This small excerpt from a huge story in the Vancouver Sun on September 9 2006 regarding the anniversary of terror attacks of 9/11 on the west makes one wonder about the allegiances of our “compatriots”. Or rather, sadly, it doesn’t.
He has posters of terrorists and fascists on his living room wall. And yet the Muslim subject “worries that a cloud of suspicion grows” in the community against Muslims like him.
Bear in mind the subject, a man named Mamdoh Ashir, works for the state. He’s an employee of the B.C. government.
Miro Cernetig, Vancouver Sun, Author of the story
SENSE OF UNEASE
Welcome,” says Mamdoh Ashir, beckoning a visitor into his ground-floor suite, inside a bungalow in one of Victoria’s leafy suburbs. “Please sit, have some tea. Some sugar?”
As the tea is being slowly sipped, the 44-year-old computer programmer for the provincial government says what many Canadian Muslims now feel: Life is still nice in Canada, which was not directly attacked, and he cherishes his adopted country. But maybe not as nice as before 9/11.
“My wife wears the hijab,” he says, running prayer beads through his fingers. “When we go to the mall, you can see people looking, there’s a different look now in some people’s eyes after 9/11.”
Actual slurs aren’t thrown the way of Ashir, who has close-cropped hair, western clothes and perfect English. “I can pass for anyone, French, English. . . . “But my wife,” he sighs, “she has the head covering. A few weeks ago, my wife and two other Muslim women were in a park, and someone gave them a rude gesture. To go home. She’s a Canadian.”
The occasional stereotyping is hardly a great hardship, he acknowledges. But with each new terrorist attack, or the discovery of alleged terrorists or terrorist plots in Canada, Ashir worries that a cloud of suspicion grows.
There is no sure way to say that Canadians’ relationships are effected by such reports. But one survey, carried out by Ipsos-Reid, does suggest that 9/11 did change the atmosphere in Canada. Released on the second anniversary of the attack on New York and Washington, D.C., it found that 35 per cent of Canadians admit to suspicion of Muslims in their midst.
Still, Ashir, whose family fled Baghdad for Canada to escape the regime of Saddam Hussein, says that he worries that Canadians will be less tolerant if the clashes between the Muslim world and outsiders increase.
He’s particularly anxious given his own, outspoken views that challenge the Canadian government’s foreign policy.
While Ashir denounces terrorism and all attacks on civilians, such as 9/11, he has turned his family’s living room into a shrine to his political beliefs. One wall of his living room features a life-sized portrait of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the organization that Canada has deemed a terrorist organization. On the other is a picture of former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. On his television are Arab-language newscasts pulled down by satellite dish from Iran and Syria and Lebanon.
“I don’t have Shaw cable,” he explains, as his TV flashes a re-created scene of an Israeli soldier slapping an Arab woman. “I can’t take all the western media always talking about mosques and terrorism. “For me the fascist is [U.S. President George] Bush. He is the terrorist.”
As the tea is finished, and his guest readies for departure, Ashir lets it be known that, as a devout Muslim, he’s not afraid to go and fight Americans in Iraq, or die tomorrow doing so.
“If I am called back to Iraq, I will go,” he said. “If there is a call to jihad, I will go. So will many others.”
And with that he turns and heads back into his bungalow, a man alone in front of a colour TV, flickering in the night with images from half a world away.
COMMENTS ARE TURNED OFF FOR THIS ENTRY—
GO TO OUR FORUMS INSTEAD (PLEASE!)….
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
Contact Mr. Johannesen about this article using this form. Please refer to article's title.
FOLLOW @JoelJohannesen ON X!
- Say something. - Friday October 25, 2024 at 6:03 pm
- Keep going, or veer right - Monday August 26, 2024 at 4:30 pm
- Hey Joel, what is “progressive?” - Friday August 2, 2024 at 11:32 am
