Four members of a Canadian Muslim family were mowed down, apparently intentionally and specifically for their Muslim faith. The perpetrator was a 20-year-old who was apprehended on a road that leads to London’s oldest mosque and the first to be built in Ontario.Since the media started reporting on the possible hate motivation, sympathies and condolences have poured in. The mantra is that “this is not who we are.” While it certainly isn’t the best we can be, the question is increasingly becoming whether it is indeed who we are. As was the case with the murderer who took the lives of six Quebec Muslims in 2017, this murderer is young — only 20. So, we should ask, what is the national narrative about Muslims that has been elaborated for the past 20 years? The impact of 9/11 on how Muslims, individually and collectively, were cast is well known. But typical of our bury-your-head-in-the-sand-and-blame-the-Americans attitude, we rarely examine our own homemade policies and their role in demonizing Muslims.
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