Five years after the September 11 attacks on the United States, their reverberations are still felt across the globe, particularly among world’s Muslim communities. But the way the events of that day have affected Muslims at U of T is still a matter of simmering debate.
“Since 9/11 Muslim students have felt isolated and in many different ways threatened while on campus,” said Jesse Greener, head of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). “That’s a real problem.”
“The reports [the CFS has received from Muslim students] range from basic needs, which include a lack of halal food, lack of prayer space…and also things like having exams scheduled during important religious moments for the Muslim community,” said Kelly Holloway, also with the CFS.
“People are getting negative looks on campus, professors are saying things about Islam that are propagating ignorance.” Greener adds that even the student-loan system could be seen as discriminatory, because some branches of Islam consider interest rates immoral.
But Hajera Khaja, communications director for U of T’s Muslim Students Assocation (MSA), is not overly concerned about Islamophobia on campus. “I’m not saying that Islamophobic incidents don’t take place at all,” she said. “Obviously things do happen, and some of the things that happen are of grave concern. But those are isolated incidents. In general I think that if you were to speak to Muslims on campus they would say that they have had a very positive experience.”
Nouman Ashraf, U of T’s anti-racism and cultural diversity officer, says he’s no more concerned about Islamophobia than he is about any other form of discrimination at the university. “I’m a big believer in letting communities speak about their lived experience,” he said, “and [Muslim students] are not telling me they have a problem.”
“I’m not saying that there are not experiences that are less than savory out there. But what I’m hearing most often is that the University of Toronto is a welcoming place.”
Ashraf said that the university administration works closely with Muslim student groups to ensure their needs are met. The MSA is involved in everything from staging social and religious events, to publishing a Muslim newspaper, to convincing campus cafeterias to offer halal meals on their menus, and coordinates a variety of Muslim-oriented activities all geared towards making the Muslim student experience as successful and comfortable as possible.
But Holloway pointed to a handful of high-profile incidents of Islamophobia over the past few years which are a major cause for concern for the CFS. In March, a Muslim woman was followed into a washroom at Hart House and had an anti-Muslim flyer shoved into her chest, and in 2004 anti-Islamic hate graffiti was found scrawled on the walls of Ryerson’s multi-faith prayer space.
Also this spring, an engineering school affiliated with the University of Québec had to be ordered by the Québec Human Rights Commission to provide Muslim students with a place to pray. Similarly, at the University of Windsor, Muslim students have been performing religious rituals in stairwells because there is no adequate space to accommodate them.
In response to what it sees as Islamophobic incidents at Canadian universities, the CFS has formed a taskforce to coordinate hearings across Ontario that will record testimony from those who feel they have been affected.
“The purpose is to document the needs of Muslim students…and to document (instances of) Islamophobia,” said Holloway, who’s in charge of organizing the taskforce, “and those can range from more subtle forms to incidents of violence.”
The first hearings will be held at U of T in late September, and the CFS will publish a report on its findings on March 21, 2007, at the International Day to End Racism.
The taskforce will be the second major project the CFS has undertaken to tackle anti-Muslim activities. Citing “increased instances of intolerance” on Canadian campuses, last year the student federation began distributing information and buttons under the slogan “No Islamophobia, No Anti-Semitism, No Racism.” That campaign is ongoing.
Last Friday, another frosh week came to an end with SAC’s annual outdoor Club Day fair. As hundreds of new students milled about the grounds in front of Hart House, Muslim students were participating in another long-standing U of T tradition inside: Friday prayers at Hart House.
For the past 41 years, Hart House has worked with the MSA to reserve a space for Muslim students to come and pray on Friday afternoons. In fact, U of T has four locations set aside for Muslim religious observances, one at the International Student Centre which is accessible around the clock.
Aasim Hasany, who was laughing with a group of friends outside the prayer space on Friday, said that the only Islamophobic events he had encountered were on the pages of campus newspapers, and that neither he nor anyone he personally knew had been directly affected by Islamophobia. He characterized being a Muslim student at U of T as “a positive experience.”
The MSA’s Kaja said that while things have changed for Muslim communities in the past five years, that isn’t necessarily a negative thing. Instead of a rise in Islamophobia Khaja described a rise in curiosity about Muslim communities in general, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Events overseas have led many Westerners to want to learn more about Islam, and have given groups like the MSA a valuable opportunity to engage with other Canadians.
“I would argue that there isn’t a growing wave of Islamophobia on campus,” she said. “I think there is a growing consciousness [about Islam] just because of all the world events that have been happening.”
Like Khaja, Ashraf sees the global attention being paid to Muslim communities as an opportunity to engage and educate.
“There’s no question in anyone’s mind that the events of September 11 have cast a light on the experience of Muslim communities. There’s intellectual curiosity but there’s also a genuine want to figure out the community in the black box.”
Increasing Western concern with Islam might also account for any apparent rise in Islamophobia, not because more Muslims are under attack, but because people are taking instances of Islamophobia more seriously.
Despite stepping up its efforts to combat Islamophobia in recent years, even the CFS is reluctant to say that anti-Muslim sentiment at Canadian universities has risen since the 9/11 attacks.
“It’s difficult to tell if there’s more incidents of Islamophobia or if its just being reported more frequently,” said Holloway. “Hopefully [once] we have depositions taking place across Canada, we can get an idea of the breadth and scope of the issue.”
