Thank you very much, and I wish to thank the standing committee for inviting me today. The clerk has my written submission, to which I added materials that I refer to herein.

My oral remarks will briefly summarize what I have written, and I welcome the discussion thereafter.

I offer two substantive points for this committee's consideration. The first concerns what I consider a category error in this committee's terms of reference. The second is meant to focus on how structural Islamophobia persists in our public and private institutions and should be a point of concern for this committee.

First, I am mindful that this committee's mandate is influenced by the war in Israel and Palestine, and specifically in Gaza. With that in mind, I believe the committee's terms of reference suffer from a fundamental category error. It erases the hatred of Palestine and Palestinians and instead collapses it into the category of Islamophobia. As a historian, I can assure you that Palestinians and Palestine cannot be simplistically reduced to the category of Muslim or Islam.

Nonetheless, as my colleagues and I explain in a primer included with my written submission, Canadians across various professions and educational levels make this category error. I believe this category error creates more room for hate and bias and for stereotypes to proliferate unchecked. The category error mistakes Islamophobia for what the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association calls anti-Palestinian racism, or APR. I fear that this committee's dual focus on Islamophobia and anti-Semitism perpetuates this erasure and exclusion.

If the committee's work perpetuates the category error of mistaking APR for Islamophobia, you run the risk of developing misguided policies, for three reasons. One is that you will overestimate the scope and scale of Islamophobia in Canada and thereby create false positives. Second, you will underestimate and thereby fail to address anti-Palestinian racism in Canada. Third, you will reduce a geopolitical, historical and colonial conflict to a simplistic religious one. This reduction, ironically, will implicate this body in perpetuating retrograde stereotypes of the religious backwardness and unmodernity of Jews and Muslims.

Hence, I recommend this committee to advise the Federal Anti-Racism Secretariat to undertake sustained analysis of anti-Palestinian racism, acknowledge its pervasiveness, and develop and promote resources to combat it.

My second focus is on structural Islamophobia in Canada's public and private institutions.

One limitation in debates on Islamophobia is a limited analysis of how our public and private institutions enable Islamophobia as a respectable policy and bureaucratic practice. I have four examples to illuminate how this takes shape in federal government practices.

As the first one, some of you may know my 2021 co-authored study of CRA audits of Muslim charities. Therein we outline the ways in which Islamophobic bureaucratic analysis is purveyed as respectable governance practice in tax audits.

Second, included in my written submission is a table of contents of the 2023 book Systemic Islamophobia in Canada, a Research Agenda, featuring 19 essays by me and my colleagues. Each essay examines aspects of how public and private institutions in Canada purvey and enable Islamophobia.

Third, I'm currently a member of the advisory committee on the charitable sector under the ministry of national revenue. In that capacity, I chaired a working group examining the implication of the Department of Finance's national inherent risk assessment of 2023, or NIRA 2023, on Canada's charitable sector. We found that NIRA 2023 creates the conditions for Islamophobic bureaucratic practice reasoning in its selection of what it calls “high-risk jurisdictions”, in its analysis of threat actors and in its assessment of which threat actors use charities as funding channels.

Fundamentally, we raise concerns about the absence of robust charter section 15 considerations in our national security landscape. The report currently sits with the ministry of national revenue. I hope this committee might draw upon that report as you continue deliberations.

In the interests of time, I will skip my fourth example on the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act and FINTRAC.

In conclusion, there is no quick fix for structural Islamophobia. My recommendation to the committee is to outline in your final report that structural Islamophobia in Canada's public and private institutions exists, runs deep and must be addressed through the commitment of substantial and sustained public resources.

Thank you very much.