Seek help from God and be patient.
Indeed, the earth belongs to God,
and He bequeaths it to whomever He so wills
from among His Servants …
—The Quran, 7:128
(Washington, D.C.; 6/9/2021) – The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), on behalf of our member institutions and American Muslims, grieves with the entire global Muslim community and the Muslims of Canada for the terrorist murder in London, Ontario – the mowing down in cold blood with a truck – of three generations of the Afzaal family: 46-year-old Salman, his 74-year-old mother, his 44-year-old wife Madiha, their 15-year-old daughter Yumna, and their seriously injured and instantly double-orphaned 9-year-old son and brother, whose name has been withheld for his protection.
Their crime, their religion of Islam, their belief that God is One. The sentence, death, for walking freely in the open spring air on Canadian soil as a Muslim family. Their executioner, Nathaniel Veltman, just 20 years old. Who filled his heart with such hatred, and from what deep vein of nativist xenophobia?
Just another day in the life of Muslims, who have become far and away the most persecuted people on the face of the earth – and not just “over there” in distant lands with ancient names, but in Canada, in America, in Europe, in Australia and New Zealand. These countries – synonymous in modernity’s lexicon with the cherished values of freedom and justice, equality and liberty – have also birthed and spread the twisted origin stories of so-called Islamophobia and supremacist hate – along with the increasingly hailed honor of committing the dark deeds of hate in their noxious names.
We can no longer brook these lethal ills of loathing that have menacingly metastasized in our cultures and communities to the point that they threaten to dissolve the underpinnings and contracts of liberal society. We must systematically counter them in our public curricula – the messages that our communal institutions propagate – and confront them with effective policies that our governments and civic and societal institutions strategically formulate and have the resolve to implement and see through. Crucially, we must consistently live by and implement our message and policies through all our institutions and practices at home and abroad. We cannot bend and refract them in the name of partisan or national interests, applying our values of freedom, equality, justice, and liberty inconsistently and selectively to appease pressure groups or uphold favored statuses.
USCMO and Muslims in America noted with gratitude Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s immediate reaction that minced no words in stating “this was a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred, in the heart of one of our communities,” which he said in the House of Commons after observing a moment of silence, promising to “dismantle far-right hate groups … adding them to Canada’s terror listing.”
We also commend London, Ontario Mayor Ed Holder for his quick and forthright response in implementing a three-day mourning period in the city. “Let me be clear: This was an act of mass murder, perpetrated against Muslims — against Londoners — and rooted in unspeakable hatred.”
We appreciate, as well, London Police Detective Superintendent Paul Waight’s immediate acknowledgment that “the victims were targeted because of their Islamic faith” and the department’s work with federal authorities and prosecutors to seek terrorism charges.
Yet it is crucial that we understand this rise in hate against Muslims has not spontaneously generated or grown out of Muslim community aggression. On the contrary, Canada’s political and cultural leadership, for example, under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper has systematically fostered this hate, including Harper’s failed 2015 campaign pledges that sought to bar Muslim women from wearing specific kinds of religious covering dress during Canadian citizenship ceremonies, along with outrageous Orwellian institution of something called a “Barbaric Cultural Practices” hotline, designed to get Canadians to file complaints to legitimize governmental harassment of their Muslim neighbors.
The French-speaking province of Quebec – following the deeply benighted practices of France’s political persecution and disenfranchisement of Muslims there – has for years bitterly persecuted its Muslim citizens and residents, including the adoption of Bill 21, which bars Muslim public servants from wearing hijab or other “religious attire.”
The gunning down of six Muslim men in a Quebec City mosque followed in 2017 as the worst mass killing in Canada in recent years, now followed by the present mass killing of the Afzaal family. In the aftermath of the gruesome Quebec mosque massacre, Canadian parliamentarians erupted in outrages of “free speech” and fear-mongering about the spread of “Islamic law in Canada” when that body tried to pass a purely symbolic condemnation of Islamophobia. They evinced no compunction about the freedom march of the anti-Islam movement “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident,” or PEGIDA, through that very city.
We at USCMO and Muslim Americans have duly noted in this mass murder Sunday, the Quebec mosque mass execution, and countless hate crimes against Muslims across America, Europe, Canada, and its sister Commonwealth Countries that the mainstream media has barely covered these events, a far remove from the mass educational program needed to stem the rising tide of racial, ethnic, and communal hatred in general in these societies, much less against the growing persecution of Muslims.
There is no other group of citizens and residents in these nations facing the fear and terror of irrational hate and hate’s frighteningly real aggressions, from supremacists and government servants – and there is no small number of such groups that now face persecution in these societies –that receive as little concern, attention, and policy reaction as Muslims.
USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal has formally called on President Joseph Biden, as president-elect and after his assumption of office, to “quickly create the ambassadorial level “Office of the Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Islamophobia” at the State Department, to be filled by an American Muslim, on par with the existing Office of the Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism.” See letter to President Biden here.
“Anti-Semitism, also growing in these nations, has no place in our societies, and the Muslim community has vociferously and concretely stood against it,” said Jammal. “We believe our government, and those of all these societies must focus as serious attention and tangible, visible, substantial policy address on the more menacing rise of Islamophobia.”
“To God we belong, and to Him we return. Our hearts, our fervent prayers, our enduring commitment go out to the loved ones of the Afzaal family, the London Muslim community, and all those who mourn this tragic, senseless loss of life and love to hate,” said Jammal.
The US Council of Muslim Organizations, our member institutions, and American Muslims call on President Biden to take steps to stop this deadly hate and forestall such tragedies, including immediately creating the “Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia.” We also urge him to meet, personally, with Muslim community leaders to devise an effective program to protect American Muslims from the deluge of anti-Muslim hate that threatens to overwhelm our community and society.
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