About 70 people gathered at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) on June 10, 2025 to hear Canada’s Special Representative on Islamophobia, Amira Elghawaby, deliver her presentation: “A Canada Where We All Belong: Our Collective Role in Combatting Islamophobia.” According to Elghawaby, the prevailing perception of Muslims “as a threat or as representing a problem to solve” is the heart of the problem of Islamophobia. In her role as Special Representative on Islamophobia, Elghawaby seeks to “change that perception and shift the national conversation so that Muslims are seen a part of—not apart from—Canadian Identity.”
Darrel Nadeau, Vice-President, Visitor Experience at the CMHR and emcee for the evening program, spoke of the overarching aim of the museum’s public programming—“transforming learning into action” by “engaging in dialogue.” Difficult discussions such as this one, especially at a time of unprecedented polarization that is being fueled by massive misinformation and disinformation, are indeed necessary.
Isha Khan, CEO of the CMHR, introduced Elghawaby, relating her extensive and decades-long experience in human rights, race relations, and a number of initiatives to counter hate and promote inclusion. Reiterating Nadeau’s message, Khan also expressed the importance of the museum’s mission to “find a way to transform our learning.” “It’s at the heart of what we do at the museum.”
Elghawaby was a remarkably articulate speaker, eloquent and confident in her delivery of the message that the persistence of discrimination, suspicion, and even violence against Muslims threatens Canada’s cohesion.
She set the tone for her presentation with, “Peace be upon all of you.” And as one audience member remarked in the Q&A, Elghawaby radiated peace, which served to convey her message very successfully. Her warm and enthusiastic reception may also have been due in part to her avoidance of key realities concerning the less peaceful aspects of this issue.
Hopefully, Elghawaby, in the role she assumed in 2023, will be able to counter not only Islamophobia but the equally hateful prejudice of many Muslims against Jews, which is visible and vocal in the still ongoing violent protests which have been disrupting the streets and campuses of most major cities across Canada and worldwide for the last twenty months. This is certainly a significant contributing factor to the negative perception of Muslims here and elsewhere in the West, one which Elghawaby did not address.
Elghawaby opened with a description of growing up in Ottawa in the 1980’s when there were few immigrant families. She fondly recalled how her parents, who had emigrated from Egypt, encouraged her assimilation into Canadian culture and how patriotic she was as a child, singing “O Canada” with excessive zeal in order to achieve the badge she coveted in Brownies. Her experience of feeling she belonged was confirmed when she was asked by the principal of her school to give a presentation on Islam and share her faith with other students. However, she asserted, “this is no longer the experience for too many Muslims who are not sure they belong.”
Elghawaby attributed this change in the experience of Muslims to 9/11, after which Muslims began to be perceived as “a security threat” and viewed as “a dangerous other,” leading to “breaches of human rights and an erosion of civil liberties” as well as “growing hate [which is] endangering the safety and wellbeing” of Muslims in Canada and elsewhere.
The 2017 killing of six Muslims at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City and the 2021 truck ramming that killed a Muslim family of four in London, Ontario, to which Elghawaby referred, are the two often-cited fatal attacks against Muslims in Canada. Though clearly relatively rare, each is tragic and should be condemned.
However, not mentioned was the 2009 murder of four Muslim members of the Shafia family—the first wife and three daughters—committed by the husband/father with his second wife and son in Kingston, Ontario. The three were convicted of murder and the conspiracy to commit murder under the guise of honour killing—a tragedy that surely had a negative impact on Canadians’ perception of Muslims and Islam.
Elghawaby emphasized the daily experiences of discrimination faced by Muslims in the workplace, in education, and in society, stating that the “6600 web pages of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant content,” in which Muslims are portrayed as dangerous and violent, are provoking the documented unfavourable view of Muslims and Islam.
According to Elghawaby, “Islamophobia is not just a Muslim issue; it is a Canadian issue,” and like all discrimination, is “incompatible with national values.” Therefore, she called on all Canadians to “transform pain into purpose, to stand with anyone who is targeted and against any attempt to diminish any individual.”
Her hope is that the newly published The Canadian Guide to Understanding and Combatting Islamophobia for a More Inclusive Canada, produced by the Office of the Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, will “complement the many other working groups” in society, in schools, mosques, and the government seeking to combat Islamophobia by “unpacking stereotypes and myths” and defining the multiple discriminations resulting from intersectionality.
Elghawaby concluded her very thorough analysis of the problem of Islamophobia on a positive note: “We can change the course of history, individually and collectively, and fulfill the promise of a Canada where we all can belong.”
In the Q&A following her presentation, Elghawaby answered Khan’s question about where she finds her hope by stating: “In education,” acknowledging that “hate is taught,” and therefore, can be untaught with informed facts. Unfortunately, the book she recommended for this purpose—El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This—promotes precisely the kind of misinformation that is fueling hate, in this case Muslim hatred of Jews. I have read this book and can attest to its blatant and dangerous anti-Israel bias. El Akkad never mentions the original crime of Hamas’ October 7, 2023 massacre of 1200 innocent Israeli civilians, placing the blame for the Hamas-Israel conflict it caused, absurdly on Israel alone.
I spoke with Elghawaby following the event to ask how she could make the claim she did that the pro-Palestinian protests, which she admits are causing a spike in “anti-Muslim, anti-Arab racism,” have been “peaceful.” This is a flagrant misrepresentation of the fact that acts of violence and antisemitism have been rampant in the ongoing pro-Palestinian protests that have too often devolved into celebrations of and support for the murderous genocidal terrorist entity Hamas, masquerading as humanitarian concern for the civilians of Gaza. Otherwise, their chant would be “Free Palestine from Hamas”—the true oppressors of the Gazans—rather than “Globalize the Intifada” and “From the river to the sea,” both clear calls for the annihilation of Israel and Jews.
In response, Elghawaby said “the police have told her the protests have been peaceful” and that “there are many interpretations for ‘From the river to the sea.’”
Both are bewildering answers, considering the well documented acts of violence and antisemitism that have occurred, especially at the large ongoing protests in Toronto and Montreal, but also here in Winnipeg, which I have witnessed firsthand. Understanding which river and which sea makes any other interpretation mystifying. Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea clearly means the erasure of Israel from the map.
