This is not who we are

A young Toronto mother is viciously attacked by two men on the way to pick up her son at Grenoble Public School. They try to tear off her Muslim head scarf, rob her, beat her to the ground, kick her, call her a “terrorist,” tell her to go back to her country.

This is her country. It always has been. She was born here. So were her children. Yet one of them, a little boy, just 5, had to watch as his injured mom was taken to the hospital on a stretcher. This is not who we are. We are better than this. As Mayor John Tory put it, the aberrant assault was “disgusting, unacceptable and not reflective of our city’s values.” By and large, ours is a civil, tolerant, inclusive society.

Yet even so, a shadow undeniably has fallen over Canada’s large Muslim community in the wake of an ugly federal election campaign that saw the Conservatives cynically demonize Muslim women for wearing the niqab, and the barbarous Islamic State terrorist attacks in Paris last weekend.

Canadian Muslims are being scapegoated and hounded — by some at least — for crimes that have nothing to do with this country, and for which they owe no apology. The Paris attacks were conceived in Syria, planned in Belgium, and carried out in France.

Yet in Peterborough, Ont., the Masjid Al-Salaam mosque has been torched in a deliberate act of arson. Someone in Toronto posted a sign on their lawnasking Muslims if they are sorry for the Paris attacks. Anti-Muslim graffiti have been found close by the Grenoble school.

A Quebec man wearing a Joker mask and brandishing an air pistol posted a video on YouTube, ranting about Arabs and Muslims, and threatening to launch a “chain of murders” to “clean up” the province.

Little wonder if in Hamilton, the Muslim Council has suggested that people with beards, hijab or prayer caps walk in groups for safety.

Rare as violent anti-Muslim incidents are, no one should have to walk in fear in our society.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke for the vast majority on Wednesday when he declared that “vicious and senseless acts of intolerance have no place in our country and run absolutely contrary to Canadian values of pluralism and acceptance.” Rather than scapegoat law-abiding Muslims, “our focus must be on stopping the people responsible for the terror,” he said. Indeed, a key part of the jihadist agenda is to turn western societies against their Muslim minorities.

Premier Kathleen Wynne is of like mind. “We need to reach out to our Muslim neighbours and friends and recognize the acts that took place in Paris were acts of terrorism and not born of religion,” she said. Happily, that reaching-out is well underway.

In cities and towns across Canada, people of every faith and conviction are marshalling to welcome Syrian refugees by the thousands. They are pledging financial aid for displaced families, opening their own homes, organizing support groups. People in Peterborough and the region have raised more than $110,000 to reopen the damaged mosque. The Toronto assault has been universally condemned. And police in Montreal have made an arrest in the Joker video case.

These gestures of human decency and collective resolve repudiate Islamic State’s poisonous call to a war of the worlds. They also rebuke the scattered bigots among us. When people of goodwill stand together the haters lose.

No one should have to walk in fear in our society