Minimizing and Denying Racial Violence:Insights from the Québec Mosque Shooting
On 29 January 2017, a twenty-seven-year-old white man named Alexandre Bissonette entered a mosque in a suburb of Québec City and opened fire, killing six people. Focusing on Canadian media reports, this article examines two seemingly incongruent responses to this heinous massacre. First, despite Bissonnette's unambiguous and purposeful targeting of Muslims, the public and the courts still debated whether this massacre was racially motivated. Second, when members of the Muslim community commented on the massacre and the impact that it had had on them, there appeared to be a type of restraint in the ways in which they expressed their fears and frustrations and in the ways in which they addressed the issue of anti-Muslim racism. How do we understand these incongruences? This article draws upon Sherene Razack's seminal scholarship on public grief, national mythologies, and anti-Muslim racism in Canada, alongside studies on public expressions of emotions to make sense of the role that race played in the responses by the Muslim community, the politicians, the courts, and the accused.
Le 29 janvier 2017, un homme blanc de vingt-sept ans est entré dans une mosquée à Québec et a ouvert le feu, tuant six personnes. À partir de l'étude du travail des médias canadiens, cet article examine deux réactions, incompatibles en apparence, à ce massacre haineux. D'abord, malgré un ciblage ostensiblement raciste de musulmans, le public et la cour ont débattu des motifs du tueur et on a nié qu'ils fussent terroristes ou racistes. La deuxième incompatibilité concerne la réaction de la communauté musulmane sur le massacre et ses impacts. Les commentaires sur les peurs et les frustrations de la communauté, de même que sur l'enjeu du racisme anti-musulman, étaient empreints de retenue. Comment comprendre ces incongruités? Le présent article se fonde sur les recherches de Sherene Razack pour comprendre qu'on a ainsi nié et minimisé le racisme. À partir des observations et du travail de Razack sur le racisme antimusulman au Canada, l'article analyse le rôle qu'a joué la notion de race dans les réactions des musulmans, des politiciens, des tribunaux et de l'accusé. [End Page 471]
If we dare to say that racism exists in Canada, we will be met with contempt.
—Sherene Razack, "In the Vestibule of the Nation"1
On 29 January 2017, Alexandre Bissonnette, a twenty-seven-year-old white university student with "anti-immigrant," "pro-Trump," and "anti-feminist" ideologies entered a mosque called the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec in the Sainte-Foy neighborhood of Québec City and opened fire at men gathered for evening prayer.2 Bissonnette killed six men: Abdelkrim Hassane, Khaled Belkacemi, Aboubaker Thabti, Azzeddine Soufiane, Ibrahima Barry, and Mamadou Tanou Barry.3 He also critically wounded five and injured fourteen others.4 In the days that followed, thousands of people, including prominent politicians, attended the funerals for the victims in Montreal and Québec City, and vigils were held across Canada showing support for the families of the murdered men. On 30 January 2018, Bissonnette was charged with six counts of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder. On 26 March 2018, at the start of pre-trial proceedings, he entered a not-guilty plea. Two days later, on 28 March, Bissonnette reversed his plea to guilty and read a statement within which he stated that he was ashamed and "bitterly regret[s]"5 what he did.6 At the time of writing, [End Page 472] Bissonnette's sentencing hearings have concluded, and the sentence is expected to be announced by Justice François Huot on February 8, 2019.
Listening anxiously to news reports as information about this massacre unfolded in its immediate aftermath, I was struck by what seemed to be a disproportionate number of stories about Canadians' "outpourings of support" rather than on the racial violence of the event itself. To roughly gauge my anecdotal observations of the overall tenor of public responses after the shooting, I counted the number of times certain emotions were being highlighted in Canadian English-language newspaper headlines within four days of the shooting.7 I noted, for instance, that the word "love" appeared twice as often as the words "grief" and "sadness" and that the words "fear" and "solidarity" appeared an equal number of times. This simple word count suggests that a significant number of news story headlines about the massacre were indeed emphasizing emotions related to unity (love and solidarity) as often or more than those associated with violence (grief, sadness, and fear). Motivated to further explore how the massacre was being constructed in the media, I decided to give a close reading to some of the mainstream headlines and news reports. I was especially interested in what members of the Muslim community were saying about this massacre and how they were articulating their fears and sadness in the face of such a brutal attack.
As I will demonstrate in what follows, two aspects of the media reports warrant particular attention. First, despite Bissonnette's unambiguous and purposeful targeting of Muslims, the public and the courts still debated whether this massacre was racially motivated. Second, when members of the Muslim community commented on the massacre and the impact that it had had on them, there appeared to be a type of restraint in the ways in which they expressed their fears and frustrations and in the ways in which they addressed the issue of anti-Muslim racism. How do we understand these incongruences? Why were Bissonnette's blatantly racist motives up for questioning? Why might members of the Muslim community offer overly generous public responses to such a manifestly racist hate crime? To answer these questions, this article draws upon Sherene Razack's seminal scholarship on public grief, national mythologies, and anti-Muslim racism in Canada, alongside studies on public expressions of emotions. In so doing, this article does not intend to offer any [End Page 473] definitive empirical claims. Rather, in offering a preliminary analysis of a limited corpus of local and specific media references, this article takes an exploratory approach and leans towards a theoretical analysis of the selected texts to advance the claim that Razack's scholarship ought to be used for subsequent analysis of media and texts related to anti-Muslim racism.
The article begins with a brief overview of the socio-political context vis-à-vis Muslims in Québec over the past decade to contextualize the confluence of state, nation, gender, and citizenship that has resulted in widespread anti-Muslim racism. In the second part of the article, drawing from news reports on the details and descriptions of the massacre, I explore how the use of labels, especially "terrorism" and "racism," were applied and debated in relation to Bissonnette's crimes. In the third part, I construct a schema that distinguishes articulations of grief, grievance, and gratitude in public expressions of mourning and discuss their different political implications. I then apply the schema to excerpts from three widely broadcasted texts in which members of Muslim communities responded to the massacre by members of the Muslim community. The article concludes that responses to the mosque shooting are a strong reminder of the important interventions Razack has offered on the complex ways in which racism is continually denied and minimized, and it calls for further analyses—ones that draw on wider ranges of data sources, including the analysis of social media, such as Twitter and related blogs—to better understand media representations of racial violence in events like the mosque massacre.8
The Muslim Threat to Québec's National Identity
Razack's exhaustive examination of anti-Muslim racism in Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics offers some fundamental background understanding to what led to the mosque massacre.9 In some ways, it foresees the extreme racial violence towards Muslims that was demonstrated through the mosque massacre. In it, Razack reveals that since the 9/11 attacks, the Western world has been gripped by a particularly intense enmity towards Muslims, who are seen as the ultimate threat.10 Arguing that Muslims are now considered a "race," Razack also explores various examples of the hatred, prejudice, and discrimination directed at Muslims and "Muslim-looking" individuals.11 One of the most incisive observations that Razack makes in this book is that three allegorical figures now dominate the Western imaginary: the dangerous Muslim man, the imperilled Muslim woman, and [End Page 474] the civilized white person.12 More importantly, she demonstrates how these figures now "animate a story about a family of white nations," which is often obliged to use force to defend itself against menacing Muslims.13
Within Québec, it is widely believed that the historical specificities of Québec culture and nationalism render the Muslim threat even more acute.14 As the only Canadian province whose population is mainly francophone, Québec's minority status has resulted in a long-standing feeling that their values, language, and way of life are in danger.15 For this reason, Québec has its own official immigration policies, which also sets it apart from other Canadian provinces. Unlike Canada's official multiculturalism policy, which, since 1971, seeks to foster a pluralist society through diversity, Québec established a policy of interculturalism in 1981 that explicitly requires the assimilation of immigrant and minority groups in order to preserve Québec's culture.16 In the past decade, the narrative of losing the Québécois national identity has centred on the idea that immigrant groups not only pose a threat to Québec values such as secularism and gender equality but also, more perniciously, that they are being overrun by Muslims and other immigrant groups.
