Minimizing and Denying Racial Violence: Insights from the Québec Mosque Shooting

Abstract

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.

Problematizing Canadian exceptionalism

“…For instance, terrorism charges were not laid against Bissonette even though both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Quebec premiere "explicitly condemned his actions as a terrorist attack" (Mahrouse 2018, 479). Mahrouse (2018) notes how this outcome was "consistent with the widespread reluctance to attribute racially motivated violence to white men" (Mahrouse 2018, 481). Citing Inderpal Grewal's (2017) work on the figure of "the shooter", Mahrouse (2018) finds that "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" (Mahrouse 2018, 481).…”

“…Over the past decade, several bills have been proposed to address the perceived Muslim threat to Quebec's national identity and secular values. For instance, in 2010, Bill 94 was introduced to ban Muslim women from wearing "face coverings", specifically, the niqab, when requesting government services (Razack 2018, Mahrouse 2018. Calling for similar regulations, in 2017, 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 was passed in Quebec (Mahrouse 2018, 476).…”

“…Through political rhetoric, Muslims have been targeted as threats, such as Harper's description of Islamicism as "the greatest threat to the West" (CBC News 2011). Through media depictions, Muslims have been associated with terror (Mahrouse 2018). In this context, wherein political leaders and news media reinforce the perception that any Muslim is questionable, people with prejudices are granted legitimacy in expressing anti-Muslim attitudes, which has increasingly turned into violent action (Perry 2015).…”

“…Police interrogation of Bissonnette revealed that he espoused far-right beliefs that conflated immigrants and refugees with terrorism. By analyzing court documents from his sentencing hearing, Mahrouse (2018) found that Bissonette's social media activities plainly revealed his extensive consumption of farright material and that he had "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" (Mahrouse 2018, 478). Mahrouse (2018) has examined how this show of explicit anti-Muslim racist violence was "minimized and denied".…”

“…By analyzing court documents from his sentencing hearing, Mahrouse (2018) found that Bissonette's social media activities plainly revealed his extensive consumption of farright material and that he had "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" (Mahrouse 2018, 478). Mahrouse (2018) has examined how this show of explicit anti-Muslim racist violence was "minimized and denied". For instance, terrorism charges were not laid against Bissonette even though both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Quebec premiere "explicitly condemned his actions as a terrorist attack" (Mahrouse 2018, 479).…”