor of agricultural engineering who channelled his insatiable curiosity into finding better ways to feed the world.
The jester who always had a joke up his sleeve.
The former boxer who kept in shape by running and working out at the gym.
The gourmet chef who prepared festive dinners, like roast duck or quail.
The devoted family man whose wife, also a professor at Laval, was not only the love of his life but also his best friend and colleague.
“My father was totally passionate about his scientific work. But behind the man of science was a man with a really great sense of humour,” Belkacemi says with a soft chuckle. “He passed on his curiosity and his sense of humour to us.”
She wants people to know who Khaled Belkacemi really was.
Because it’s only by seeing others as they really are, in all their humanity and complexity, that we can conquer hate, she explains.
“Hate blinds us, so we don’t see clearly anymore and we think that the other person is the enemy. When really, he or she is just a person like you. They’re a human being with faults and qualities, goals and achievements, with their own story.
“So the lesson is that, for example, we wrongly think that all Muslims are Islamists, but here we have a clear example of people who lost their lives but they weren’t Islamic extremists. They were just ordinary citizens,” she says.
“I dare to hope that it was just an isolated act. I dare to hope that having seen this horror, which was so widely publicized, it will affect people’s perceptions.”
A year after the attack that killed six and injured 19 at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, its long-term impact on Quebec’s ongoing conversation about religious diversity is unclear.
Quebecers’ attitudes toward Muslims became markedly more positive in the wave of empathy following the tragedy, reveals a Léger poll for the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS), provided exclusively to the Montreal Gazette.
But after the tearful declarations by politicians, the vows to work together to combat hate, the vigils and the flowers, it was back to business for Muslim-bashing trash-talk radio hosts and politicians exploiting identity issues.
The poll shows negative views of Muslims “bumped back up when we re-engaged discussions about the niqab (face veil),” noted Jack Jedwab, president of the ACS.
“No matter how you slice it, these debates that we have around values are a catalyst for building on people’s negative sentiments,” he said.
The most encouraging thing that came out of the tragedy “is the reaction of a lot of ordinary people of all faiths,” says Fo Niemi, executive director of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations.
“That brought out the best in people, people from all kinds of backgrounds, French, English, Jewish. Everybody feels that this is a human story and I think people have responded with support,” he said.
“Less encouraging is the political and government response to the crisis, not immediately, but a couple of months later, when the emotions died down and they went back to the regular routine,” Niemi added.
Passed in October, Quebec’s Bill 62, barring people who cover their faces from giving or receiving government services, revived divisive debates over the rights of religious minorities.
Proposed hearings into systemic racism, cancelled the same month amid a political outcry, prompted accusations by opposition politicians that all Quebecers were being tarred as racist. More recently, a proposal to designate Jan. 29 a national day against Islamophobia was rejected for similar reasons.
Bill 62, attacked by opposition parties for not going far enough, erased some of the empathy created by the tragedy, says Amira Elghawaby, a writer, human-rights advocate and volunteer with DawaNet, a Muslim organization based in Mississauga, Ont., that has provided support to Quebec City Muslims affected by the mosque attack.
“This obsession with focusing on the religious clothing has really harmed our community because it really tends to exacerbate the differences, versus highlighting all the similarities and all the joint sentiments of community-building and wanting to participate equally in our societies,” she said.
Meanwhile, the increased visibility of far-right, anti-Muslim groups like La Meute in Quebec City suggests the climate of racism has actually worsened since the tragedy, says Rachid Raffa, 68, a former president of the mosque and a 33-year local resident who works as an analyst for the provincial transport department.
“I thought that after Jan. 29, 2017, the racist atmosphere would decrease. But on the contrary, it has exploded. Movements that used to be hidden, like La Meute, now march openly in the streets and appear in the media.
“The massacre has had a paradoxical effect. I expected things to calm down, especially after the extraordinary support we received from the public in the days that followed, which still continues.
“But instead, we’re seeing these racist groups come out into the open,” he said.
At the mosque, where a giftwrapped pig’s head was left on the doorstep seven months before the tragedy, hateful incidents have continued, Raffa noted.
They include threatening phone calls and letters, excrement left on the doorstep and a package in July 2017 containing a defiled copy of the Koran. In August, the car of mosque president Mohamed Labidi was set on fire.
Meanwhile, anti-Muslim rants on Quebec City’s notorious trashtalk radio continue unchecked, Raffa noted.
Hate crimes reported to the Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence more than tripled in the year after the mosque attack, soaring to 166 in 2017, compared to 52 in 2016 and 17 in 2015. However, the centre noted the rise could reflect increased reporting, as opposed to an increase in crimes.
Local Muslims were bitterly disappointed that the Crown decided not to charge the suspect in the attack with terrorism.
Alexandre Bissonnette, 28, a former student at Université Laval, is facing six first-degree murder charges and six attempted murder charges. His trial is to start March 26. Efforts by the city’s estimated 10,000-member Muslim community to open a cemetery have also continued to meet with obstacles. In July, residents of St-Apollinaire, a nearby town, defeated plans for a Muslim cemetery in a referendum. In August, the mosque obtained a lot in Quebec City for a cemetery, but now it appears the land might be contaminated.
Muslims also worry about being targeted in the upcoming election, in which opposition parties have vowed to campaign for tougher restrictions on religious garb.
Hate blinds us, so we don’t see clearly anymore and we think that the other person is the enemy. When really, he or she is just a person like you. They’re a human being with faults and qualities, goals and achievements, with their own story. So the lesson is that, for example, we wrongly think that all Muslims are Islamists, but here we have a clear example of people who lost their lives but they weren’t Islamic extremists. They were just ordinary citizens.