Image by Hendra via Adobe Stock

On October 7, 2023, I was just about three months pregnant. As a genocide unfolded before our eyes in the weeks that followed, I reflected a lot on the parallel lives mothers live on both sides of this dystopian world.

Like many others, my social media feed exposed me to countless images of the Israeli military’s atrocities in Palestine. Images of shrapnel seared into the bodies of innocent Gazans are seared into my brain like scars: a woman silently mourning as she tightly hugs a child-sized body bag. A damaged incubator containing shrivelling babies. A girl hanging limp over the window of her destroyed home. Wide-eyed toddlers shaking uncontrollably as they begin to process the trauma that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Many of these images were censored, black squares politely asking me whether I still wanted to view the photos that they concealed. Apparently their contents were too heinous to set eyes on, and yet not heinous enough to end in reality. There was always the occasional image that slipped by uncensored. In those moments, I wished I had not logged on. I cried often. I was pregnant, but these tears were not hormonal. They were human. I often had to force myself to move away from the screen to limit the horrors I was viscerally absorbing, as if to protect the baby that was living through me.

It was an unusual time to be pregnant, to be growing a new life as I witnessed the lives of others being ended so mercilessly. Over the span of three months of genocide, 20,000 babies were born in Gaza. As I planned for my son’s future, over 16,000 children were killed, futures completely obliterated. Of the nearly 1.1 million children in Gaza, those that survived now faced malnutrition, disease, physical disability, and psychological trauma. As I received excellent care in Toronto through regular prenatal appointments, I read about the horrific and life-threatening conditions that 50,000 expectant mothers in Gaza endured, birthing in unsanitary conditions on rubble-filled floors with limited access to medication. As I felt the pain from the stitches of my C-section for weeks, I remembered the mothers who were forced to have emergency C-sections with no anesthesia. I cannot conceive of their unfathomable pain and the trauma that will forever be bound to the memories of how they welcomed their babies into the world. As one mother from Gaza, Um Raed, told Al Jazeera, “Since the birth, I’ve not known whether I should be focusing on my contractions or on the sound of warplanes overhead. Should I be worrying about my baby, or should I be afraid of whatever attacks are happening at that moment?”

Though my pregnancy felt challenging, my baby boy arrived, healthy and present. When I caressed and gently wrapped his little body in soft swaddles, I kept getting intrusive flashbacks of those babies whose tiny bodies were maimed before their first birthdays, and of those who did not even reach this milestone at all, wrapped in white shrouds. While I had the privilege of enjoying my baby’s first winter through a festive holiday season, I also got chills thinking about the infants in Gaza who have frozen to death.

I often wondered about the purpose of bringing new life into this world full of anger and injustice and pain. But if there is anything I have learned from the Palestinian people, it is their deep-rooted resilience, one that stems from the same faith that I share with them as a Muslim, but has been put to the test in ways I can’t comprehend. They provide us with an important lesson on finding purpose in a world littered with inhumanity: we all have a responsibility to be active agents, building a more just world for all. From the articles and poems we read and write to the dinner table conversations we partake in using the knowledge we choose to seek, from the silent donning of a keffiyeh to the ways in which we raise and speak to our children about the world and its people, we all have, within our own skillsets and capacities, in our respective spheres of life, the ability to partake in this global, growing tide of activism.

Over the course of a year, we contributed what we could. Never has the world been so vocal in its support for a free Palestine. Boycotts have proven successful, careers have been put at stake, and a new media outlet, Zeteo, has emerged, questioning the status quo and bringing challenging conversations to the forefront so that we no longer have to tiptoe carefully around the subject of an ongoing genocide.

Despite the signing of a ceasefire deal 465 days later, we will continue to learn, speak, cry, create, call out, and call it like it is. In doing so, we will watch the tide continue to rise, from the river to the sea, in all ages and stages of life, until injustice is entirely swept away.

Photo courtesy Rahim Thawer.

Growing up in an Ismaili Muslim community in Toronto, there was no explicit acceptance of queer folks, says Thawer. “I simply did not know where to look to find other people like myself.”

At the age of 23, Thawer finally found his people at Salaam Canada, a social network and support group for those who identify as both Muslim and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer. The volunteer-run organization based in Toronto, which opened briefly in the 1990s but closed after two years due to violent responses and threats from other parts of Canada and the United States, reopened in 2000. Salaam now offers monthly gatherings and refugee support. It also hosts an annual Peace Iftar during Ramadan, and hosts meetings about human rights and social justice issues within the LGBTQ and Muslim communities.