These views resulted in the launch of the 2007–08 Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, which was convened by philosopher Charles Taylor and historian Gerard Bouchard. As I have argued elsewhere, although the goal of this commission was to study the challenges of interculturalism and the limits of "reasonably accommodating" immigrants and was framed as being about "reconciliation," it became a forum for white Québecers to articulate their vulnerability as a people with a fragile national identity and to express their fears of the Muslim Other threatening their values and way of life.17 In 2010, once again responding to concerns about members of religious and cultural communities threatening Québec's secular values, Bill 94 was introduced in the Québec National Assembly.18 Framed in terms of "gender equality," it further revealed the preoccupations with the three figures that Razack has identified.19 Bill 94 bans face coverings (the niqab) from public officials and buildings and limits Muslim women from requesting services of [End Page 475] the government if their faces are veiled.20 Another example of exclusionary policies in Québec that especially targeted Muslims followed during the 2012 provincial electoral campaign when the leader of the Parti Québécois (a political party seeking sovereignty through separation from Canada) promised to put forward a chartre de la laïcité (charter of secularism) that would prohibit the display of religious signs in public institutions. Again, the wearing of the Muslim veil was the predominant concern, and the province charged itself with safeguarding its most cherished values and beliefs. In October 2017, Bill 62, a "religious neutrality" bill, was passed requiring the uncovering of faces when giving or receiving a public service.21
Writing about the discourse of secularism in Québec and elsewhere¸ Razack has argued that the divide between the secular and the religious has, in effect, functioned as a colour line that marks the difference between the modern, enlightened West and tribal, religious Muslims. Moreover, she points out that, in such a climate, appeals to secularism succeed in creating a moral panic and legitimize the surveillance and regulation of Muslim populations.22 Moreover, in Québec, as elsewhere, Muslims are no longer just seen as threats to national identities but are now also assumed to be threats to national security. In 2015, Bill C-51, also known as the Anti-Terrorism Act, was passed in Canada giving police extensive power to arrest and detain suspected individuals of terrorist activity without a warrant and for more personal information to be shared between different government departments.23 Indeed, in the past few years, radicalization has become a main preoccupation of politicians, as seen through a series of new security practices and programs that have been created to combat it.24 Although many see these measures as necessary steps towards better public security, Muslims in Québec have expressed concerns that these forms of surveillance and information gathering will target them and intensify the racism they face.25 [End Page 476]
While anti-Muslim attitudes in Québec predate the presidential campaign and subsequent election of US President Donald Trump, his rhetoric and policies have emboldened anti-Muslim attitudes in Québec and around the Western world. Moreover, the rhetoric of Trump and other far right anti-immigrant leaders regarding the threats that Muslims pose has resulted in a widespread conflation between terrorists and those seeking refuge from war-ravaged countries.26 Two days before the massacre, on 27 January 2017, the then newly elected Trump issued an executive order entitled "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States," in which he referenced honour killings and misogyny as a reason to keep foreign nationals and refugees out.27 Unsurprisingly, the feeling of being besieged by Muslims/refugees/terrorists resulted in a sharp increase in hate crimes towards Muslims in Canada and the United States.28
In response to the blatantly exclusionary policies being implemented by Trump in the United States, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent a message on Twitter that many interpreted to mean that the refugees banned from the United States would be welcomed in Canada.29 International news reporters subsequently contrasted [End Page 477] the differences between Trump's and Trudeau's stances on refugees, showing, for example, how "astonishingly hospitable" Canadians are.30 This view of Canada's "open-door" policies heightened the panic, fear, and frustration of Canadians who regard the presence of Muslims as a threat. As I will illustrate in the next section, this false notion of Canada opening its doors to refugees directly provoked Bissonnette's murder spree.
Exploring the Labels
As more details about Bissonnette and the grisly massacre he committed were made available, the picture that emerged was of what Inderpal Grewal has described as the archetypal "angry, white, Christian man who sees himself as dispossessed from his rightful place of power in the nation and exerting the sovereignty given to him by virtue of his gender and race."31 For example, in video evidence shown during his sentencing hearing, he explains to police: "I was watching TV and I learned that the Canadian government was going to take more refugees, you know, who couldn't go to the United States, and they were coming here … I saw that and I, like, lost my mind. It was then that I decided it was time to go."32 Citing violent attacks by Muslims in Europe, he said he wanted to protect people, especially his own parents, from being killed.33 During the sentencing hearings, court documents that were previously unavailable were released to the public, revealing the extent to which Bissonnette consumed right-wing and far-right material and studied previous mass murders including Marc Lepine, who killed fourteen women in Montreal in 1989, and Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who committed the Charleston church mass shooting in 2015, killing nine black people who were in bible study.34 [End Page 478]
From the start, Muslim citizens, anti-racist activists, and legal scholars have noted several incongruences with respect to attributing the terms "terrorism" and "racism" to Bissonnette and his crimes. This first emerged when news reports indicated that charges of terrorism would not be brought against him. This came as a surprise to many because both the Canadian prime minister and the premiere of Québec explicitly condemned Bissonnette's actions as a terrorist attack.35 Nevertheless, terrorism charges were not laid because, according to Canadian legal experts, in the Canadian Criminal Code, the offence of terrorism requires not only acts of violence but also collaboration with a terrorist group, which would be difficult to prove for a single gunman.36 Commenting on this decision, Kent Roach, a professor of law at the University of Toronto, explains that terrorism-related offences do tend to apply to "those who finance, participate, facilitate, instruct or advocate others to commit acts of terrorism. They do not apply well to 'lone wolves.' "37 However, he asks why the Québec prosecutor did not proceed against Bissonnette "on the basis of s. 231(6.01) of the Criminal Code, which provides that murder is first-degree murder if the crime 'also constitutes a terrorist activity.'"38 As he explains, this provision was added to the Criminal Code immediately after the 9/11 terror attacks and would have provided the prosecutor with an opportunity to prove that Bissonnette's murderous acts of violence and hatred were also terrorist acts.39 In Roach's perception, Bissonnette's actions clearly satisfy the Criminal Code's legal definition of terrorist activity insofar as "[h]e was motivated by hatred and fear of Muslims and migrants … [and] [h]e intentionally caused death … with the intent to intimidate a 'segment of the public', namely Muslims."40 Moreover, although the victims' families were told that additional terrorism charges would have little impact on the sentencing, it was the refusal to acknowledge this act as terrorism that was distressing to many.41 As Roach puts it, "if we are to have terrorism offences, they must be applied equally to all and without discrimination. There is no room for discriminatory double standards … it would help affirm that our terrorism laws apply to all who would use violence to advance or express their politics. And that we should be as vigilant about far-right violence as other acts of terrorism."42 [End Page 479]
