Parliament must combat the “radicalization of white people in this country,” a former Calgary mayor yesterday testified at the Senate human rights committee. According to Blacklock's Reporter, Naheed Nenshi said unnamed politicians “have seen short-term political gain in this.”.“When do we start talking about the radicalization of white people in this country?” testified Nenshi. “When do we start talking about the fact there are generations – not students but the next generation up – people in their 20s and in their 30s and older who are feeling dispossessed, who are wondering about change in their community, who are very, very susceptible to radicalization messages?”.Nenshi testified as part of an ongoing committee study of Islamophobia. “I actually don’t love the term ‘Islamophobia’ because it’s not about a phobia,” he said. “It’s not about a fear. I often talk about religious bigotry. But it doesn’t matter what we call it. The same people are going to attack us anyway.”.“What recommendations do you think this committee should make to the government?” asked Senator Mobina Jaffer (BC). “Number one is, we need a strong statement from this committee that across this country the importance of the dignity of Muslim people matters and that Muslim people cannot be used as political footballs,” replied Nenshi. “It’s a hard thing to say.”.“Some, not all, of the Islamophobia we see is manufactured,” said Nenshi. “It is by design. It is because political calculus has been done that targeting Muslims has greater benefit than costs from a political perspective, from a fundraising perspective, if I can be that crass, and that this stuff didn’t just happen. People across the country didn’t wake up and say, ‘I’m going to send death threats.’”.“Growing up in Calgary I never for a moment thought there was any job in the community, except maybe priest or rabbi, that was unavailable to me because of my faith,” said Nenshi, the first Muslim elected mayor of a major Canadian city. “Things got worse.”.“In 2015 things changed in a very significant way,” said Nenshi. “Do I believe the government of that day in its Barbaric Cultural Practices Act and its niqab bans was particularly Islamophobic? Did I believe those people were Islamophobic? No. Do I believe they saw political benefit in a cost-benefit analysis by targeting Muslims? Yes I do.”.Parliament in 2015 passed Bill S-7 the Zero Tolerance For Barbaric Cultural Practices Act to criminalize forced marriages. The Conservative cabinet 17 days before that year’s election announced if re-elected it would establish a police tip line dedicated to “barbaric cultural practices.”.The two cabinet members who announced the tip line, MPs Kellie Leitch (Simcoe-Grey, ON) and Chris Alexander (Ajax-Pickering, ON), both lost re-election. “Political rhetoric concerning Muslims during the 2015 federal election campaign was highlighted as a broader attack on Muslims that heightened levels of frustration with government,” said a 2016 Department of Public Safety report..“The whole time I was mayor I was invited to innumerable conferences on the radicalization of young Muslim men,” Nenshi yesterday testified. “How do we stop the radicalization of young Muslim men? I would submit to this committee our problem in this country is not the radicalization of Muslim men in this country. It’s important and we have to focus on it. When do we start talking about the radicalization of white people?”
