Concerning “Islamophobia”, Modifying The IHRA Definition Of Antisemitism Would Well Serve Muslims In Canada

In its 2018 budget, the federal government announced its intention to formulate its anti-racism strategy.

The Federal approach to this definition is set out in the government’s publication Building a Foundation for Change: Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy 2019-2022 (“strategy”). This document needs to be read together with the document published  contemporaneously by the Government of Canada titled  Anti-Racism Action Program (“ARAP”) , and the pre-existing document titled Community Support, Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Initiatives (CSMARI).

The Anti-Racism Action Program is “intended to help address barriers to employment, justice and social participation among Indigenous Peoples racialized communities and religious minorities… ARAP will also prioritize projects that target online hate and promote digital literacy…”

According to Pablo Rodriguez, Minister of Heritage at the time and now Government House leader,  the strategy fulfils the key recommendations  of the  2018 report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage titled Racism and Religious Discrimination  including Islamophobia in response to the Parliamentary motion M-103, which the Prime Minister  put through the House of Commons after defeating the procedural  motion of the Official Opposition. They had simply sought the M.P. who tabled the motion to provide a precise definition of the term “Islamophobia” – and she refused to do so.

According to a statement issued by the Minister’s office, “[the strategy which will cost $45 million] helps advance the government of Canada’s vision of fostering and promoting a more inclusive and equitable country for all Canadians.”

Strategy defines Islamophobia as follows:

“Includes, racism, stereotypes, prejudice, fear or acts of hostility   directed towards individual Muslims or followers of Islam in general. In addition to individual acts of intolerance and racial profiling. Islamophobia can lead to viewing and treating Muslims as a greater security threat on an institutional systemic basis.”

This definition is beset with so many problems and consequently does not commend itself to be adopted as national consensual definition.

– The first problem, a serious one with the definition is that it is open-ended. It merely includes certain things, but fails to provide the rest of it.

– The second problem with the definition is redundancy: surely if one is a Muslim, his religion is Islam then ipso facto he is a follower of Islam.

– The third problem is the rather unrealistic nature of the definition. It is hard to imagine how a person in fear of some people would want to commit an offence against them.

– The fourth problem is the failure of the definition to capture and respect the essence of term.

In this instance, the definition ignores the central notion of phobia. A phobia is not merely a fear; it is an irrational fear, and since it is irrational it is a self-induced one. 

The government cannot have it both ways; namely, retaining the term while defining it in a manner that does not correspond to its essence.

Nevertheless, the government still refuses to provide the full definition for reasons which are unfathomable other than the current thinking that the government is playing identity politics.