Considering further how the term terrorism was applied to the massacre, a salient moment occurred when Pierre Bruneau, an anchor for Québec's largest French-language broadcaster TVA, referred to the terror attack as "reverse terrorism" because it was committed against Muslims and not by Muslims.43 As several commentators pointed out, this term implies that terrorism has one form: Muslims attacking others.44 Although Bruneau subsequently apologized for his words, his statement is indicative of the racialized ways in which we understand certain acts of violence. In fact, it reveals how the default understanding of terrorists is, as Caroline Corbin plainly puts it, "[t]errorists are always Muslim but never White."45
The second point of profound incongruency between what took place and the labels it was assigned was when Bissonnette declared that he "is not a terrorist, nor an Islamophobe" after entering his guilty plea.46 This claim was baffling to many given that his murder spree was described as "methodical, strategic and cold-blooded"47 and that he unambiguously targeted Muslims in their place of worship.48 In fact, Bissonnette admitted that he targeted the mosque because he believed that killing Muslims was "more acceptable" and because he was convinced there would be a terrorist there.49 Importantly too, during cross-examination, the Crown prosecutor pointed out that Bissonnette admitted to lying about hearing voices while planning to argue he was not criminally responsible for the crime. It was also revealed that he also told a social worker that he regretted "not having killed more people."50 [End Page 480] Yet, because he had previously contemplated attacking other spaces, such as the university he attended and a shopping mall, his defence witnesses argued that the murders were not a result of Bissonnette being Islamophobic.51
In addition, a significant part of the defence's argument was to depict Bissonnette as an injured, mentally ill person as a result of being bullied in his childhood and his subsequent feelings of ostracization. The psychiatrist acting for the defence argued that, rather than a deep hatred for Muslims, it was a lifetime of being bullied and rejected and feelings of anxiety and depression that turned Bissonnette into a murderer. Two people who testified for Bissonnette's defence, including one of his former teachers, also corroborated that he was a victim of bullying at school.52 Although it is to be expected that the defence would paint a picture of the accused in ways that would draw compassion, we must also question how attention to Bissonnette's suffering can overshadow or minimize the crimes he committed. That is, when does the "mental illness" defence have legal traction to produce empathy? Put differently, it is far more difficult to build a persuasive argument about mental instability when crimes are committed by a people of colour, especially Muslims. In sum, while some, especially Muslims, regard this massacre as one of the worst acts of racist violence in Canadian history and as "epitomizing islamophobia in its deadliest form," others have responded that there is no evidence to make such a claim.53 Québec's Muslim community leaders expressed some relief when Gilles Chamberland, a forensic psychiatrist called by the Crown, unequivocally declared that "the Quebec Mosque shooting was a racist act fuelled by false prejudices."54 For example, Mohamed Labidi, former president of the mosque where the shooting occurred, stated that "[t]o hear the words finally come from an expert's mouth was vindicating."55
Why was it difficult to pin the charges of terrorism and racism to Bissonnette's crimes? This framing of Bissonnette as a victim is consistent with the widespread reluctance to attribute racially motivated violence to white men. As Grewal's work on the now familiar figure and discourse of "the shooter" observes, in recent cases where the perpetrator is white and Christian, he is not referred to as a killer, murderer, or criminal (and I would add, terrorist), and this in turn marks them and their crimes as exceptional.56 However, it is some of Razack's earliest work that begins to explain the reticence in labelling this massacre as racially motivated. Indeed, one of the most enduring contributions of Razack's scholarship has been her contention that a central feature of race discourse in Canada is the widespread reluctance to admit that racism is an everyday reality.57 The example that is most comparable to the mosque massacre [End Page 481] that Razack offers comes from her detailed examination of the "Somalia affair" in Dark Threats where she points to how despite extensive evidence that provided an alarming and close-up view of Canadian peacekeepers wounding, torturing, and killing Somalis, the official script of it in public memory is one that not only obscures racism but also constructs Canadian peacekeepers as the victims.58 Indeed, like the Somalia affair, the Québec mosque massacre presents a pedagogically rich site for understanding Razack's work on denials of racism because it teaches us the lengths to which racism must be denied or minimized. Moreover, it reveals how even the most heinous racist acts can be constructed in a way that marks them as exceptional and individual, thereby not harming the national innocence of Québecers and Canadians.
Members of Muslim Communities Speaking Out after the Massacre
Within Razack's work on the discursive minimizing and denial of racism in Canada, she has shown two important corollaries: (1) that processes of minimizing and denial of racism limit the ways that racism can be confronted and challenged by people of colour because they "must above all confirm the civilized and generous nature of their hosts"59 and (2) that this in turn reinforces white Canadians' belief in their innocence with respect to racism. Building from Razack's work, others have emphasized the emotional contours of these racialized dynamics, revealing the ways in which attachments to white innocence pre-empt any substantive discussions of race and highlighting the emotional labour that people of colour are called upon to perform given the ways in which they are positioned within racial structures.60
Borrowing from these insights, I next contemplate the contours of how members of the Muslim community in Canada and Québec can acceptably speak out about racism. For this, I pair Razack's work with studies on the expressivity of emotions through language, especially how emotions are displayed through enunciation or [End Page 482] speech.61 As Tamar Katriel explains, "[s]tudying the language of emotion in given social settings is one way of illuminating the ways in which specific emotional configurations inform the discursive construction and negotiation of self-identities, social relationships, and moral sensibilities."62 Katriel further argues that discourses can be a strategic tool in evoking audiences' emotional responses to the act of persuasion.
