| |
 Print
Hate Crimes Targeting Muslims in Canada On The RISE
12-12-2018
Hate Crime in Canada shows a very sharp and significant increase in Canada, specifically targeting Muslims. This should not come as a surprise to anyone. However, what is alarming is the year over year percentage increase. “For the year, police reported 2,073 hate crimes, 664 more than in 2016,” states Stat Can report.
Police reported crime are based on per 100,000 population, meaning, in 2017, there were 664 more incident reported incidents per 100,000 people in Canada.
Stats Can also points out, “Police data on hate-motivated crimes include only those incidents that come to the attention of police services and also depend on police services' level of expertise in identifying crimes motivated by hate.”
“When analyzing this data, it’s equally important to consider what the data does not show. The numbers don’t tell the story of victims who are targeted because of multiple aspects of their identity. For instance, hate crimes committed against an Arab Muslim woman or a Black Jewish man are not fully captured by the data. Additionally, the data does not speak to the issue of perception of identity. In some cases, Arabs, Sikhs and others are targeted because they are perceived to be Muslim, but the data isn’t able to account for this nuance. Therefore, there is an ongoing need for improvement to the data collection process on hate crimes in Canada,” says NCCM Communications Coordinator Leila Nasr.
Therefore, we need to understand that the problem is much wider and requires immediate attention of the authorities to deal with this epidemic. “This tells us that Islamophobia in Canada is getting more intense and more pervasive. And these numbers are just the tip of the iceberg - approximately two-thirds of hate crimes are never even reported to police for a variety of reasons including fear of retaliation, shame, and fear of not being believed by police,” says NCCM Executive Ihsaan Gardee.
Hate crimes increased by 47% overall, while those targeting Muslims increased by 151%. Black and Jewish communities also saw disturbing increases of 50% and 63% respectively.
“The data, while very unsettling for our communities, unfortunately does not surprise us. 2017 was an immensely difficult year for the Canadian Muslim community, beginning on January 29th with the single largest Islamophobic attack in Canada’s history in which six men were brutally murdered and many others injured while worshiping in their Quebec City mosque. This new data reveals Islamophobic hate crimes peaked in February 2017, signalling that the shooting very much set the tone for the increase in hate crimes against Muslims for the remainder of the year,” says Gardee.
The NCCM recently released an open letter, endorsed by over 100 Muslim organizations, faith-based groups and civil society allies, to the federal government asking for January 29 to be designated as a National Day of Action Against Hate and Intolerance.
According to Stat Can, “Hate crimes targeting religion up by more than 80%. Hate crimes against religion accounted for 41% of all hate crime in Canada in 2017 and the number of such hate crimes was up significantly from 2016. There were 842 hate crimes targeting religious groups in 2017, up 83% from the previous year. Increases were seen across all categories of religion, with those against the Muslim population reporting the greatest rise. Following a decrease in hate crimes against the Muslim population in 2016, numbers more than doubled in 2017 (+151%).”
For the benefit of our readers, we have further analyzed the Stat Can the data for the year 2017 in respect to BC, so we can see that although Ontario and Quebec saw the biggest increase, BC province is also not far behind. There were total of 255 incidents of hate crime reported in BC. That’s 44 more than the previous year, 2016.
The top ten cities which witnessed the highest reported crime, Vancouver is number nine, with 11.5 per 100,000 population in 2017, up from 8.5 in 2016, and Port Coquitlam is number ten, with 11.4 in 2017, from none in 2016.
Overall, BC ranked third with 255 reported incidents of hate crime, with Ontario at, 1023, and Quebec at 489.
Overall, the lion share of reported hate crimes were whopping 49% categorized as mischief, followed by 14% of uttering threats. 10 % involved level 1 assault, and 6% listed as public incitement of hatred and advocating genocide. Where as 5% were deemed as violent and 6% as non-violent crime.
There is definitely a need for raising awareness on this issue by educating our community members to report such incident, so a better understanding could be achieved as to how bad the situation really is, and resources could be allocated.
One such way to deal with this issue would be to form a committee comprising of community members to raise this issue with local police forces to launch an anti-hate campaign, such as the one launched by York’s Regional Police in Ontario.
Superintendent Ricky Veerappan, of York Regional Police told Macleans Magazine, “some of the large increase in police-reported hate crimes in the York region might be because of those outreach campaigns, in addition to an increase in the incidents themselves. “People are maybe a little bit more comfortable in connecting with the police, knowing the resources that are available, knowing the numbers to call and knowing members of our diversity unit are very accessible.”
A similar campaign seemingly worked for Guelph, Ontario. Although there was a sharp increase in reported Hate Crime “of 11.8 incidents per 100,000 people is the eighth highest for any police service covering a population of 50,000 or more. “The year before it was 10 [incidents],” Fraser said. “I’m not trying to downplay it, but it’s six more. It’s not like it jumped from 50 to 100,” Josh Fraser, public information officer with the Guelph Police Service, told Macleans.
Education, awareness, and most importantly reporting such incidents to the police is the key to better gauge the problem of Hate Crime. It can only be achieved with the help of the community members reporting such matters to the police within time so appropriate course of action could be taken.
By education, we mean not only educating our community members but educating mainstream Canadians about Islam and Muslim so they may have a better understanding of our religion, as many of these hate crimes are often linked to individuals who were simply acting or reacting to baseless misinformation perpetuated against Islam and Muslims by right wing groups on social media and elsewhere to perpetuate and incite hatred.
Footnotes:
|