Jewish organizations in Canada are far more likely to condemn tragedies and attacks against the Muslim community than Muslim organizations are to condemn attacks on Jews.
This finding comes from a recently released analysis from the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy which examined how the leading Muslim and Jewish organizations in Canada reacted to major acts of religiously motivated violence against one another’s communities.
The research report’s author, Rahim Mohamed, took ten Jewish-Canadian organizations and looked at if they had condemned 2017’s Quebec City shooting and 2021’s London, Ont. attack.
The report found that Jewish organizations had by and large condemned the attacks, with nine of the ten condemning the Quebec City shooting and six of the ten condemning the London attack. The only organization that had not condemned any of the attacks is Chabad-Lubavitch.
On the other hand, ten leading Muslim organizations were analyzed to see whether or not they had condemned the Oct. 7 attack against Israeli civilians and condemned Hamas.
Of the ten organizations studied, eight of them stayed silent and refused to condemn the Oct. 7 attack. Those organizations include the Muslim Association of Canada, National Council of Canadian Muslims, Canadian Council of Muslim Women, Canadian Muslim PAC, Islamic Society N.A., Muslim Students Association, Agmadiyya in Canada, and The Ismaili Canada.
Only Muslims Facing Tomorrow and the Global Imams Council condemned Hamas after the Oct.7 attack. While the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community expressed condolences for Israelis killed in the attack, they did not condemn Hamas.
Instead, the report notes that some Muslim organizations released statements expressing solidarity with Palestinians and laid the blame for the attack at Israel’s feet.
Mohamed concludes that there is cause for concern that Muslim organizations did not condemn such a deadly act of religiously motivated violence, suggesting a decay of cross-community links.
“The failure of most major Muslim-Canadian organizations to issue condemnations of Hamas in the days that followed suggests a fraying of the bonds of interfaith solidarity that underpin religious plurality in Canada,” reads the report.
Since the Oct. 7 attack, waves of pro-Palestinian protesters have taken to Canadian streets in opposition to Israel’s counter-attack against Hamas and its general right to exist.
Some protests had been organized in Jewish communities, with one protest occurring outside of Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital – a historically Jewish hospital.