Good morning, honourable members of Parliament, standing committee members and other guests.

In preparing for today, I gave some thought as to what I could cover in the five minutes that have been allotted to me on this most important topic. If I could leave behind one message that the standing committee might remember when it prepares its report to the House, what would that message be?

Islamophobia is a disease that kills. For too many Canadians, it has resulted in serious injury or death, and unless we do something to address it, this disease will continue to spread.

I will tell you a little bit about myself. I graduated from the faculty of law at the University of Toronto in 2007. To my knowledge, I was the first visibly Muslim woman to graduate from U of T law. After graduating, I joined Miller Thomson LLP, one of Canada's leading national law firms, first as an articling student, then as an associate and finally as a partner, a position that I continue to hold. In my 14 years on Bay Street, being among a very small minority of visibly Muslim women, I've had the opportunity to work with numerous Muslim community organizations on initiatives to help our community. I've also been called upon in an advisory capacity to provide support to community members at critical times.

One such time that will forever stay with me was a summer evening in 2018. I was asked to attend at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, to speak to the family of Mohammed Abu Marzouk. Earlier that day, the young father and husband had attended a picnic with his family in a Mississauga park, where he was beaten within an inch of his life by two white men yelling racist and Islamophobic slurs. At the time of the attack, Mohammed was with his hijab-clad wife, who wondered whether it was the sight of her hijab that almost cost her husband his life.

That's the reality for Muslims in Canada, especially identifiably Muslim women. It doesn't matter how accomplished we are, how many degrees we've accumulated or how much we pay in taxes. Almost every single one of us has had an encounter with an Islamophobe—harassed, belittled and sometimes assaulted for simply being ourselves. How many of us try to mentally train ourselves to respond calmly if verbally assaulted on a subway or in some other public place? How many of us instinctively make mental notes of the exits in a mosque so that we know where to go if we have to flee? How many friends have I heard from—strong, professional women, leaders in their own right—about the burnout and exhaustion they face from the rampant Islamophobia? It shouldn't be happening, and yet, it continues. In fact, with the wild west that is the Internet, it seems to be getting worse. The more public-facing you are, the more nonsense you have to put up with. I know that many of our Muslim women MPs have had to deal with this, as have countless others.

I'd like to share a small extract from an article written by my good friend, Noor Javed, a journalist with the Toronto Star.Just a few short days ago, she wrote the following:

When I got my first barrage of hate mail as an intern at the Star 15 years ago, and turned to a colleague for support, he looked at my hijab and said: if you want to survive, you will need to have Teflon-like skin. Let the hate bounce off you. Don’t let it stick. But the truth is, even when you tell yourself it doesn’t impact you, it still does. Every email in your inbox with someone telling you they hate you because of your hijab. Every letter calling you a “dirty raghead.” Every tweet telling you to go back to where you came from. Every person who walks by and whispers “You’re disgusting.” Every smear campaign calling you a terrorist. Every time someone doubts your news judgment because you are a “lying Muslim.” Every time someone asks if you were a token hire.

Noor's words have resonated with Canadian Muslims far and wide. When the pandemic hit Canada, millions of Canadians understood first-hand what it felt like to be in danger of something that you cannot see but that continuously lurks. As a society, we've come together—and rightfully so—to tackle this danger and to minimize its effects. We need to do the same when it comes to Islamophobia.

I will conclude by repeating the same message that I started with: Islamophobia is a disease that kills. I call upon this committee to prepare a report with concrete strategies to stamp out this disease so that Canadian Muslims can just live our lives peacefully, free of harassment, injury and, most importantly, from the threat of death.

Thank you.

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