Can anti-radicalization tip line work?
MONTREAL — When Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre announced the creation of a Radicalization Prevention Centre on Monday, he insisted the city is not targeting any one cultural or faith community with this project.
When journalists pointed out that no members of Montreal’s Muslim community were present at the announcement or expressing support for the project, the mayor bristled.
“I’m not falling into your trap, brother,” he told a CBC reporter who asked if members of the Muslim community had been or would be consulted about the centre.
“It’s not (about) the Muslim community. It’s about violence. It’s about radicalization. It’s about many, many communities who are witnessing (radicalization) and demanding that they want to be part of the solution. ... Frankly, it would be a very big mistake to focus on one community (over) others. What we are doing is providing tools so that parents, no matter where they are coming from, or teachers or volunteers have some tools to work with if they are facing a situation. But it has nothing to do with a community.”
Some members of the Muslim community, however, are quite willing to acknowledge that there is a particular problem with radical groups targeting vulnerable members of their community.
“We think we do have a problem,” said Haroun Bouazzi, co-president of the Association of Muslims and Arabs for a Secular Quebec. “We have our kids going to die in Syria and for the parents of those kids, this is a catastrophe. ... This is a problem that we have to face.”
But Bouazzi doesn’t understand why the mayor was in such a rush to announce what is, so far at least, not much more than a hotline that connects callers to Montreal police.
“How can they call what they are doing prevention? The phone line goes straight to the police. It is OK to have security, but don’t call it prevention. That is not serious.”
He worries that the tip line will be jammed with anti-Muslim callers with no useful information. Anyone who knows about and is truly concerned about a young person becoming radicalized would not want to call police, he said.
Instead of this, he would like to see the mayor encouraging Montrealers to be more accepting of Muslims. Recent moves in Montreal and elsewhere in Quebec to use zoning bylaws to close down or block the opening of mosques are the kind of thing that feeds radicalization, he said.
“Radicalization is due to discrimination and actions that make people feel rejected by their own society. Islamophobia, racism and discrimination push people toward radicalization, because they feel they don’t belong to their own society; they feel a greater sense of belonging to a terrorism group 9,000 kilometres away.”
Fo Niemi, executive director of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, echoed some of Bouazzi’s concerns.
“In the present context, my concern is that this hotline will be inundated by people who are anti-Muslim. It will be like in the olden days when people were asked to denounce anyone who could be a Communist. How will they weed out the real threats? What will be the checks and balances to ensure people are not falsely accused?”
Niemi, who has been an adviser on race relation issues for many city projects, was also taken by surprise by Coderre’s announcement and by the fact that all the partners announced as part of the project were people from the white, francophone majority.
“You have to wonder if it was well thought out, because the community partners were not there ... We do have to combat violence and terror, but we have to be careful when every week another report about Muslim wrongdoing is in the news. I worry this will create a frenzy, and increase paranoia. I think it was a serious faux pas, reflecting haste and a lack of cultural sensibility.”
But psychologist Jocelyn Belanger of the Universite du Quebec a Montreal, a partner in the tip-line project, said: “Things are going to move very quickly. The phone line is up and running and the city is acting fast in creating this prevention centre. That should reassure parents and teachers and others that we are taking care of this.”