Today, Salaam Canada is associated with over 20 organizations across Canada and others worldwide, including NAZ Male Health Organization in Pakistan and The Inner Circle in South Africa.

The traditional schools of Islamic law (and many other religions) consider non-heterosexual acts a sin. Many have been forced into arranged marriages, been shunned by loved ones, or forced out of their native countries in fear of being killed.

For Thawer, maintaining his faith while embracing his sexual and gender identity was a process of anticipating loss of community and friends, and then coping with that loss. “My identity formation centered on a belief that my queerness was a deficiency I should correct and compensate for,” says Thawer, who’s now part of the core organizing team of Salaam Canada. “I’ve overcome the weight of these experiences by surrounding myself with affirming people.”

As Thawer points out, offering the space and support to help reconcile one’s identity is a rare but critical service. “We then get to think about what could Islam mean for me if I was queer and trans? Does it have a place in my life? Do I want it to be a spiritual thing in my life or do I want to reclaim it as a cultural part of who I am?”

When it comes to Muslims, even the good news stories can turn ugly. Take this example from September 2016: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited a mosque during Eid, one of the holiest celebrations in the Islamic calendar, to pay his respects. The story morphed into something sinister and malevolent.

Several newspapers owned by Postmedia reported that the mosque our prime minister was stepping into—and the imam who leads it—have ties to terrorism; that the mosque is sexist for separating men and women; and that the PM can’t really be a feminist if he is prepared to speak before such a gathering. “If Canada’s prime minister were a woman, she wouldn’t have been permitted where Justin Trudeau stood earlier this week: on the ground floor of a gender-segregated Ottawa mosque for Eid al-Adha celebrations,” wrote one columnist erroneously in the National Post.

The contention that women couldn’t speak anywhere in the mosque was refuted a few days later by a female Liberal MP who shared her own experience of appearing at the front of that very mosque on various occasions. Irrespective of the truth, the mosque and those who frequent such spaces were framed as being at odds with Canadian “values,” considered a threat to be marginalized and avoided. The stories led to at least one hateful and threatening email that was reported to police, never mind the vitriol spewed in various comment sections and on social media.

In the public imagination, the mosque symbolizes a space representative of the more than one million Canadian Muslims who call this country home. And that not all mosques are the same, or that there are many Muslims working to make these spaces more inclusive and welcoming doesn’t always matter when it comes to media coverage.

Some media outlets and personalities view stories like this one as an opportunity to perpetuate stereotypes and stoke fear. They seem to bank on heightened anxiety around violent extremism, Syrian refugees, xenophobia, and divisive political rhetoric calling into question the loyalty of Muslim minorities in the Western world, reinforcing the harmful narratives promoted by violent extremists: that Muslims can never belong here.

No one has studied the roots of this phenomenon in Canada, but according to an in-depth U.S. study, it’s estimated that seven American foundations have spent more than $42.6 million between 2001–2009 to promote anti-Muslim narratives. “The efforts of a small cadre of funders and misinformation experts were amplified by an echo chamber of the religious right, conservative media, grassroots organizations, and politicians who sought to introduce a fringe perspective on American Muslims into the public discourse,” says the report, “Fear, Inc. 2.0.” Our borders are porous in more ways than one; these “perspectives” influence Canadians too.

All of this despite the fact that polling indicates a majority of Canadian Muslims are deeply proud of this country, a democratic and prosperous nation where religion can be practiced freely, citizens can contribute positively to the wider communities without fear of discrimination, and where it isn’t impossible to dream of opportunities for oneself or one’s family—theoretically, at least.

As Canadians confront painful truths about this country—its treatment of First Nations, ongoing racial profiling, sexism in our institutions, and countless other social justice travesties—we turn to the media to understand the various sides of an issue and to find solutions to our myriad social inequities and challenges. But that’s not always the way media producers handle this immense responsibility, desperate for clicks and in a constant rush to capture fleeting attention in a 24-hour news cycle where speed often matters more than accuracy or balance. These compromised standards of journalistic ethics and integrity seem to erode further when it comes to talking about Muslims in Canada.

