Thank you, Madam Chair, for convening today's meeting.

Good morning, respected parliamentarians and staff. Thank you so much for inviting me to present today at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

I am here in my personal capacity as a human rights advocate who “wears many hijabs”, as I like to say. I'm a founding board member of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, an organization that monitors hate in Canada, as well as a board member with the Silk Road Institute, an organization that fosters cross-cultural and interfaith understanding.

I'm also part of Canada's labour movement, specifically the Canadian Labour Congress, where we actually released a groundbreaking report in 2019 titled “Islamophobia at Work”. It's actually there that I will begin my remarks, by discussing the ways in which Muslim women and girls are especially vulnerable to hate crimes by virtue of their status as Muslim women.

It is the combination and interaction of gender, racialization and religion that make Muslim women vulnerable to bias-motivated violence and intimidation. Many Muslim women in Canada and around the world choose to wear head coverings like what I'm wearing today, my hijab, or the niqab or burka, for various reasons. We know that over the years the hijab and niqab have been, and sadly, continue to be at times, vigorously debated and reported on by Canadian media. They are frequently politicized quite negatively. In fact, currently, Bill 21 in Quebec prevents women from wearing a hijab if they choose to work in various professions, including teaching, the law and policing.

As noted in the CLC's report on Islamophobia, the interaction of gender, religion, race and culture is especially acute for Muslim women who cover. Their visibility puts them at higher risk and makes them much more vulnerable to gender-based Islamophobia. They are immediately identified as targets for perpetrators motivated by hatred of Muslims and gender-based violence.

Of course, we don't know the exact reason or the evidence found by police in the most recent horrific attack in London against the Afzaal family, but we do know it was motivated by hate toward Muslims, and it is highly likely that their religious clothing was the reason they were most tragically targeted. Our thoughts and hearts are with those families and those they have left behind, including little Fayez.

A 2018 qualitative study by University of Toronto researcher Sidrah Ahmad, titled “Invisible Violence Against Hypervisible Women”, shows a very high rate of unreported gender-based violence against Muslim women in the GTA. That qualitative report documents the everyday Islamophobic experiences and impacts on Muslim women. The Muslim women in the study reported being spat at, yelled at, sworn at and experiencing physical as well as sexual assaults. Of the 40 Islamophobic incidents documented in the study, only three were reported to the police.

At this point, if I may, I will actually share my own personal experiences with the committee. Several incidents throughout my lifetime of wearing the hijab in Canada have really brought home to me how fraught it can sometimes be to wear visible Muslim clothing. In my own neighbourhood here in Ottawa, in Orleans, I too was almost hit by a truck that was deliberately and very dangerously swerving toward me while the driver was yelling obscenities at me. I have repeatedly been harassed and yelled at. While I maintain that the vast majority of Canadians are loving people who really promote dignity for all, these currents of hatred unfortunately do run through our society. These currents are, of course, the focus of my speech today, and I hope, some of the remedies you'll be looking at.

As Statistics Canada noted in its 2018 release on police-reported hate crime, for all types of hate crimes, nearly a third, 32%, of victims reported to police between 2010 and 2018 were female. Violent incidents targeting Muslim and indigenous populations were more likely than other types of hate crimes to involve female victims. Of all victims of violent crimes targeting the Muslim population that were reported to police, 45% were women or girls, as was the case for 45% of victims of hate crimes against indigenous populations.

Statistics Canada noted that the relatively high proportion of female victims of hate crimes targeting Muslim and indigenous populations could be related to specific factors, meaning the practice of wearing head coverings makes religious identity more visible for Muslim women than for Muslim men.

What we've also seen, unfortunately, is visibly Muslim politicians, athletes and celebrities who have been targets of intense hate and vitriol, being threatened daily with violence, rape or murder. Many of them are forced to leave their careers for their safety. We have, sadly, many examples in the current Parliament. As many may know, MP Iqra Khalid received horrific threats when she tabled M-103 and we know that MP Salma Zahid, who wears the head scarf, has also faced some harassment as well. Of course, I can't speak to what she's gone through but I know that it is not easy to represent constituents while also wearing religious clothing.

Hate crime statistics are hugely unreported, especially in the Muslim community as there is a lot of fear of being blamed and shamed. Of course, there is distrust of law enforcement or the feeling that there's unfair over-surveillance and detention anyhow within our Muslim communities. In fact, according to Statistics Canada, two-thirds of hate crimes are unreported.

Furthermore, we also realize that there are serious problems with prosecuting hate crimes. This is according to the fact that police solved just 28% of hate crime incidents in 2017, as shown by a Stats Canada analysis. By comparison, among all Criminal Code violations, excluding traffic violations, 40% were solved by police in that same year. Even when the hurdle of reporting to police is cleared by victims of hate crimes, the chances of success are 12% lower than with other types of offences.

Online hate is another area in which we know there is spillover into real life. Online hate does disproportionately impact racialized people, including women and visibly Muslim women, where the agenda of online trolls and haters is to silence or harm women and to control who has a voice. This is an important point to note, especially for those who argue that limiting online content is a freedom of expression. There are limits to free expression, including hate speech, especially when violence and hate is planned or incited.

Many committee members today may be surprised to learn that a report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in the U.K. identified more than 6,600 online pages, accounts or groups in Canada that were spreading white supremacist or misogynistic views. On a per capita basis, Canada was shown to be one of the most active countries in the world when it comes to spreading toxic views.

With the work at the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, we have advanced recommendations to government on how best to address online hate, which does remain a very serious problem. We know, for instance, that deplatforming works—

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