Anne Anlin Cheng's work on the politics of grief and the task of racial healing after trauma is most relevant for my purposes because it distinguishes various emotional discourses and discusses their political implications.63 Of particular relevance is Cheng's detailed discussion of a theatrical production that addresses the aftermath of the 1991 Rodney King verdict in California. King was violently beaten by four police officers during an arrest for speeding and despite the police's extreme excessive force being captured on film, three were totally acquitted. Outrage at the injustice of the verdict resulted in 1992 riots in Los Angeles that lasted six days. This docudrama, entitled "Twilight", written produced and performed by Anna Deavere Smith, Cheng argues, "raises the question of what it would take to sufficiently recognize a historically disenfranchised person in a democratic body politic that has not lived up to its own promise of equal rights and equal protection."64 Defining the black community's response to the King verdict as racial trauma, Cheng writes of the connection, as well as the distinction, between expressions of grief and grievance.65 Cheng also argues that because such events can be seen as evidence of the ways in which racialized communities are disenfranchised, they can offer community leaders an opportunity to demand (that is, through grievance) that the government and police take seriously the everyday violence and racist hate crimes against them.66
Coupling Cheng's work with Razack's, I propose a schema that enables a critical reading of how members of racialized communities publicly responded to the racial violence of the Mosque massacre. Specifically, I adapt Cheng's argument on [End Page 483] discourses of grief (expressions of sadness and loss) and grievance (emotions such as anger, fear, frustration, and demands for justice) and Razack's observation on how people of colour are compelled to acknowledge the generous nature of their "hosts"—discourses I refer to here as gratitude. As I will show, this schema helps to identify and disaggregate the "layered" losses of grief, grievance, and gratitude for racialized subjects and how they are sanctioned.67 To illustrate the potential of this schema, I focus on excerpts from three texts in which prominent members of the Muslim community publicly spoke out about the massacre within two weeks of its occurrence. The first is from a twenty-minute English-language program entitled "How Muslim Canadians Are Coping after Quebec City Attack," which aired across Canada on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio's The Current on 3 February 2017.68 The second text is from the popular French-language program Tout le monde en parle (Everyone's Talking about It) and its segment on the mosque massacre, which aired on 2 February 2017 and was framed around the question of "living together in harmony."69 The third is a speech given by Imam Hassan Guillet at the 3 February 2017 funeral services for three of the victims at the Congress Centre in Québec City.70
These particular texts were selected because of their widespread popularity and circulation. The Current has been described as "Canada's most listened-to radio [End Page 484] program" and is heard by English-speaking Canadians across the country.71 Similarly, the show Tout le monde en parle, which airs on Radio Canada is hugely popular among francophones in Canada, especially in Québec, with over 1,058,000 viewers tuning in during the winter 2017 season. Lastly, excerpts from Guillet's speech are examined because of the impassioned and pervasive reactions to it on social media, resulting in it going "viral" and being shared around the world.72 While certainly not comprehensive, the excerpts from the three mediated texts offered here together give a glimpse into some of the general ways that representatives from Muslim communities were compelled to respond to the massacre. In other words, although the excerpts examined here mainly reflect only the thoughts and feelings of a small number of Muslims and/or Québec commentators, these examples nevertheless serve as important entry points for considerations on some of the implicit emotional and discursive parameters of expression set by racialized systems and structures.
The Current
This program brought together three Muslim Canadians "to talk about their experience of living in this country and how Sunday's terror attack has touched their lives and communities."73 The guests were Shireen Ahmed from Toronto, introduced as "a sports writer and activist focusing on Muslim women in sports," Mohamed Huque, "the executive director of Islamic Family and Social Services Association" in Edmonton, and Farida Mohamed, "a teacher and president of the Montreal chapter of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women."74 In her introduction, the host used the term "Islamophobia," thereby presumably creating an opening for the guest speakers to speak freely about racism. Curiously, however, within the twenty-minute discussion, the panelists rarely used the words "Islamophobia" and "racism." When they did, their comments revealed a consistent pattern whereby they oscillated between grief, grievance, and gratitude.75 For example, in the following excerpt, the speaker began with gratitude but then interjected a grievance:
Huque: There are some really good things I like about the media coverage since the Quebec City attack and that's been sort of this national period of [End Page 485] mourning and sort of collective sense of let's reflect and figure out what's happened. One of the things I don't like though is that it's been sort of characterized as sort of this lone wolf and that I think decontextualizes the incident. Here is a terrorist who became radicalized after being influenced by online hate speech and rhetoric. And often when we say that, we're referring to Muslims but in this case, this was a right-wing extremist. So one of the things I'd like to see sort of more attention paid to these kinds of groups.76
Similarly, when asked about her reaction to the vandalism of a Mosque the day after the shooting, the panelist from Québec intersperses her response with all three discourses of grief, gratitude, and grievance.
Mohamed: Well, that was incredulous to hear the news of a Mosque being vandalized right after the funeral. You know? Right after we saw the feeling of support, the feeling of sympathy that fellow Quebecois were giving to the Muslim community, we were still shocked to see that some people would go ahead and commit acts of vandalism … Muslims in Quebec are shocked. Sad—very sad—but there are many who are hopeful, hopeful that now we are going to be dialoguing more.77
In another example, Ahmed offers poignant anecdotes of the everyday racism her children face and expresses grief caused by the trauma her community suffered after the massacre. Yet she too intersperses her statement with the discourse of gratitude on the "outpourings of support."
Ahmed: [Y]ou know my youngest was called a terrorist and he's soon to be 11. It was happening when he was about seven and it was just in passing and it was very odd because he kind of didn't know how to react … This particular incidence, there's a lot of healing required. This was really traumatic on many levels for a lot of members of the community. So in addition to growing and moving forward—and I agree with what Mohamed said—to show solidarity for other communities, it's also important to look back and say this has been festering for a while. This isn't new. So as the outpouring from Canadians is so heartwarming and appreciated, it's important to understand this is a systemic thing and it's been there for a long time.78
These excerpts suggest that in order to draw attention to racial violence and the pain it inflicts, the speakers were compelled to also acknowledge white Canadian displays of solidarity. Put differently, the oscillation between these discourses works as a form of emotional control insofar as discourses of grief and grievance (the negative emotions) were mitigated by gratitude (the positive emotion). This oscillation also functions to temper the speakers' overall emotional tone, resulting in a more measured response. [End Page 486]
In drawing attention to these expressions, I am not claiming that what is being expressed publicly reflects how people actually feel. Rather, my interpretation is premised on the understanding that emotions can be performed and are often self-censored, managed, or adapted to correspond to the "feeling rules" and "emotional regimes" determined by societal norms.79 The question then is why there is the need to be measured? In addition to Razack's contention about the difficulty in speaking about racism, studies on the constraints on the expressions of certain emotions for members of marginalized groups offer further explanations.80 In particular, that members of certain racialized groups must avoid being seen as bitter and angry so that they are not perceived as dangerous.81 Moreover, it has been shown that those who name racism and discrimination (rather than those who perpetuate it) become the problem—"the blow, the cause of injury."82
Tout le monde en parle
On 2 February 2017, the program dedicated a twenty-minute segment that was focused on the Québec mosque shooting.83 The guests were introduced as Rachida Azdouz, a psychologist specializing in intercultural relations at the Université de Montréal, Nadia El Mabrouk, a professor also at the Université de Montréal, and member of Pour les Droit et Femmes du Québec (For the Rights of Québec Women) and the Association Québécoise des Nord Africains pour la Laïcité (Québec Association of North Africans for Secularism), and Dalila Awada, a master's student studying questions of racism and Islamophobia. In his introduction, the host described El Mabrouk and Awada as "activists, sometimes with divergent opinions" and Azdouz as a "specialist."84 Compared to the segment on The Current, the guests on this program were far more emotionally expressive. This is likely due to both the earlier-mentioned charged political climate around Muslims in Québec and the fact that the speakers were more affected by the proximity of the crime. Moreover, the [End Page 487] actual terms racist/racism, Islamophobia, and/or xenophobia were enunciated more frequently. However, it is the ways in which the terms were invoked and the emotional reactions to them that warrant a careful reading.
