Merrilee Fullerton should apologize for her tweets
Her comments stigmatize Muslims, Fatimah Elfeitori says.
To err is human, to forgive divine.
But you can’t forgive without first being offered an apology.
Merrilee Fullerton, the Progressive Conservative candidate in Kanata-Carleton, has so far avoided apologizing for a series of stigmatizing tweets against Muslims that were discovered earlier on in the election.
Other than an accusatory and defensive statement issued a few weeks ago rejecting concerns raised by the Liberal party, Fullerton has yet to publicly distance herself from views that bolster harmful and false tropes about our communities as being oppressive toward women and representing a security risk.
Her various tweets include criticisms of the right of Muslim women to wear a face or head covering, as well as the claim that second-generation immigrants pose the most significant danger. She also shared news from the far-right Breitbart News site about an anti-Muslim rally organized by the hate group Pegida. Fullerton additionally blogged that she believed foreign doctors in Canada should be surveilled, based on foiled plots involving foreign doctors overseas.
The discovery of these tweets coincided with the beginning of the month of Ramadan, a month of fasting, love and mercy. This would be an opportune time for Fullerton to apologize to our communities for comments that clearly reinforce harmful stereotypes and promote fear and suspicion.
Many of us would be quick to forgive.
The reason Fullerton’s comments raised alarms is chiefly because several of these comments touch on the visible identity of many Muslim women who are already at a higher risk of attacks.
Her comments impact our collective sense of safety, especially anyone who is visibly Muslim, or even perceived as being Muslim. We also know that Muslims, along with other minority
Dog-whistle politics fuel fear and further embolden intolerance.
groups, often face racial profiling, as documented by the Ontario Human Rights Commission in a report released last year. Nearly half of Canadians also report perceiving Islam as “damaging to Canada,” according to an Angus Reid poll from last November.
Kanata resident and community leader Aisha Sherazi did reach out to Fullerton at a “meet and greet” for all candidates in the riding. “I found her to be willing to discuss the troubling tweets, and she attempted to explain her misconceptions,” she told me. “I thought she might use the same platform to clarify her original misconceptions. Instead, I found she had retweeted the Socrates quote, ‘When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.’ That was quite telling.”
Fullerton then subsequently blocked Sherazi on Twitter. Also telling.
We expect representatives of any stripe to work with their communities to fight xenophobia and Islamophobia, which are already worryingly entrenched into the fabric of our society.
With hate groups reportedly on the rise in this country, our politicians have a clear responsibility. We don’t have the luxury of tolerating or dismissing such rhetoric, whether intentional or unintentional.
Dog-whistle politics fuel fear and further embolden intolerance. This is certainly evidenced in Donald Trump’s America, where we have seen statements against Muslims affect not only public policy but public attitudes as well.
Fullerton deserves the benefit of the doubt that she no longer holds such biased views towards Muslim women and towards immigrants.
But to shrug off this pattern of offensive tweets as political inexperience or as clueless gaffes is a dismissal that does us all a disservice. Fatimah Elfeitori is a volunteer with the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Committee (CMPAC).