Islamophobia motion sparks continuing outrage

Members of Parliament of different political stripes have been getting an earful about a controversial anti-Islamophobia motion passed last spring.

On Monday, the House of Commons heritage committee began a study of racism and religious discrimination required by M-103, a motion whose sponsor, Liberal MP Iqra Khalid, received death threats and hate mail after she tabled it in 2016.

She’s not the only MP who’s been hearing about it. A number of committee members remarked that they’ve been contacted repeatedly about the issue.

Winnipeg Liberal MP Dan Vandal said people have complained to his office over fears about Sharia law. Arif Virani, a Liberal MP in Toronto, said constituents have been asking whether the government is chilling their ability to raise legitimate questions about faith.

“I have never seen such fomented anger, concern and misconceptions about any motion before Parliament as applied to Motion 103,” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.

Vandal said discussion of the motion “spun out of control into a bunch of lies.”

“Racism and religious discrimination have no place in Canadian society,” said Khalid, the first witness to testify before the committee on Monday.

Khalid’s motion asked the government to “recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear,” and called for the heritage committee to study how the government could fight systemic racism and religious discrimination and to “collect data to contextualize hate crime reports.”

A similar motion tabled previously by NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, which simply asked the House of Commons to condemn all forms of Islamophobia, had been unanimously adopted without issue.

But M-103 touched off a political firestorm, with Conservatives suggesting it would limit free speech, in part because the term “Islamophobia” is poorly defined. The Tories tabled a counter-motion calling for a general study of religious discrimination that didn’t explicitly mention Islamophobia, but it was defeated by the Liberals. Many of the Conservative leadership candidates also came out against M-103.

Khalid’s motion was passed in March, with most Conservatives and all Bloc Québécois MPs voting against. Their concerns were raised again on Monday.

Conservative MP David Sweet said he didn’t mind pointing to the “elephant in the room.

“There’s a large percentage of people in Canada that are concerned that their speech would be stifled if something like Islamophobia wasn’t really defined,” he said.

Khalid said the motion addresses all systemic racism and religious discrimination, and was not meant to focus solely on Islamophobia.