Recalling that the premise of the segment was "living together in harmony," one has to question from the outset the optics given that three Muslim-origin women are being asked to offer explanations on how "harmony" can be achieved despite the fact that the harmony in their community had been brutally disturbed by a white Québecer.85 Thus, not only is the onus on them to solve this puzzle, but their opposing views on the topic are also pitted against each other, while the predominantly white Québécois audience watch. In fact, two of the guests had very polarized views about the issue of living in harmony. While Azdouz gave a tactful response about "mutual misunderstandings" and the need for better communication and awareness, El Mabrouk gave an impassioned speech on the problem of calling Québecers racist.86 Moreover, she insisted that Muslims are "hurting themselves" by making special demands and not integrating.87 In contrast, Awada strongly asserted that the starting point to living in harmony is to recognize systemic racism in Québec and to pay attention to white extremism. The details of this conversation and how the points of view were articulated bear closer scrutiny. For instance, at the start of the interview, after Azdouz responded to a question posed to her about how much she thinks this event marked a turning point in society by likening it to the massacre that occurred in 1989 in Montreal when fourteen women were killed, a visibly shaken El Mabrouk jumps in with the following statement:
El Mabrouk: What hurt me is that accusations fell so easily on everyone. Just as when it's a case of other tragedies, attacks committed in the name of Islam, well one shouldn't conflate things, right? … one had the impression that all Québecers were guilty. Well, that hurt me because I've always been well welcomed here … so I felt the need to say: "No, Québecers are not racists … Québecers are not guilty." So let's do the same thing, let's not create a double standard. Just as one shouldn't conflate on one side, one shouldn't do it on the other.88
In declaring that she was "being hurt" three times in this statement, El Mabrouk is clearly and strongly articulating a grievance. Yet the source of her pain and frustration is not the heinous act that had been committed against Muslims; rather, it was what she perceived as unfair accusations towards Québecers. In contemplating this need to protect Québecers from accusations of racism, it helps to return to Razack's point that there is great risk in speaking about racism because "to contest that Canadians are a generous and fair-minded people is to 'desecrate' the national heritage."89 [End Page 488] Moreover, after 9/11, Muslims have come to be constructed as being different from the dominant white "civilized" community. Thus, it is possible that El Mabrouk is wary of falling into the stereotypes of the uncivilized or ungrateful immigrant.
In response to El Mabouk's impassioned intervention, Awada goes on the defensive and qualifies her contention that Québecers need to acknowledge rather than deny racism:
Awada: Indeed, the idea is not to say that all Québecers are racists. Not to say that Québec is more racist than elsewhere. But to recognize that there is racism in Québec society as in any other society. Then as soon as we acknowledge this racism and this islamophobia, we can develop concrete solutions to counter it. But if we stay in denial and then refuse to question certain ways of doing, we leave ourselves open to this kind of tragedy reproducing itself.90
Again here, we see the ways in which the remarks of Muslim community members about the racism they face are consistently mitigated and qualified with acknowledgements of the goodness of (most) Canadians/Québecers. The following excerpt focuses on a tense moment in the segment when the host challenged Awada's rejection of a gesture of solidarity by a political party in Québec:
Host: Dalila, on the day after the Québec mosque shooting, the Parti Québécois caucus observed a minute of silence in memory of the shooting victims. You sent the following Twitter message to the PQ and to the party leader Jean-François Lisée that said "Muslims do not want the solidarity of a xenophobic party. Have some decency and keep a low profile." This clearly did not help to calm things down. So for you the Parti Québécois is actually xenophobic?
Awada: It is not to say that all those in the Parti Québécois are xenophobic. One mustn't take these things personally. I would like to say that this was a few days after the tragedy, I was very, very affected and I think that what the Parti Québécois doesn't realize is that many Muslims were extremely hurt by the episode on the Charter of Values. And the Parti Québécois never apologized and up until today Muslims and other people in society are still suffering from it.
Host: But you continue to use the word xenophobe?91
We see that, although Awada has to retract and qualify her allegation and that she uses her emotional state to justify her charge of xenophobia the host nevertheless pursues the issue. In fact, the host then turned to Martine Ouellette who had just resigned from the Parti Québécois political party, a guest from the previous segment who had been [End Page 489] sitting listening and pointedly asks her how she reacts to what Awada is saying. Ouellette indignantly states that she finds it very striking that anyone could say the Parti Québécois is xenophobic because "it's not true."92 She concedes that things could have been done better with the chartre but goes on to emphasize that using words like xenophobe is an extremely serious charge and that one has to be very careful to maintain dialogue like the one they were having. In effect, Awada is being told to temper, if not retract, her point about xenophobia lest she risk closing down the conversation.
In response, Awada attempts to make the distinction between individual and systemic racism by complicating the simple understanding of racism as the attitudes of certain individuals. In the comment above, she clearly states: "One mustn't take these things personally." Indeed, at one point, she refers to a request for a commission on systemic racism in Québec put forth by some civil society groups and adds that, in her opinion, this is a measure "that will allow us to document, understand and assess the situation on racism in our institutions, to then develop tools, concrete solutions for countering this racism."93 In so doing, Awada's statement makes clear that she is concerned about systemic structures that target Muslims in ways that adversely impact their lives. However, this point was overshadowed by the outrage provoked by the charge of xenophobia—to which many who were present clearly took offence.