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There was clearly a deliberate attempt at scoring political points by suggesting that Trudeau had no feminist backbone in speaking before a segregated prayer space during Eid. But the story was presented to bolster these negative connotations, even if the supposed offences weren’t actually rooted in fact. For one, there were women at the front of the room that day, despite reports that stated otherwise; at least one columnist had to change her piece when notified of the obvious error. And separation between men and women occurs primarily during prayer services, as with most religious prayers in other faith communities. It quickly became evident that suggesting separation is sexist only when in the context of Muslim prayer space was an attempt to reinforce stereotypes.

Muslims are more frequently becoming a proxy for political manoeuvrings, as seen in the last federal election and in the last Quebec provincial election, with all the talk of banning religious clothing from citizenship oaths and workplaces. The challenge in even speaking to such slanted stories means there’s little room for nuance. Addressing universal struggles for greater female empowerment, for example, could be used as evidence of rampant patriarchy if mentioned in this context. It’s too often a lose-lose.

These Islamophobic themes in our media mean that struggling for social justice within our own faith spaces and calling for change can be a challenge. Fellow community members might see it as “airing dirty laundry” at a time when our communities are under intense scrutiny. Others might view it as fuelling the Islamophobes. We’re left wondering what we can safely say, and how we can call for positive change in such a divisive climate.

To top it all off, a third of Canadians have a negative perception of Islam and Muslims, according to the recent Environics Survey of Muslims in Canada. Other polling shows that people who actually know a Muslim will be far more likely to have a positive impression. But when our daily media diet is persistently negative, painting Muslims as a fifth column, barbaric, sexist, dangerous, deceptive, and problematic, how can we blame people for simply wondering—even on a most basic level—what gives?

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Just a few weeks prior to the mosque “controversy,” the Canadian Press ran a terribly damaging story about a so-called report by a couple of self-proclaimed researchers with the headline, “Mosques and schools in Canada filled with extremist literature: study.” How such a study was published at all is a mystery: it wasn’t peer-reviewed, and it did not contain any actual data, other than a few anecdotes clearly aimed at scaring people. “Many of those present during the visits to the libraries seemed sullen and sometimes angry. The traditional greetings of friendship were absent,” one particularly ridiculous section reads. “This is consistent with the increasing general angriness of Islamist/extremist views being advanced in some local mosques.”

Canadian Press editor-in-chief Stephen Meurice issued something of a mea culpa, admitting the story required actual responses from Canadian Muslim organizations before being published. But it was too little, too late. The Toronto Star also had to apologize for accompanying the piece with a picture of an unrelated Toronto mosque.

Most other media organizations that ran the original article didn’t publish a follow-up piece with responses from Canadian Muslim organizations countering the claims in the so-called study. In fact, an academic who wanted to share her own experience researching an Islamic school wasn’t able to find a single editor who would publish her commentary. She resorted to posting it on a Huffington Post blog. Writing for VICE, Davide Mastracci was the only journalist to do a full take-down in a piece aptly titled, “That Study About Extremist Mosques in Canada Is Mostly Bullshit.”

Do editors fail to see how such lopsided negative coverage impacts Canadian Muslims? Do people think we live in some kind of vacuum—that what is said on television or online won’t directly affect how we’re treated at work, by our neighbours, or on the streets? Hate crimes against Muslims in this country are rising at an alarming rate, doubling between 2012–2014 as they decline overall by comparison to other targeted communities. Sure, media are supposed to be “neutral,” but being fair and responsible doesn’t negate that neutrality.

The Toronto Star, despite its recent fault with the mosque story, actually leads the way when it comes to coverage of Islam and Muslims. Last spring, the country’s largest newspaper concluded that using the Islamic State to describe the violent extremist group was wrong. The newspaper decided to use Daesh, the Arabic acronym of the group, instead. It’s the term used by foreign leaders around the world, even recently adopted by our own government as the most accurate term to describe this “multinational gang of killers and rapists” as described by the Star’s editor-in-chief, Michael Cooke.

And yet, even after Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale made the announcement in August 2016 that Daesh is the right label to use, most Canadian media outlets continue to use the other term, feeding into a violent extremist myth: that this group is Islamic and that it is a state.

And there are studies that demonstrate how disproportionate negative coverage of Islam and Muslims can be. One American study published in the Journal of Communication found that between 2008–2012, 81 percent of stories about terrorism on U.S. news programs were about Muslims, while only six percent of domestic terrorism suspects were actually Muslim. A Canadian study looked at New York Times headlines over a 25-year span and found that Muslims garnered more negative headlines than cocaine, cancer, and alcohol. It’s quite likely that Canadian media are similarly inclined. Here in Canada, author and academic Karim H. Karim has described much of the media framing of Islam and Muslims as constructing “an Islamic Peril.”

