After the most recent fatal incident Targeted attack About Muslims in Canada—— third Four years later-“Anti-Islamphobia” was used as another tool to consolidate the status quo of Islamophobia.

Political leaders shed tears for the Afzal family who was chopped down on a public street in London, Ontario, while maintaining a largely invisible policy of cruel treatment of Muslims: increasing military spending; Sell Provide weapons to countries that slaughter Muslims; try Deport Muslim refugees to avoid torture; and spend millions of dollars in court to fight compensation claims from torture survivors of the “War on Terrorism”.

Politicians in all political fields support the use of anti-terrorism to combat “right-wing extremism,” and in the name of protecting Muslims, it has further consolidated the vast majority of anti-Muslim legal weapons. For example, earlier this year, when the proud boy was listed as a “terrorist entity”, nine Other groups identified as Islamists have also been quietly added to the list-under the cover of anti-racism, it has exacerbated the Muslim centrism on the list.

Characterizing the perpetrators in London as terrorists does not correct the anti-terrorism “color line”; it conceals it. Nathaniel WiltmanThe man who killed the Afzaal family in London is being prosecuted for the murders he has committed, while Muslims are being preemptively convicted for actions that are far from any death or injury. This has created a situation: Since 9/11, Muslims have accounted for less than 10% of casualties caused by public political violence in Canada, and 98% of completed terrorism prosecutions have been held by Muslims.

If Veltman is treated “equally” by Muslims, he and his entire family and members of the community will often be harassed by security agencies at school and at work, denied security permission to participate in paintball shooting, and monitored in their places of worship , Became the target of trapping when fighting mental illness, put it under the suffocating “peace bond” condition preventively without trial, and was included in the no-fly list based on name coincidences and racist stereotypes: no ” “Equality” is the removal of severe state powers of “equality”.

In the few days after the attack, the Canadian media almost continuously broadcast interviews of Muslims, talking about their trauma, grief and fear-ostensibly “humanized” Muslims, but did not question how and why Muslims are human. Become something that needs proof.

The previous mosque massacres-Quebec in 2017, Christchurch in 2019-hardly happened Few minutes Mentioned in the CBC evening news broadcast and on the margins of the front page of the National Globe and Mail. Now, although the amount of coverage has changed dramatically, the qualitative framework remains basically unchanged. Islamophobia is distorted as a problem of interpersonal “extremism” and “hatred”, which is largely separated from the daily state practice that presupposes and benefits from the devaluation, demonization, and dominance of Muslim life.

In fact, some “national security experts” who are responsible for legitimizing the demonized speech of “Muslim extremism” are now regarded as the authority on how to combat anti-Muslim extremism.

For example, Professor Stephanie Cavin is exposed The cake was baked last year to celebrate the death of Muslim drones, but it continues to be cited in the media analysis of the London killings-proving that it is entirely possible to own your Islamophobic cake and eat it.

even Progress expert Participated in the expression of Islamophobia as isolation from certain paranoid figures and past times: Blame the blame on former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party, just as the popular anti-Muslim racism in the United States was blamed on Donald Trump Untimely.

Never mind that Harper’s Conservative Party has lost power in the past six years, but the state-backed poisonous factories of Islamophobia have been stirring up.

Both the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party have strengthened their anti-terrorism powers, resisted accountability for torture conspiracy, and refused to challenge Quebec’s prohibition on public officials from wearing headscarves and other “visible religious symbols”-abuse of power measures have been rationalized to eliminate imagination Necessary threats for Muslims in China.

When the Conservative Party drafted 2015 The Zero Tolerance of Barbarous Culture and Customs Act – Effectively label and convict Canadian Muslims as “barbaric” – the Liberal Party supports it. Now they are in power, name Legal, but not its Problematic substance, Has changed. In the “anti-racism” liberal approach, some racially unfair appearances were refurbished, but the building remained intact.

When it comes to addressing Islamophobia, calls for even the most superficial gestures have met resistance. Even after the cold-blooded murders of six Muslims in the Québec mosque, it took the government four years to make the anniversary of January 29 as a memorial day and a memorial day for taking action against Islamophobia: the cracked Put a small bandage on the wound.

Just a few days after the London killings, the former Freedom Attorney General and the recently appointed anti-Semitism envoy Owen Kotler reposted an article in the right-wing Toronto Sun, insisting that “Canada does not have Islamophobia” and any anti-Muslims. Hatred is the fault of Muslims. After being criticized, this tweet was later deleted as an “accidental”; but Kotler’s long-standing pattern of blaming the victims of ethnic violence, especially the Palestinians, for the violence they suffered still exists.

The enduring power of Islamophobia is that from right to left, almost everyone can find something in it. It is obvious from the consequences of the London attack that even “anti-Islamphobia” may become Islamophobia in another form. The tools of state violence (such as counter-terrorism) have expanded in the name of curbing private violence—cutting off some “extreme” branches of systemic racism while nourishing the root causes.

A week before the Muslim massacre, an unmarked large-scale cemetery 215 Indigenous children It was discovered outside a former church-run residential “school” in the country—more precisely, it was called a prison, torture, and labor camp. In the weeks since then, There are hundreds Unmarked graves were found. White supremacy is not an anomaly in Canada, but the foundation of genocide on which the country relies.

Prime Minister Trudeau might declare that “Islamophobia has no place in Canada”, but in reality, anti-Muslim racism has been intertwined with the anti-indigenous violence that has been the basis for settler colonies for centuries.

The Pope Bull, which authorized the deprivation and enslavement of Muslims and Jews during the Crusades, became the foundation of the discovery doctrine-European self-styled 15th-century colonial recognition, which continued to provide guarantees for the theft and occupation of indigenous lands by Canada.

The tactics of book burning and compulsory re-education were exported from the Spanish Inquisition in Andalus (Spanish Muslims) to the genocide in the Americas: the destruction of knowledge systems is inherently linked to the destruction of the people who produced them.

European conquerors turned Muslims and Jewish demihumans into “people of false religion”, while indigenous peoples were completely expelled as “people without religious beliefs.” This hierarchy of existence still exists in the jurisprudence of the Canadian courts—supporting anti-Muslim laws, such as Quebec’s religious symbol ban, while refusing to recognize that indigenous holy sites facing corporate looting are entitled to any protection of religious freedom.

The complete dehumanization of the indigenous peoples supported the extreme genocidal violence of the “Indian War” in the United States and created legal and military precedents. These precedents were extended to the “war on terror”: the cape of continued suppression of indigenous peoples and Muslims resisted the rule. Colonial countries, from Canada to Palestine to Kashmir.

Many of the same counter-terrorism powers that Canada has established against the mass surveillance and criminalization of the Muslim community after 9/11 target indigenous land and water defenders-continuing to treat those who accept state terrorism as “terrorists” Long tradition.

The reaction to the London attack not only highlighted the fallacy of resorting to this colonial state apparatus as a solution to racism, it was also absurd, but in fact it was the root; an institution that continued to reproduce the white supremacism at its core, Whether it is through condemning the violence of a truck attack, or through the police and military killings, torture and conspiracy, and the deprivation of indigenous sovereignty to condone violence.

To the members of the Afzaal family killed in London—Talat, Salman, Madiha, and Yumna—we say inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un, we are from God, and we will return to God. This reminds us that if we all come from the same place and will all return to the same place, then all the racial supremacist systems in between have been constructed and can therefore be deconstructed: a struggle in their memory .

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.