Imam Hassan Guillet's Speech
Lastly, building on the above two examples, I will consider what was said by Imam Hassan Guillet during the 3 February 2017 funeral services for three of the victims of the massacre: Aboubaker, Azzedine, and Ibrahima.94 As in the case of the Muslim community members who spoke on The Current, one can easily identify a pattern of measured emotional expressions that oscillate between grievances, grief, and gratitude in Guillet's speech. Indeed, Guillet himself has stated that he believes that he was chosen to speak at the funeral because the community "wanted someone to convey its concerns and pain without being aggressive or shouting."95 However, it is the following small section of his speech that subsequently received international attention:
We have 17 orphans. We have six widows. We have five wounded. We ask Allah for them to get them out of the hospital as soon as possible. Did I go through the complete list of victims? No. There is one victim. None of us want to talk about him. But given my age, I have the courage to say it. This [End Page 490] victim, his name is Alexandre Bissonnette. Alexandre, before being a killer he was a victim himself. Before planting his bullets in the heads of his victims, somebody planted ideas more dangerous than the bullets in his head.96
It is clear that Guillet was expressing grief for the widespread poisonous racist rhetoric to which Bissonnette had succumbed. Moreover, throughout his speech, he also expressed several instances of what can be considered grievances—for instance, stating: "Day after day, week after week, month after month, certain politicians unfortunately, and certain reporters unfortunately, and certain media were poisoning our atmosphere."97 Towards the end of his speech, he stated: "We are citizens like every other citizen. We have the same rights and we have the same obligations."98 Importantly however, it was only the above one-minute-and-six-second portion in which he refers to Bissonnette as a victim of his speech that immediately became popular on social media and in the news. Headlines referred to the Imam's words as "moving"99 and "profoundly magnanimous."100 The peak of the popularity of this small part of Guillet's speech happened when J.K. Rowling, the renowned author of the Harry Potter book series, retweeted it to her nearly 10 million Twitter followers. The moving and generous aspects of the speech notwithstanding, what is significant is how the public was quick to laud the message that the man accused of the shootings in Québec City was himself a victim. As one headline in The Guardian read: "Eulogy for Québec mosque attack dead: 'Alexandre Bissonnette was a victim, too.'"101
Conclusion: Minimizing and Denying Racial Violence
To conclude, I turn to some of the reflections that Razack offers about her testimony as the expert witness on racism at the inquiry into the investigation of the bombing of the Air India Flight 182. Her written submission to the inquiry and her analysis [End Page 491] of it are useful for considering the limited range of responses to the Québec mosque massacre. In it, she painstakingly maps out the definitions and distinctions between individual and systemic racism within Canadian society.102 Her aim is to show that there was a lack of caution paid to the events prior to the bombing and to suggest that it is because the majority of those being threatened were of Indian ancestry. When applied to the mosque shooting and the threats leading up to it, one can see an eerie parallel. In 2015–16, the year before the mosque massacre, police-reported hate crimes in Québec City more than doubled, yet the Canadian Security Intelligence Service stopped investigating right-wing extremism in March 2016, ten months before the massacre.103
The individual/systemic distinction that Razack illuminates in the Air India bombing report can also be used to consider the responses to the mosque shooting because what fails to get captured is that, while the heinous murders that Bissonnette committed are a manifestation of his individual racism, one needs to consider the ways they were shaped by systemic racism. It is not incidental, for instance, that since the massacre hate crimes against Muslims in Québec have risen, and the mosque where the massacre took place continues to be the target of hateful messages, including a package containing a copy of the Qur'an, its cover slashed where the name of Allah was written in Arabic.104 The package also held a photo of a pigsty with the message that Muslims could bury their dead there. In addition, a car belonging to the mosque's president was set on fire in his driveway.105
Although the Québec mosque massacre was most obviously motivated by anti-Muslim racism, I have shown a number of ways in which this is minimized and denied. As stated earlier, this article is intended as a call for further analyses—ones that draw upon a wider range of data sources including social media to better demonstrate racialized representations of the responses to events like the mosque massacre. Suggestions for further investigation also include explorations on the preservation of white innocence vis-à-vis settler colonialism in Québec and Canada. Lastly, more work is needed on how racism scripts the public expressions of grief from members [End Page 492] of racialized communities. As I have shown, Razack's body of work is a good starting point for making sense of these dynamics. It especially helps us to understand the emotional currencies that racialized communities must exchange within and the constraints of speaking about racism that exist for them, even in the aftermath of the most harrowing of racist experiences. [End Page 493]
Gada Mahrouse is an associate professor at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University. Mahrouse's research seeks to identify and challenge social inequalities. Primarily, her work explores the racialized and gendered dimensions of transnational social justice and humanitarian movements/organizations. She has published articles in the International Journal of Cultural Studies, Citizenship Studies, Race and Class, and ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies. Her book Conflicted Commitments: Race, Privilege and Power in Transnational Solidarity Activism (McGill Queens University Press, 2014) won the Women's and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes 2016 Outstanding Scholarship Prize.
Footnotes
1. Sherene H Razack, "In the Vestibule of the Nation" in Chandrima Chakraborty, Amber Dean & Angela Failler, eds, Remembering Air India: The Art of Public Mourning (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2017) 119 at 120.
2. Les Perreaux & Eric Andrew-Gee, "Quebec City Mosque Attack Suspect Known as Online Troll Inspired by French Far-Right", Globe and Mail (30 January 2017) <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/quebec-city-mosque-attack-suspect-known-for-right-wing-online-posts/article33833044>; Melissa Fundira, "Quebec City Mosque Attack Suspect Alexandre Bissonnette Charged with 6 Counts of 1st-Degree Murder", CBC News (30 January 2017) <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-city-mosque-attack-alexandre-bissonnette-1.3958559>.
3. They were originally from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Guinea, their ages ranged from thirty-nine to sixty years old. "Quebec City Mosque Shooting Victims Include Businessman, Professor and Fathers of Young Children", CBC News (30 January 2017) <http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-city-mosque-shooting-victims-1.3958191>.
4. Sabrina Marandola, Kamila Hinkson & Kalina Laframboise, "Six Dead, 1 Arrested and a Province in Mourning Following Quebec City Mosque Shooting", CBC News (29 January 2017) <http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-city-mosque-gun-shots-1.3957686>.
5. Canadian Press, "Transcript of Letter Alexandre Bissonnette Read Out in Quebec Courtroom", CTV News (28 March 2018) <https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/transcript-of-letter-alexandre-bissonnette-read-out-in-quebec-courtroom-1.3863306>.
6. With a guilty plea, the maximum sentence Bissonnette could face is 150 years—consecutive twenty-five-year sentences for each of the six first-degree murder convictions. This prompted Bissonnette's defence team to challenge the section of the Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, which since 2001, allows for consecutive sentences. Canadian Press, "A 150-Year Term Would Be 'Death Sentence' for Mosque Gunman, Defence Says", Montreal Gazette (5 April 2018) <https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/a-150-year-term-would-be-death-sentence-for-mosque-gunman-defence-says>.
7. I used broad search terms (Quebec and mosque or shooting) in the Proquest Canadian Newsstream database. It offers access to nearly 300 newspapers from Canada's leading publishers. The source type was limited to newspapers (any types of articles including columns, editorials, and features). The focus of my search was headlines and lead sentences because as media and communications scholar Teun van Dijk reminds us, they "summarize … and … provide the conceptual and epistemic information." Teun A van Dijk, "How 'They' Hit the Headlines: Ethnic Minorities in the Press" in Geneva Smitherman-Donaldson & Teun A van Dijk, eds, Discourse and Discrimination (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988) 221 at 229, which, in turn, "define the situation" (ibid at 257) and that this is what is mostly "recalled … and … used in the interpretation of later news reports … [and] … everyday conversations" (ibid at 229).
8. See Sherene H Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008) [Razack, Casting Out].
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid at 6.
11. Ibid at 5.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid at 5.
14. Darryl Leroux, "Debating Québec's Interculturalism as a Response to Canada's Multiculturalism: An Exercise in Normative Nationalisms?" (2012) 9:2 Canadian Diversity 67.
15. Whereas Canada is bilingual with two official languages (French and English), French is the only official language in the province of Quebec. See Gada Mahrouse, "'Reasonable Accommodation' in Québec: The Limits of Participation and Dialogue" (2010) 52:1 Race and Class 85.
16. Ibid at 86.
17. See Mahrouse, supra note 15.
18. Bill 94, An Act to Establish Guidelines Governing Accommodation Requests within the Administration and Certain Institutions, 1st Sess, 39th Leg, Quebec, 2010.
