Ikechukwu Ibebugwu

January 29 has been designated by the Canadian government as the National Day of Remembrance of the Quebec City Mosque Attack and Action Against Islamophobia – an opportunity to honour the survivors and victims of a violent hate-motivated attack on Muslim worshipers at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Sainte-Foy, Quebec in 2017. It is also a day to commit to ongoing efforts to combat Islamophobia in all of its manifestations from biased and bigoted attitudes, to individual and systemic acts of discrimination, to hate-motivated violence.

Sadly, Islamophobic hate crimes in Canada are on the rise, along with other forms of bias motivated hate crimes. In 2021, police-reported hate crimes in Canada demonstrated a rise in hate crimes motivated by race or ethnicity as well as by religion. While Islamophobia represented 4 per cent of all reports, it increased by a staggering 71 per cent over the previous year. And, because the Muslim Ummah (community) is ethno-racially and globally diverse, Islamophobia often manifests in intersecting ways with other forms of race or ethnicity based hate, and particularly with anti-Black, anti-Arab, and/or anti-Asian racism. Anti-Black hate crimes represented the greatest proportion of hate crimes reported, at 19 per cent, while hate crimes targeting Arab/West Asian and South Asian people represented 5 per cent and 5 per cent of all reports, and increased by 46 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively.

Join UBC students, faculty, and staff to honour the survivors and victims of the Quebec attack and other violence targeting Muslims, to learn more about Islamophobia and intersecting forms of racism, and to personally commit to combating hate in all of its forms. Click here for more information.

While hate speech and bias motived violence are criminal offenses in Canada and should be reported to the police, bias motivated discrimination contravenes UBC’s Discrimination Policy, which is guided by the BC Human Rights Code. For more information about how to report hate, Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination on campus, view the UBC Discrimination Complaint Process found on the Human Rights Advising page.

Arig al Shaibah, PhD

Associate Vice-President, Equity and Inclusion

On January 27, UBC community members are encouraged to pause to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, designated by the United Nations to honour the memory of six million people of Jewish identity and millions of others who were killed through the genocidal regime of Nazi Germany, including those targeted based on their ability, ethnicity, religious and political beliefs, and/or sexual orientation (for example, people with disabilities, 2SLGTBQIA+ people, Roma, Black people, Slavic people and Jehova’s witnesses). It is also a day to recognize and resist the racial and religious bias, stereotypes, and intolerance that historically enabled human atrocities against Jewish peoples and which persist to this day. According to Statistics Canada, anti-Semitic hate crimes represented 15 per cent of the 2021 police-reported hate crimes in Canada, and they increased by 47 per cent over the previous year. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was established as an aspirational international humanitarian effort to promote universal human rights.