More recently, a series of articles in the Spring 2016 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism (RRJ) points out grave deficits in Canadian media’s ability to reflect and report fairly on diverse communities. “Questioning the intentions of journalists is fundamental to admitting that Canadian news has a race problem, but it doesn’t mean all outlets will be quick to address it,” concluded Eternity Martis in a piece exploring media coverage of Toronto’s gang and gun violence and the perpetuation of stereotypes related to Black communities. To scapegoat an entire group for the violent actions of a few sounds eerily familiar, even if nonsensical.

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Where does that leave us? We could talk about diversifying newsrooms, but that doesn’t fully solve the problem. Muslim journalists and writers can also face soul-destroying hate mail and attack, and even harassment from fellow colleagues, as has been reported to the National Council of Canadian Muslims, where I work. Though, no doubt, “building diversity is a collaborative effort,” as Anda Zeng rightfully concludes in a RRJ piece titled “Token Effort.”

For those of us engaged in the struggle, we should keep pushing back, writing commentary pieces, speaking out. But, again, there are limitations. Sometimes even reacting to a particular narrative frame confirms that you and your community are a problem to sort out. After all, “even though some Western media try to provide fair and balanced representations of Muslims, stereotypical media depictions of them are more common in Western societies,” notes University of Ottawa academic Mahmoud Eid in a 2014 collection, Re-Imagining the Other: Culture, Media, and Western-Muslim Intersections.

The good news is that Islamophobia is finally being acknowledged as a real concern in this country. With the rise in police-reported hate crimes, and in an increase in the number of Canadian Muslims who are reporting experiences of discrimination and fears of stereotyping, others are taking notice. There is a growing realization that fighting against this form of hatred is right up there with fighting against all other forms of intolerance. More and more people are also hearing the multitude of voices speaking out against violent extremism, and confronting the false interpretations that seek to justify criminal behaviour in the name of our faith.

Equally hopeful is the growing number of young people taking to their microphones, their pens, their video cameras and their phones, putting new narratives forward, creating new characters, and sharing new and authentic experiences to change attitudes and perceptions. “Pop culture has the biggest chance of countering Islamophobia,” said author and commentator Reza Aslan in March 2016 during a panel on Islam and the media in Oshawa, Ont. He’s totally right. Whether we’re talking about Muslim characters in the hugely successful past series Little Mosque on the Prairie (which broke CBC’s record of audience viewership during its debut), or in the teenage drama Degrassi, people want to be entertained. It’s a bonus if one can both entertain and deconstruct stereotypes— kind of like when moms blend vegetables into spaghetti sauce.

But we can’t sit back and wait for more cultural arts to feature Muslim perspectives and realities. That will take time, encouragement, and investment. For now, news media must check their own biases when choosing which stories to run, which voices to feature, and which sides to ignore. It isn’t just a matter of ethical journalism. It’s a matter of being on the right side of history and not inadvertently on the side of those who aim to construct figurative divides.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of writer Davide Mastracci. This regrets the error.

That wild bolshevik magazine Time has had the gall to question the notion that America is the best country in the world. The March 14th cover story, by Fareed Zakaria displays a red foam finger the reads “We’re #1” pointing downwards. “Yes, America is in decline,” reads the caption.

Some could argue that the U.S really hasn’t been in the best shape for a while now. In Canada, we have this crazy notion that Americans—occasionally—look at things from a different angle. Speaking of backwards, turn that Time cover upside down and there is a caption that reads “Yes, America is still No. 1.”

Of course the statistics say that over a year ago the unemployment rate was the worst it has been since 1983, with 15.7 million Americans out of work. Also, the U.S. is starting to fall behind other nations in terms of life expectancy, infrastructure, and is now only the 4th strongest economy in the world.

CNN specials airing this past weekend tried to advise the discouraged and unemployed with strategies on how pull themselves up by their boot straps and get back to work.

Of course this might require learning some Mandarin and having your evening news read by—gasp—a Muslim. Shockingly, some Americans aren’t too happy about this, because while millions have been out of work they have also been living under a rock. The comments on the CNN web page describing Fareed Zakaria’s feature story and his TV special “Restoring the American Dream: Getting Back to #1″ show how truly excited and open American audiences are to inform themselves and discuss change. The comment section is a swamp of racist horror that you do not need to read in full. But a few choice excerpts illustrates the point.