19. Mahrouse, supra note 15 at 87.
20. Exploring what she refers to as "Racial/Spatial Politics of Banning the Muslim Woman's Niqab" Razack asks who is unsettled by it and argues that in the West anxieties about the niqab ultimately stem from what it represents—a refusal to yield to the western male gaze. See Sherene H Razack, "A Site/Sight We Cannot Bear: The Racial/Spatial Politics of Banning the Muslim Woman's Niqab" (2018) 30:1 Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 169.
21. Bill 62, An Act to Foster Adherence to State Religious Neutrality and, in Particular, to Provide a Framework for Requests for Accommodations on Religious Grounds in Certain Bodies, 1st Sess, 41st Leg, Quebec, 2017 (assented to 18 October 2017), SQ 2017, c 19.
22. Razack, Casting Out, supra note 8 at 34.
23. Haydn Watters, "C-51, Controversial Anti-Terrorism Bill, Is Now Law. So, What Changes?", CBC News (18 June 2015) <https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/c-51-controversial-anti-terrorism-bill-is-now-law-so-what-changes-1.3108608>; Anti-Terrorism Act, SC 2015, c 20.
24. See e.g. Relations Internationales et Francophonie Quebec, "The Fight against Radicalization Leading to Violence" <http://www.mrif.gouv.qc.ca/en/radicalisation>.
25. Uzma Jamil & Cécile Rousseau, "Subject Positioning, Fear, and Insecurity in South Asian Muslim Communities in the War on Terror Context" (2012) 49:4 Canadian Review of Sociology 370.
26. This can be best seen in Trump's campaign promise to bar all Syrian refugees from entering the United States and frequently referring to them as potential terrorists. In one instance, he stated that Syrian refugees are "a Trojan horse" who "may be Isil-related." Nick Allen & Ruth Sherlock, "Donald Trump: 'I'll Look Syrian Children in the Face and Say They Can't Come'", The Telegraph (9 February 2016) <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/donald-trump/12147515/After-tomorrow-Donald-Trump-could-be-unstoppable.html>.
27. Executive Order 13769 of 27 January 2017, "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States", Code of Federal Regulations, Title 3 (2017) 82:20 Federal Register 8977 <https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2017-02-01/pdf/2017-02281.pdf>; Dan Merica, "Trump Signs Executive Order to Keep Out 'Radical Islamic Terrorists' ", CNN (30 January 2017) <http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/27/politics/trump-plans-to-sign-executive-action-on-refugees-extreme-vetting>. Colloquially referred to as the "Muslim ban," it temporarily halted entry into the United States by nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen) for ninety days, suspended refugee resettlement for 120 days, banned all Syrian refugees indefinitely, and attempted to restrict the United States's refugee quota by half. In the post-9/11 climate, male Syrian refugees are often cast as "potential terrorists" and "not true refugees." Jill Walker Rettberg & Radhika Gajjala, "Terrorists or Cowards: Negative Portrayals of Male Syrian Refugees in Social Media" (2016) 16:1 Feminist Media Studies 178 at 179, 180.
28. Tanisha Ramachandran, " 'Take It Off! This Is America!': The Materiality of Headscarves and Hatred in the Benev(i)olent West" (Lecture presentation delivered at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute's Feminist Café, Concordia University, 1 November 2016) [unpublished].
29. Justin Trudeau, "To Those Fleeing Persecution, Terror & War, Canadians Will Welcome You, Regardless of Your Faith: Diversity Is Our Strength #WelcomeToCanada", Twitter (28 January 2017) at 12:20 <https://twitter.com/justintrudeau/status/825438460265762816?lang=en>.
30. Nicholas Kristof, "Canada, Leading the Free World", New York Times (4 February 2017) <https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/opinion/sunday/canada-leading-the-free-world.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&referer=http://m.facebook.com>.
31. Inderpal Grewal, Saving the Security State: Exceptional Citizens in Twenty-First-Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017) at 185.
32. Amira Elghawaby, "Quebec Mosque Killer Epitomizes Islamophobia in Its Deadliest Form", Globe and Mail (15 April 2018) <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-quebec-mosque-killer-epitomizes-islamophobia-in-its-deadliest-form>.
33. Ibid.
34. Andy Riga, "Quebec Mosque Killer Confided He Wished He Had Shot More People, Court Told", Montreal Gazette (17 April 2018) <https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/quebec-mosque-shooter-alexandre-bissonnette-trawled-trumps-twitter-feed>; Stephanie Marin, "Alexandre Bissonnette Reportedly Said He Regrets Not Killing More People", Huffington Post (16 April 2018) <https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/04/16/alexandre-bissonnette-reportedly-said-he-regrets-not-killing-more-people_a_23412822>.
35. See Faisal Bhabha, "Why Accused in Quebec City Mosque Shooting Isn't Likely to Face Terrorism Charges", CBC News (1 February 2017) <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/why-accused-in-quebec-city-mosque-shooting-isn-t-likely-to-face-terrorism-charges-1.3961837>.
36. Criminal Code, supra note 6.
37. Kent Roach, "Why the Quebec City Mosque Shooting Was Terrorism", Globe and Mail (19 April 2018) <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-why-the-quebec-city-mosque-shooting-was-terrorism>.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Bhabha, supra note 35.
42. Roach, supra note 37.
43. CPN, "Quebec TV host: Muslims Being Attacked Is 'Reverse Terrorism'" (31 January 2017), YouTube <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL2SPT8sZ3I>.
44. "'Terrorisme Inversé': Pierre Bruneau S'Excuse", La Presse (31 January 2017) <http://www.lapresse.ca/arts/television/201701/31/01-5064815-terrorisme-inverse-pierre-bruneau-sexcuse.php>.
45. Caroline Mala Corbin, " 'Terrorists Are Always Muslim but Never White': At the Intersection of Critical Race Theory and Propaganda" (2017) 86:2 Fordham Law Review 455 at 455.
46. "Alexandre Bissonnette Explains Why He Pleaded Guilty, in His Own Words", CBC News (28 March 2018) <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/alexandre-bissonnette-quebec-city-Mosque-shooting-statement-guilty-plea-1.4596924> (transcript translated into English from French).
47. Andy Riga, "Quebec Mosque Shooting: Chilling Videos Show a Calm, Calculated Killer", Montreal Gazette (12 April 2018) <https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/quebec-mosque-shooting-sentencing-hearing-begins-for-killer-alexandre-bissonnette>.
48. Elghawaby, supra note 32.
49. Jesse Feith, "Quebec Mosque Shooting: Racism but Not Terrorism, Psychiatrist Says", Montreal Gazette (26 April 2018) <https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec-mosque-shooting-racism-but-not-terrorism-psychiatrist-says>.
50. Marin, supra note 34.
51. Feith, supra note 49.
52. Ibid.
53. Elghawaby, supra note 32.
54. Feith, supra note 49.
55. Ibid.
56. Grewal, supra note 31 at 185.
57. Sherene H Razack, "Making Canada White: Law and the Policing of Bodies of Colour in the 1990s" (1999) 14:1 Canadian Journal of Law and Society 159 at 173 [Razack, "Making Canada White"]; Sherene H Razack, " 'Simple Logic': Race, the Identity Documents Rule and the Story of a Nation Besieged and Betrayed" (2000) 15:6 Journal of Law and Social Policy 181 [Razack, "Simple Logic"].
