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Canada needs to re-learn a distinction: anti-Muslim bigotry is not the same as criticism of Islam.
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That distinction is no longer just academic. In the 25 years following 9/11, Canada has spent a lot of time building official machinery around the word “Islamophobia.” A Canadian Press report marking the anniversary this week argued the country has fallen behind, pointing to Ottawa’s decision to fold its Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia into a broader advisory council.
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Asmaa Malik, a journalism professor quoted in the piece, called that decision a step toward “dismantling the concept of Islamophobia” altogether. Canadians should refuse anti-Muslim bigotry without qualification. They should refuse, just as firmly, to let “Islamophobia” become the official lens through which one religion is placed beyond the reach of ordinary scrutiny.
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I was born in Iran, a country culturally shaped by Islam and the birthplace of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. My mother attends mosque faithfully every Friday and is deeply committed to her faith. My uncle left his graduate studies at UCLA, tore up his green card and returned to Iran to join the revolutionary fervour.
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The conversation about Islam is therefore not foreign to me. It runs through my family and my country’s history.
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Yet what drew my family, along with millions of other immigrants, to the West was precisely its protection of freedom of religion, speech and conscience. These liberties are secured not only by law but by a cultural tradition that allows people with radically different beliefs to live together.
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That tradition depends upon a vital distinction: people must be protected from persecution, but ideas must remain open to scrutiny.
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Anti-Muslim bigotry targets Muslims as people. It appears as hatred, discrimination, intimidation or violence directed at individuals because they are Muslim. It has no place in a free society.
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Criticism of Islam is something entirely different. Islam, like Christianity, Judaism, Marxism, nationalism or secular liberalism, makes claims about God, morality, law, history and the proper ordering of society. Christian sects the world over await the second coming of Christ and the culmination of history. Religious Jews await the descent of a third temple. Such claims inevitably enter the public square, and none of them, Islam included, can claim immunity from examination.
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Indeed, the greater the claim an idea makes over human life, the greater the public’s right to examine it.
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That scrutiny is nothing new to Islam itself. Muslim scholars have debated their own tradition for 14 centuries: school against school, reformer against traditionalist, one reading of the Qur’an against another. Treating Islam as too sensitive for outside examination flattens that tradition into a single untouchable claim.