One commenter asks “Why is CNN/Time giving this MUSLIM a platform to trash America?” Then he/she proceeds to tell Zakaria (degrees from Yale and Harvard in hand, presumably) that he should go back to where he came from: his “shit-hole birth place INDIA.” Another asks: “Is he even American? It seems he would more likely be worried about where he is from. We don’t need some Indian telling us what we should be doing.”

Yes, America, though your economy is teetering, your political system dysfunctional, and your populace increasingly unhealthy, when it comes to weird xenophobic internet trolls, you truly are a city on a hill.

1838–1850 Great Britain’s Chartist movement, which is steeped in Methodist thought, becomes among the first broad labour movements in modern history. Prominent members William Lovett and Joseph Sturge, and much of the Methodist clergy, consider it their Christian duty to bring freedom and social justice to all, following the example of Christ. Although the movement faded after 1850, it precipitated the Reform Act of 1867, which extended the vote to the working class.

1915-1947 Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian National Congress, and the Hindu Mahasabha (a nationalist organization) use the Hindu principle of non-violence to guide their struggle for an independent India. They lead several non- violent events including the Salt March, boycotts against British goods, and the Quit India movement, resulting in the country’s 1947 liberation.

1930 Zainab Al-Ghazali founds the Muslim Women’s Association and fights for women’s liberation within an Islamic framework. Al-Ghazali believes Islam gave women a tremendous amount of rights when it came to the family, so the MWA focuses on helping poor families, mediating family disputes, and giving women access to education.

1940s Reeling from the Holocaust, Jewish NGOs band together to push for a universal system of human rights. Their determination contributes to the UN adopting the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, in Canada, the Canadian Jewish Congress played an important role at the Senate hearings of 1950 that explored human rights here at home.

1957–1965 Backed by dozens of southern Baptist churches, Dr. Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference plays a central role in the civil rights movement, pressuring the U.S. government to pass the 1964 law ending school segregation and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Today Environmentalism is the latest social movement to get a boost by organized religion. Several Christian organizations, including the Evangelical Environmental Network that has reached 35,000 churches, actively encourage believers to care for God’s gifts by living a greener lifestyle.

Newspaper photo editors show their creativity when selecting images for this story. Bottom left is from the Star, that actually dispatched a photographer instead of using the file-photo cliché of "eyes peeking through veil"

Quebec is going ahead with its ludicrous ban on religious head-coverings like the niqab and the burka on provincial government property. It’s an astonishing piece of legislation that manages the improbable feat of being baselessly arbitrary and obviously xenophobic. The whole law is crafted to be targeted at a single identifiable—and extremely tiny—minority, but Premier Jean Charest swears up and down that it’s simply intended to ensure that everyone has to show their face to get government services. But everyone understands that the real point of the law is to get a handful of observant muslim women to take off their niqabs—just Google “niqab ban,” and it’s pretty obvious that everyone knows the score. It’s a creepy piece of social engineering, with added bonus dashes of Islamophobia and paternalism.

Constitutional experts called up by newspapers are pretty unanimous in their opinion that this is unconstitional and will be challenged right out of the gate:

“This legislation will probably be considered a breach of human rights,” said Lorraine Weinrib, a leading constitutional expert and professor with the University of Toronto’s law school. […]

By cutting off access to such services to health care and education to women who are following Muslim dress codes, Ms. Weinrib said Quebec is “discriminating” and “disadvantaging” people on the basis of their religion and gender.

“Denying people health care or other government services is such a draconian result, it seems extreme,” she said.

The Law is Cool blog has an extended post today on the niqab law and why it is both legally and ethically untenable. I would encourage you to give it a read — it gives a lengthy primer on some of the core principles of Canadian charter rights, and how they apply specifically in this case. And it goes deeply into the complexities of religious and cultural accommodation: It’s perfectly reasonable to query the religious, social, gender, and cultural dilemmas posed by the niqab. The reasons that some women wear them are numerous and complex—I even believe that quite a few of them are not good reasons, but it’s not up to me.

Cynically, I think the Charest government knows that the law is unconstitutional, and is introducing it to stir the electoral interest of a (depressingly large) segment of society that mistrusts immigrants in general and muslims in particular. There’s nothing like a manufactured bogeyman to spook the base into action.

