What is the lesson that we can learn from the New Zealand terrorist attack at two mosques in Christchurch. This devastating attack resulted in the death of 50 people while injuring another 39. Romeo Dallaire, former general peace-keeper to the mission in Rwanda once posed an interesting question: “Are all humans human, or are some humans more human than others?” Although we would all like to unhesitatingly exclaim “of course not,” somewhere in our hearts we know that history tells another story.
Over the past two decades we have seen a rise in Islamophobia in Canada. Mosques have been vandalized, Muslims have been verbally and physically attacked and more recently in 2017, in a Montreal Mosque, six Muslims were murdered while praying. What did they do wrong? They believed in Islam. Islamophobia in Canada isn’t as exaggerated as it is in the USA, nonetheless it exists and cannot be ignored. Despite this alarming increase of Islamophobia, there has been little done about it. It would be dishonest for me to say that this shocks me. In fact, given the existing climate, the recent attacks in New Zealand are not surprising. It is tragic and devastating. These attacks all are. Adding to this tragedy is the attitudes and styles of our media and politicians and their positions and dispositions towards the Muslim community.
The New Zealand attack is not the first terrorist attack against ethnic minorities conducted by white supremacists. For example, the Charleston church massacre, the Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooting and the Quebec City mosque shooting. All off these acts were perpetrated by white supremacist. We need to connect the dots. We cannot simply look at these in isolation and say, it’s because of anti-Semitism or Racism or Islamophobia. Its more than that. Also, it is not the work of a lone wolf terrorist act. In fact, it is a global ideology. It is the work of a coherent and competent social movement with a coherent ideology. They are more organized and politically engaged than ever.
These organizations use the dark web or other organized platforms. There is a lot of evidence that they are taking advantage of our political climate. According to the ADL’s Center on Extremism (COE), murder and extremism in the United States in 2018 found that “Almost all of the 2018 extremist-related murders were committed by right-wing extremists. White Supremacist: 78%; Anti-Government Extremism:16%; Incel Extremism: 4%; and Domestic Islamist Extremism: 2% (p.13). This movement has been on the rise around the world and 73.3% of all terrorist attacks in the last ten years have been conducted by white supremacists and yet there is little effort to acknowledge the increasing right wing extremism/terrorism.
Despite the above facts, many Canadians, believe that radical Islam is more of a threat than white supremacy. In July of 2018, the Angus Reid Institute (ARI) and Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) released a public opinion poll on radicalization and homegrown terrorism in Canada. “Canadians view radical Islamic attitudes and white supremacist attitudes as more concerning than other prejudices that exist in Canadian society today. A full majority (54%) say radical Islam is cause for “a great deal of concern,” while 44 per cent say the same of white supremacy (p. 2).
I must admit that sometimes the so-called experts who support white supremacist ideology and their politicians are the ones who are always framing white supremacy as a left wing conspiracy. They also rationalize the irrational ideology of white supremacy. We need to acknowledge white supremacy as the number one threat to Western society. We need to create Federal, Provincial and Municipal strategies to tackle white supremacism in the same way that we have been tackling Islamist ideology. This requires holistic efforts among all Canadians. We need to pay attention to the comments and attitude in our circles, in our family, from our colleagues and politicians. We need to call them out racist comments and so called jokes, and remove the rhetoric that contributes to white supremacy from our vocabulary.
Let’s not let Christchurch become just another statistic. Let’s have the lesson from this be a realization that White Supremacy is real in the world and that Canada is not immune. Let this be the time that we ask ourselves: what are we going to do about it? White Supremacist ideology shows no signs of going away. We cannot continue to ignore the signs. The only question is how will we confront this. Remember the question from General Romeo Dallaire: “Are all humans human, or are some humans more human than others?”, if we believe that all humans are equal than why can we not confront white supremacist ideology the way we confronted Islamist ideology? What’s the difference?
Hassan Adan
hassan.adan@gmail.com