{"id":87479,"date":"2017-02-01T09:38:28","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T14:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=87479"},"modified":"2017-02-01T09:38:28","modified_gmt":"2017-02-01T14:38:28","slug":"canadians-need-to-talk-about-racism-and-islamophobia-legal-advocacy-groups-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/02\/01\/canadians-need-to-talk-about-racism-and-islamophobia-legal-advocacy-groups-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadians need to talk about racism and Islamophobia, legal advocacy groups say"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Canadians<\/a>
Canadians need to talk about racism and Islamophobia, legal advocacy groups say (Photo: Pedro Szekely\/Flickr<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

VANCOUVER\u2014Lawyers who launched a legal assistance hotline for victims of Islamophobia are urging Canadian citizens and politicians to talk more openly about the racism and xenophobia in their midst.<\/p>\n

Hasan Alam, a community liaison for the Islamophobia Legal Assistance Hotline, says the tragic killings of six men in a Quebec City mosque are a \u201charsh reminder\u201d of the fact that Islamophobia exists in Canada.<\/p>\n

He says Canadians often see race as a taboo topic, but greater awareness is needed of the hateful comments and attacks Muslims are experiencing, including a recent incident in Vancouver in which he says a woman’s hijab was ripped off.<\/p>\n

Alam says a range of legal groups in British Columbia came together to start the hotline last March after the National Canadian Council of Muslims reported a significant increase in Islamophobic incidents in the past two years.<\/p>\n

He says the reasons for this rise are complex and many, but during the last federal election a “divisive form of Islamophobic rhetoric” was used to single out Muslims as a threat, and Canadians are being exposed to a more extreme form of this rhetoric from the U.S.<\/p>\n

According to a Facebook profile in his name, the suspect in the Quebec City attack \u201cliked\u201d French far-right politician Marine Le Pen and U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Alam says politicians need to be aware that their statements can provide \u201ctacit approval\u201d for heinous acts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VANCOUVER\u2014Lawyers who launched a legal assistance hotline for victims of Islamophobia are urging Canadian citizens and politicians to talk more …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":87483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,18,16],"tags":[14496],"class_list":["post-87479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news-ca","category-news","tag-islamophobia","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}