Two Afghan women wear burkas in Northern Afghanistan. Creative Commons photo by Steve Evans.

Banning burkas has long been a popular idea among immigration hardliners on the European right, who claim that the head-to-toe woman’s garment is a matter of national security. Canadians may scoff at such paranoia, but the idea is gaining some momentum here, and the push is coming from an unexpectedly liberal source. Last October, the Muslim Canadian Congress asked Ottawa to introduce legislation outlawing both the burka and niqab, calling them “political symbols of Saudi-inspired Islamic extremism.”

While MCC senior vice president Salma Siddiqui argues the ban is needed to address possible security risks posed by citizens who can’t be easily identified, it’s not the organization’s only concern. Indeed, second to security, the MCC has some underlying (and more compelling) feminist goals. Just ask MCC communications director Farzana Shahid-Hassan, who accuses Islamists of pushing back the equality clock, telling media: “It is of utmost importance that the Canadian government take the lead and end this medieval misogynist practice once and for all.” Both she and Siddiqui dismiss the notion that burkas are protected by the Charter’s right to religious freedom. For proof, they point to prominent Egyptian imam sheik Muhammad Tantawi’s edict declaring the garments a cultural tradition—not a religious duty. “It cannot be argued anymore that [wearing the burka] is a religious right,” says Siddiqui.

…but banning the burka is not the answer

Last June, French President Nicolas Sarkozy slammed the burka during a joint session of parliament: “In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity.” Though Sarkozy might find it difficult to imagine anyone choosing to don a burka, not every woman who does is forced to. “It’s insulting to the intelligence of women who wear the burka to say they oppress themselves by making this choice,” says Alaa Elsayed, Islamic Society of North America-Canada’s director of religious affairs. The key word here is choice. In Canada, there are no reasonable grounds to ban any form of religious or cultural clothing, and though sheik Tantawi’s liberal interpretation of Islam is laudable, no one person can determine how every Muslim must observe their faith. Telling women what they can and cannot wear will not address root causes of misogyny and oppression. To do that, we must ensure all Canadians understand their rights while providing recourse for women who feel shunned or threatened by elements in their religious and cultural communities. Anything less amounts to little more than grandstanding.

The fight for free speech is not the work of angels. Academics love Evelyn Hall’s famous saying, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” In the age of promiscuous online speech, the sentiment of two university protestors seems more apt: “Free speech for all. Even douchebags.”

Marc Lemire, the cherubic-faced webmaster of white supremacist Freedomsite, is the latest unpalatable hero in the fight to fix Canada’s hate speech laws. On September 2, the Canadian Human Rights Commission vice-chairperson, Athanasios Hadjis, acquitted Lemire of hate speech charges for comments on the site accusing gays of conspiring to spread AIDS. Hadjis also declared the Section 13 hate speech provisions of Canada’s Human Rights Act unconstitutional. The decision is not legally binding. But it should be.

In addition to Canada’s rarely applied criminal laws against hate speech, human-rights commissions have had the authority to prosecute hate speech since 1977. This was expanded to include internet-based hate in 2001. The tribunal has a staggeringly low burden of proof compared to most legal proceedings; for instance, it’s easier to prosecute someone for hate speech than it is for libel. And until Lemire’s case, no one had ever been acquitted of hate speech by the CHRC, a record that would be scandalous for any other court. It puts Canada at odds with the hate speech laws of most other nations. It also puts us at odds with our own values.

We protect religion and equality because we recognize that these freedoms make individuals’ lives better. But we protect expression because unfettered dissent is the only way to protect democracy. When a government official sits across from conservative blogger Ezra Levant in a 25-square-foot conference room and asks him to explain his decision to publish the infamous Danish Mohammed cartoons, she is asking a single citizen to justify his political beliefs before the power of the state. Levant may be a blowhard, but that scenario should give everyone—left, right, whatever—serious pause.

The stated reason for upholding hate speech laws is that they protect minorities from greater harm. Or, as Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, ominously puts it:, “Racist war, from the ethnic cleansing in Cambodia, to the Balkans, to Darfur, to the Holocaust, did not start in a vacuum. Hateful words do have an effect.” We need a better justification than comparing ourselves to far-flung genocidal regimes. In Canada, we already prosecute rare hate-based assaults, murder, and yes, genocide. Hate speech laws punish people for creating the mere potential for violence, even though violence rarely materializes.

