9/11, 20 years later How 9/11 changed Quebec

Reasonable accommodations. Charter of values. State secularism law. These debates, which have polarized Quebecers, were influenced by the terrorist attacks of September 11 in the United States 20 years ago, note observers.

Like all those old enough to have experienced the event, Dalila Awada remembers what she was doing on September 11, 2001: she was in class in the Saint -Michel, in Montreal.

“I mostly remember the next day,” she says. We observed a minute of silence. Afterwards, a guy in class turned around. "Is it true that you are a Muslim? he asked me. I answered yes. He was disgusted, and called me a terrorist. It was the first time this had happened to me. I was in fifth grade. »

Before that day, Dalila, whose family is of Lebanese origin, and who was born and spent her entire life in Quebec, was “vaguely” aware of being Muslim. Too young to wear the hijab, she didn't stand out from the other kids at school.

After 9/11, the children continued to play together at recess, she says. “But I felt that I was no longer the same in the eyes of others. »

The September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed by 19 al-Qaeda jihadists in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, are considered the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States. history.

Images of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, as well as later images of attacks by the Islamic State terrorist group in Spain, France, the United Kingdom and Canada, have created a wave of concern around the world, explains Michel Seymour, essayist, retired philosophy professor from the University of Montreal and author of the new book Reason, unreason and religion – Plea for open secularism (ecosociety).

Suddenly, there is this fear of a religion subject to political interests that seems to want to expand on a global scale. There has been an international rise in Islamophobia.

Michel Seymour, essayist, retired philosophy professor from the University of Montreal and author

In Quebec, the impact of the attacks was felt primarily among the Arab-Muslim community. In the weeks following September 11, 2001, Dalila Awada saw her mother being the victim of racism for the first time.

“We had just done a little shopping at the pharmacy, and a man started insulting my mother. “Terrorist, go back to your country, you are destroying the world. It is disturbing for a child to witness this. You can’t forget it,” says M^me Awada, now a columnist for the Métro newspaper.

Interest to understand

For Lamine Foura, journalist and co-founder of the Maghreb Congress in Quebec, the attacks of September 11, 2001 created a “before” and an “after” for Muslims around the world. This change has also allowed some positive elements to emerge, he says.

We have gone from indifference towards the Arab-Muslim world to an interest in understanding this complex and heterogeneous world, in the West and in Quebec in particular.

Lamine Foura, journalist and co-founder of the Maghreb Congress in Quebec

Mr. Foura notes that the early 2000s coincided with when the Muslim community reached 100,000 people and overtook the Jewish community to become the second largest in Quebec, after the Christian community. “In my opinion, this too is a turning point that has had an impact on relations between the community and Quebecers in general. »

50 or 60 years ago, some Quebecers could feel “uneasiness” in the presence of a black person. Today, a similar "discomfort" is perceptible among some Quebecers when they are in the presence of a Muslim woman whose hair is covered with the hijab, explains Michel Seymour.

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“We feel threatened from the outside, we think our identity is in danger. Among certain French and Quebec intellectuals, we have begun to feel a kind of psychosis of the invasion of political Islam, which curiously does not happen. »

It is in this context that the bill on the Charter of Quebec Values ​​of the Parti Québécois appeared in Quebec, then that of Bill 21 on the secularism of the State, carried by the Coalition avenir Québec.

Since September 2001, secularism has curiously become a major issue and Islam, at the same time, has curiously also become a religion that [many] like to hate.

Michel Seymour, essayist, retired philosophy professor from the University of Montreal and author

The bills on secularism are not Islamophobic, he clarifies. That said, the arguments developed for years in Quebec to support them had an Islamophobic content, believes the professor.

“You had Bernard Drainville, the minister who was promoting the Charter of Values ​​project, who said: ‘Either it’s Bill 60, or it’s fundamentalism. You also had Djemila Benhabib who told us that political Islam was going to settle in Quebec, Fatima Houda-Pepin who maintained that all the mosques in Quebec were subsidized by Saudi Arabia and that Salafism was taught there, Jean -François Lisée warned us of the danger of AK-47s under burqas…”

This fear of Islam “has provoked acrimonious debates, led to the appearance of far-right groups in Quebec, an increase in hate crimes perpetrated against the Arab-Muslim minority and caused horror at the mosque of Quebec City, where six people were killed while praying,” said Seymour.

Daniel Baril, president of the Mouvement laïque québécois, finds it “ridiculous” to link 9/11 to the State Secularism Act.

“Secularism has nothing to do with anti-religious sentiment,” he says.

The Mouvement laïc québécois, he recalls, was founded in 1981. “At first, we called for a secular school, but then we called for a secular state. All this, 20 years before September 11, when there was not a single Muslim veil in the street! We have not changed our conception of secularism since that time, it is the same thing that we are putting forward. »

Sometimes religions “are more expressive than others about who they belong to,” he says. This is not an argument to make us change our minds. »

A context that fueled the debates

Lamine Foura notes that beyond the political debates, immigrants from the Maghreb and Muslims in general integrate well into Quebec society. "And these terrorist attacks haven't changed that," he said.

In 2001, Mr. Foura, who has an engineering background, was working as a consultant at Bombardier Aerospace when news that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center began circulating around the office on the morning of 9/11.

In the weeks that followed, the aviation world was in disarray, and his department had people to let go.

“Out of 20 or 30 consultants at Bombardier, they kept 5 who became permanent employees. I was one of the 5, and I am of the Muslim faith. »

Mr. Foura often gives this example when speaking to groups of newcomers to Quebec.

“As in all societies, there is discrimination, but it is not always the case. If they have the opportunity to see your competence, people will recruit you, without seeing your origin or your religion. »