58. Sherene H Razack, Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004).
59. Razack, "Making Canada White", supra note 57 at 173.
60. See Sarita Srivastava, "Tears, Fears, and Careers: Anti-Racism and Emotion in Social Movement Organizations" (2006) 31:1 Canadian Journal of Sociology 55 at 62; Barbara Applebaum, "Learning from Anger as an Outlaw Emotion: Moving beyond the Limits of What One Can Hear" in Michele S Moses, ed, Philosophy of Education 2014 (Urbana, IL: Philosophy of Education Society, 2014) 132; Kiran Mirchandani, "Challenging Racial Silences in Studies of Emotion Work: Contributions from Anti-Racist Feminist Theory" (2003) 24:5 Organization 721. For instance, citing Razack's work on how of race, economic status, class, disability, sexuality, and gender as they come together to structure power and privilege, Mirchandani, asserts that "[b]oth racial majority and racial minority groups do emotion work which is racialized, that is, which is situated within hierarchies of racial privilege and disadvantage…. Women do emotion work to maintain privilege or to challenge disadvantage in conjunction with the emotion work they do as part of their jobs" (ibid at 729 [emphasis omitted]).
61. See "Introduction: Emotion, Discourse and the Politics of Everyday Life" in Lila AbuLughod & Catherine A Lutz, eds, Language and the Politics of Emotion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 1.
62. Tamar Katriel, "Exploring Emotional Discourse" in Helena Flam & Jochen Kleres, eds, Methods of Exploring Emotions (London: Routledge, 2015) 57 at 58.
63. Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
64. Ibid at 303.
65. Ibid at 168–69.
66. Ibid at 174.
67. Ibid at 175.
68. Nora Young (host), "How Muslim Canadians Are Coping after Quebec City Attack", The Current (3 February 2017) <http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-february-3-2017-1.3963901/how-muslim-canadians-are-coping-after-quebec-city-attack-1.3963952>.
69. Fashioned after a show by the same name in France, this "talk show" is taped before an audience. Marie-Christine Blouin, Tout Le Monde en Parle: Un Miroir Révélateur de la Société Québécoise? (MA thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2007) at 35 <https://archipel.uqam.ca/800/1/M10118.pdf>. The program airs on Radio Canada. The show started in 2004. "Tout le Monde en Parle," ICI Radio-Canada <https://ici.radio-canada.ca/tele/tout-le-monde-en-parle/2016-2017/emission/concept>. Co-hosts are Guy A Lepage and Dany Turcotte. In 2017, 1,058,000 viewers tuned in. Richard Therrien, "Une 14e saison pout Tout le monde en parle", La Presse (25 April 2017) <http://www.lapresse.ca/arts/television/201704/25/01-5091632-une-14e-saison-pour-tout-le-mondeen-parle.php>. It is styled as a "talk show" and taped before an audience. Blouin states that the show demonstrates a mixture of "serious conversations," "light discussions," "eccentric interviews," and musical performances of invited guests or/and singers (ibid at 35; translated by author). "Rachida Azdouz, Nadia El-Mabrouk et Dalila Awada TLMEP Tout le monde en parle 12-02-2017", YouTube (12 February 2017) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06eCjZDb0Yg> ["Tout le monde en parle 12-02-2017"].
70. "In His Own Words: Imam Hassan Guillet's Address at Quebec City Funeral for 3 Mosque Victims", CBC News (3 February 2017) <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/in-his-own-words-imam-hassan-guillet-s-address-at-quebec-city-funeral-for-3-mosque-victims-1.3966917>.
71. "About The Current", CBC Radio <http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/about-the-current-1.4348036>.
72. "In his Own Words", supra note 70.
73. Young, supra note 68. A copy of the show's transcript is available at "February 3, 2017 full episode transcript", CBC Radio (3 February 2017) <https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-february-3-2017-1.3963901/february-3-2017-full-episode-transcript-1.3966442#segment>.
74. Ibid [emphasis added].
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid.
79. Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Flam & Kleres, supra note 62.
80. Uma Narayan, "Working Together across Difference: Some Considerations on Emotions and Political Practice" (1988) 3:2 Hypatia 31; Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2004).
81. bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995).
82. Sara Ahmed, "Progressive Racism", feministkilljoys (30 May 2016) <https://feministkilljoys.com/2016/05/30/progressive-racism>.
83. Rachida Azdouz, Nadia El-Mabrouk & Dalila Awada, "TLMEP Tout le monde en parle 12-02-2017", YouTube (12 February 2017) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06eCjZDb0Yg>.
84. Ibid. This and all subsequent translations of speakers on the show were informally done by the author and her research assistants.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid at 1:20–2:21.
89. Razack, "Simple Logic", supra note 57 at 206.
90. Azdouz, El-Mabrouk & Awada, supra note 83 at 2:21–2:48.
91. Ibid at 9:00–10:06.
92. Ibid at 10:42–10:43.
93. Ibid at 7:54–8:05.
94. The funeral services for the other three men were held in Montreal.
95. Rob Drinkwater, "J.K. Rowling Praises Quebec Imam's 'Extraordinary' Eulogy to Mosque Shooting Victims", Huffington Post (6 February 2017) <https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/02/05/quebec-city-imam-speech-mosque-shooting_n_14630182.html>.
96. "In His Own Words", supra note 70 [emphasis added].
97. Ibid.
98. Ibid.
99. Claire Lampen, "Quebec City Imam Hassan Guillet Extends Empathy to Mosque Shooter in Moving Eulogy", MIC (5 February 2017) <https://mic.com/articles/167668/quebec-city-imam-hassan-guillet-extends-empathy-to-mosque-shooter-in-moving-eulogy#.66Li3f6Cx>.
100. Elliot Hannon, "Québec City Imam's Profoundly Magnanimous Eulogy Includes White Gunman in List of Victims", Slate (5 February 2017) <http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/02/05/quebec_city_imam_s_profoundly_magnanimous_eulogy_includes_white_gunman_in.html>.
101. Hassan Guillet, "Eulogy for Québec Mosque Attack Dead: 'Alexandre Bissonnette Was a Victim, Too'", The Guardian (8 February 2017) <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/08/quebec-mosque-attack-eulogy-alexandre-bissonnette-victim-too>.
102. See Sherene H Razack, "The Impact of Systemic Racism on Canada's Pre-Bombing Threat Assessment and Post-Bombing Response to the Air India Bombings" in Chakraborty, Dean & Failler, supra note 1, 85.
103. Alex Boutilier, "CSIS Stopped Monitoring Right-Wing Extremism Months before Mosque Shooting, Watchdog Says", The Star (20 June 2018) <https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/06/20/csis-stopped-monitoring-right-wing-extremism-months-before-mosque-shooting-watchdog-says.html>.
104. Graeme Hamilton, "Nine Months after Mosque Killings, Quebec Muslims Still Waiting for Promised Change", National Post (20 October 2017) <https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/nine-months-after-mosque-killings-quebec-muslims-still-waiting-for-promised-change>.
105. Ibid.