Even if hate speech rarely leads to violence, it is true that it demoralizes minorities and threatens tolerance. After anti-Islamic comments by Levant and Maclean’s columnist Mark Steyn made headlines, a poll found that 45 percent of Canadians believe Islam promotes hatred and violence. The CHRC is right to worry about this kind of view taking hold. But trying to ban speech, especially on the internet, only gives it wings. When Levant posted the videos of his CHRC hearings to YouTube they received over 500,000 hits, and clips were featured on numerous mainstream media programs.

The (re)legalization of hate speech would be difficult and unpalatable. But we don’t have to approve of what the douchebags say—we just have to let them say it.

I was sitting in my meditation practice working on quieting my thoughts when it hit me—religion could stop climate change.

Well perhaps it wasn’t such a stroke of enlightenment, as it was keeping my ears open.  In this style of Buddhism led by Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thích Nhất Hạnh, the practice contains the reading of five trainings which guide meaningful living.  In a revised set of these precepts developed by the community of participants, the second of the five calls for personal action to solve a global problem: “I am committed to practicing Right Livelihood so that I can help reduce the suffering of living beings on Earth and reverse the process of global warming.”

So explicit. No messing around. Why can’t our political leaders be so clear in their action? But it’s not just the Buddhists—let’s turn to the far right.

Evangelicals are making a stand on climate. And although there is not consensus within the community south of the border, youth from Christian colleges who met in Seattle three years ago released their own Declaration on climate change.

Back home the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada saw the environment as one of its top issues in the last election and implored people of faith to ask their candidates questions on global environmental protection.

“We were created by God along with all the other things and living creatures, and God created humankind to be stewards of His creation,” read their election kit.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops at the same time showed the same concern about our responsibility for the planet, and took the insight a step further, stating that the political choice between saving the environment and saving jobs “is a symptom of a profound imbalance between economic activities and the place of the human being in nature.”

In 2007 I attended a conference on world religions organized by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community that brought representatives from major religions together to ask what religion can do.

The examples within organized religion could clearly go on and on.

So if all of this support for climate action in the religious community, and of course much from science-loving atheists and humanists, why the lack of government action?

The climate movement has thus far failed to build coalitions that work.

Make no mistake, we’re doing a lot better than we used to.  The Climate Action Network Canada now counts labour, youth and feminist organizationss and quasi-religious/social justice groups like KAIROS as members and supporters.  But just “representing” millions on Canadians won’t cut it.

UBC forestry prof George Hoberg blogged that “Efforts thus far to use science-based arguments to motivate adults and the politicians responsible to them have generally not been successful in producing strong climate policies,” and that a wake-up call from youth to their parents may be the groundswell needed to succeed.

The youth movement, in concert with their older counterparts, must be a big, dynamic tent. If results are to happen in Canada through the democratic system, the challenge will be to connect and message the climate crisis (or its necessary strategies and outcomes) as a political issue that will resonate at the ballot box in a way that is has not yet done. We need millions of everyday folks writing in for action.

How do we mobilize the meditators and the church-goers and the workers and the bankers to care?  Maybe start with this: 1) think of the best way to talk about it and connect with coalition partners and 2) go out and talk. 3) Listen to what you hear back, and repeat until it’s done right.

The Islamic punk music scene would never have existed if it weren’t for his 2003 novel, The Taqwacores. Melding the Arabic word for god-consciousness with the edge of hardcore punk, Michael imagined a community of Muslim radicals: Mohawked Sufis, riot grrrls in burqas with band patches, skinhead Shi’as. These characters were entirely fictional.

But the movement they inspired is very real.

Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam follows Michael and his real-life kindred spirits on their first U.S. tour, where they incite a riot of young hijabi girls at the largest Muslim gathering in North America after Sena takes the stage. The film then travels with them to Pakistan, where members of the first Taqwacore band, The Kominas, bring punk to the streets of Lahore and Michael begins to reconcile his fundamentalist past with the rebel he has now become.

By stoking the revolution—against traditionalists in their own communities and against the clichés forced upon them from the outside—“we’re giving the finger to both sides,” says one Taqwacore. “Fuck you and fuck you.”

Sounds to me like a much-needed retort to the kind of reductive, ridiculous, or racist (or all three!) portrayals of Muslims in Western pop culture. Can’t wait to see it. Taqwacore plays this weekend in Toronto, and opens in Montreal on Monday.