One evening in late September, Saad Baig, co-chair of the Queen’s University Muslim Student’s Association, found that the group’s club space had been broken into. Approximately $700 was missing. The next day, a sign directing students to the QUMSA office was vandalized. The defaced poster read “Queen’s University Muslims should die.”
In recent years, there has been a series of attacks on Muslim students at Queen’s. QUMSA Co-chair Isra Rafiq said that between 2002 and 2008, there have been seven break-ins at the QUMSA office.
“People in the university community are either tip-toeing around us or they are making assumptions about the way we think or the way we feel, and a lot of people think we are hyper-sensitive over everything that has happened.”
The most recent attempt was in mid-October, when the perpetrator sawed through a recently installed metal sheet covering the wooden office door. These incidents prompted QUMSA to close their prayer room for the first time in 40 years. The attacks have not been limited to the QUMSA office. In October 2006, on the eve of Eid al Fitr, an Islamic holiday marking the end of Ramadan, a banner celebrating the event was set on fire.
Rafiq said that campus security has responded by setting up a phone in the QUMSA office for emergency assistance. Convex mirrors have been placed so that people approaching the office can be seen. Queen’s admin have offered to assist with an anti-Islamophobia campaign and anti-discrimination training for student leaders and faculty members.
“The administration has approached us and they have offered to assist us but nothing has been put in cement,” says Rafiq. “It’s a matter of how much we can expect. We don’t know whether [the admin] will be able to follow through with what they say they are going to do.”
Queen’s has struggled with issues of race and discrimination before. In 2001, then-VP academic Suzanne Fortier asked for an investigation after six faculty members resigned, citing racism on campus. The Henry Report authored by a York University professor adressing the issue, concluded that a significant number of the campus community experienced discrimination, highlighting the role students have played in perpetuating it. Since then, faculty members have formed the Queen’s Coalition of Anti-Racist Faculty, asking the admin in December to create a more effective response plan for future incidents.
Early last semester, the university introduced the Intergroup Dialogue Program in residence. The program enlisted six student facilitators to live in residence, engage students about race issues, hold social functions, and step in when conflicts arise.
In the meantime, QUMSA encourages its members to record incidents of discrimination on its website, producing a timeline which currently stretches back to 2005.
“As anybody else we find it quite shocking that such incidents should be taking place anywhere, let alone on a university campus where you find that people are generally more open and more tolerant,” said Yaser Khan, Communications Director for U of T Muslim Students Association.
“After such incidents, you need to feel support from the university, to condemn the event and reach out to the Muslim community,” said Khan. “We felt, given the nature of those incidents, the university’s response wasn’t strong enough or immediate enough.”
