Reluctance among residents in Quebec to accept thousands of Syrian refugees is deepening a rift with the province’s Muslim community, raising worries that more Muslims could become radicalized as they have in France and other European nations.
Like France, the French-speaking Canadian province has struggled to reconcile its secular identity with a rising Muslim population, many of them immigrants from North Africa.
Since last Friday’s attacks in Paris claimed by Islamic State militants, an anti-refugee petition launched in Quebec has garnered more than 75,000 signatures nationwide and Montreal police have arrested a man who posted a video on social media vowing to kill one Arab per week.
Canada’s plan to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year is facing resistance from some provincial and municipal leaders, who say the short time line does not allow for enough security checks. Quebec would take around 6,000 of the refugees.
“I’m in favor of helping the refugees in theory, but security needs to be a priority, and we also need to make sure that we are providing enough support for the immigrants that are already here. Honestly, I don’t think we’re ready for this,” said Alain Bernard, 55, from Quebec City.
Some Muslim residents, who in total number about 243,000 or 3 percent of Quebec’s population, find the argument weak.
“People here are brainwashed to fear us,” said Sabir Alizada, a 39-year-old Muslim immigrant from Azerbaijan, after evening prayers at a mosque in Quebec City.
“It used to be the West feared communism, now it fears Islam,” Alizada said.
France has one of the largest Muslim communities in any Western European nation and has seen tensions soar in recent years over issues similar to those appearing in Quebec.
Quebec’s Muslims have an unemployment rate over 17 percent, or more than double the provincial average, according to federal estimates, and ethnic minorities in the province tend to live in poor, ghetto-like neighborhoods.
“Marginalization is a serious concern, if you want to prevent the kind of thing that happened in Paris from happening here,” said Meriem Rebbani-Gosselin, a spokeswoman for the publicly funded Center for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence in Montreal.
Quebec was rocked last year by an attack in which a man, who law enforcement said was an Islamic radical, killed a Canadian soldier by ramming him with his car. Days later, a Quebec-born Muslim convert launched an attack on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, killing one soldier before being shot dead inside the Parliament building.
For members of Quebec’s Muslim communities, the debate over the Syrian refugees highlights the distrust of them they say has been deepening for years.
“We don’t ask for the security to be compromised, but to associate [terrorism] with the Syrian refugees is so much injustice,” said Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum in Montreal, which advocates for Muslim interests across Canada.
He said that Quebec appeared to have a higher level of distrust of its Muslims than other Canadian provinces, something he attributed to Quebec’s efforts to retain a distinct French culture in a mostly English-speaking country.
Quebec has attempted to separate from the rest of Canada twice since 1980, arguing its laws, language and culture are unique.
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