Islamic Supremacy and Discrimination runs Deep in Canadian Social Equity Circles But Rarely Confronted

This week Markham-based Haleema Mustafa was arrested over allegations she left Canada to join ISIS (a Fascist Islamist militant group), the Public Prosecution Service of Canada confirmed in summer of 2020. Haleema’s husband and Guelph-based Ikar Mao was also faced with 2 terrorism-related charged by Canadian authorities. ISIS has been responsible for the genocide of thousands of native non-muslim people such as the Yezidis. It has also committed sex slavery of thousands of Yezidi women.

Most of Canadian media outlets have glossed over the details of Haleema and Ikar’s recent history that may had impact on other Canadians, as any form of extremism is not limited to isolated geographic regions. Take Haleema for example, she was given a platform in many Canadian media outlets including state-funded CBC and the Ryersonian  (the Ryerson University’s school of Journalism media site) to share her Muslim experiences in the Greater Toronto Area under the alias ‘Yung Samosas’. Also, according to her LinkedIn page, Mustafa studied social services and had moved on to a degree in human rights and equity studies at York University while participating in various ‘social justice’ campaigns. Her husband Ikar Mao was listed on York University Muslim Student Association’s 2018 financial report as being the public relations officer that would engage with diversity and inclusion-related organizations. Did any of these diversity and equity organizations condemn or share insight on Haleema’s past non-pluralism? Were they able to survey their members to see if there was any hostility, bigotry and Islamic supremacist narratives being shared on them?

The stark reality is human rights groups, diversity & inclusion, and anti-fascist groups are made of people that share different ideologies, religious-backgrounds and identities. However, what is rarely confronted or challenged is that these same groups who are meant to support social justice causes and provide platforms for human rights, pluralist and inclusive campaigns – are sometimes hijacked by fascist, totalitarian and non-pluralist minded individuals. For example, Mehdi Hasan, a muslim social and human rights activist who is widely known in global social justice organizations has promoted Islamic supremacy and far-right bigotry towards other people such as jews, LGBTQ, buddhists, indigenous and hindus before he was given a platform on major news outlets like CNN and Intercept. A few years ago there were a number of videos and screenshots of Mehdi Hasan calling kuffars (non-muslims) and LGBTQ/gays as dirty animals – yet, this brazen  public hate speech in support of islamic supremacy did not cancel his stature among these diversity and inclusion groups even at the expense of many non-muslims who had their safe spaces destroyed.

To think a group such as ISIS, who committed the most gruesome sex slavery and terror in the Middle East to people it deemed ‘not-muslim enough’ or simply kuffar (like the Yazidis), is supported and aided by westerners who went through many years of human rights, diversity and equity education. This raises the question of how this may have created a non-safe space for fellow classmates that did not belong to the same religious identity as Haleema. In a city like Markham, Ontario which is one of the most diverse and pluralist cities in Ontario, Canada, it’s impossible not to interact with ‘kuffars’ as it has large population of Sikhs, Chinese Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Atheists, Taoists, Muslims (Ahmadi, Sunni and Shia) and Jews. Therefore, we reached out to a few Buddhists, Sikh and Hindu youth who live in Markham and said they went to school with Haleema. Although, all people we spoke with wanted to remain anonymous, due to fear , it was told to us that they did often feel hostility. This hostility was not from Haleema only, it’s a wider issue where kuffars are seen as lesser humans and sometimes compared to animals. The hostility felt was typically based on narratives that ‘my faith (Islam) is better than yours’, even if unprovoked. One asian that went to school with Haleema mentioned that “religion someone out of nowhere would come up, even if we just learnt that a hip hop artist said an arabic word, then the discussion would be around how its cooler to be Muslim and other religions are junk that pray to animals. It was also like a competition how her faith (Islam) was better and the only true way to live.” Similar to white supermacy, Islamic supremacy is the belief that Muslim people are superior to those of all other religions, especially non-abrahamic and polytheist people, and should therefore have their ways of life dominate society.

We also reached out to a Yazidi man based in Ontario to get their thoughts on the latest news of living among ISIS-supporters. Izy, the name given to us to keep his identity anonymous said, “I have depression, anxiety even after moving in Canada after many friends and family were killed or kept as sex slaves for Islamist male fighters in ISIS, often facilitated by ISIS women. To know there are educated Muslim-youth who have been radicalized in Canada and live among me makes me more fearful as I fear they could threaten me here and try to pressure me to convert to Islam. I hope police and Canada take the threat of islamic extremism that targets kuffars seriously.” We asked Izy his thoughts on any actions that authorities could do to make Yezidi and Canadians who were impacted by ISIS violence feel safer? Izy mentioned that in Iraq and Syria, many Yezidis had sunni-Muslim friends and neighbors, but overnight some became radical and tried murdering them to show support/allegiance for ISIS when they entered the region. “How can authorities help us if we didn’t know that our own sunni neighbors of 20 years would want us dead only because our religion; what special machine will Canadian police have to identify extremist ISIS supporters 10 years before they choose to kill us?

A reminder to people of all faiths, to resist non-pluralist attitudes and to confront such bigotry in schools and ‘social equity and diversity groups’ that can contain normalized tones of bigotry and fascist sympathies. Even if one states that “their God is the only true God”, or “Non-believers will go to Hell”, this is a form of religious (Islamic or any faith) supremacy and bigotry towards those who have other identities.