MONTREAL REACTIONS TO THE TORONTO ARRESTS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MONTREAL 000676 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/16/2016 TAGS: PTER PGOV CPAS CVIS CA SUBJECT: MONTREAL REACTIONS TO THE TORONTO ARRESTS REF: 05 QUEBEC 0046 Classified By: MBMARSHALL FOR REASONS 1.4 (b) (d) -------------- Summary -------------- ¶1. (C) Montreal has a diverse population, receiving 88% of the province's immigrants. According to the 2004-05 report from the Quebec Ministry of Immigration and Cultural Communities, 27.6% of the Island of Montreal's residents are foreign-born. The greater-Montreal area has an estimated Muslim population of 150,000. Salam Elmenyawi, president of the Montreal Muslim Council, has called on Muslims and non-Muslims alike to engage in constructive dialogue about Islam, and to avoid giving words like "jihad" and "Islamist" the negative connotations they have received in the media. A June 9 incident in which a prominent Montreal Imam was threatened outside his mosque has raised tensions among some members of the city's Muslim community. A June visit to a public school in a Montreal neighborhood where 107 nationalities are represented reveals that students from a wide range of backgrounds can interact peacefully. Overall, reactions in Montreal to the arrests in Toronto, based on our conversations with contacts, have been a mixture of lost innocence and reevaluations of the meaning of "Canadian" identity, but have not included a backlash against multiculturalism. And yet, beneath rhetoric about the need for tolerance and dialogue, there lies a tension between Quebeckers' commitment to their "secular" society and the expression of religious belief that multiculturalism entails. End summary. -------------- -------------- Montreal's Muslim Community Calls for Dialogue, Tolerance -------------- -------------- ¶2. (SBU) The greater Montreal area has an estimated Muslim population of 150,000, which Montreal Muslim Council (MMC) President Salam Elmenyawi noted to ConGen is both young and fast-growing. The MMC issued a press release following the recent Toronto arrests of suspected terrorists condemning "terrorism and extremism in all its forms," and calling on Canadians and the media in particular not to "rush into judgment" of the accused. The MMC applauded the efforts of the RCMP, Mayor of Toronto, and Toronto Chief of police in referring to the averted criminal acts as "motivated by politics and hatred, not by any religion or faith." One June 14, a group of Montreal-area Shiite Imams held a press conference to condemn all violence committed in the name of Islam. Imam Sayad Nabil Abbas noted that ten year sago, the Iraq-based Ayatollah for all Shiite Muslims issued a fatwa that all Muslims residing in non-Muslim countries must obey the laws of the land in which they live. ¶3. (C) Mr. Elmenyawi recently told Econoff that he feels there has been "confusion in the rhetoric used to describe Islam in the papers. I guarantee these (journalists) do not know what is going on in our mosques." Elmenyawi emphasized the need for "intelligent scholars who understand the Koran to go out to speak to Muslims and non-Muslims alike." He noted the need to distinguish among "extremism, radicalism, and terrorism" and the fact that these words have become interchangeable in the media. Elmenyawi stated that "people should be proud of their religion" and warned that "there are people with different agendas using this issue to attack Muslims" and Islam more generally. One spokesperson for the group Bel Agir, a Montreal-based Muslim organization focused on promoting understanding of Islam and spirituality, told Econoff that he has found the coverage of the arrests in the Montreal media to be "lacking objectivity" but that he has not encountered overt anti-Muslim sentiments in the last week, "perhaps because people view these events as something that occurs in Toronto rather than in their own backyard." ¶4. (C) Some Montreal-area Muslims are more uneasy in the wake of the arrests. In what Montreal police describe as a hate crime, a prominent Montreal Imam, Said Jaziri, was threatened with a knife outside his mosque at midnight on Friday, June 9. A 34-year-old man was arrested shortly thereafter, and charged on Saturday with armed assault, uttering threats, and the possession of a dangerous weapon (Note: Mr. Jaziri was one of the Montreal Imams who organized protests in the wake of controversy over the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in Danish newspapers.) An article in MONTREAL 00000676 002 OF 003 Wednesday's La Presse contained an interview with Nabiha El Wafai, an administrative assistant at a Montreal-area private school for Muslim students, in which she described a recent experience in which a man yelled "terrorist go home" at her in a metro station. Ms. Wafai expressed her desire to leave Canada because she "no longer feels respected" here. -------------- Montreal's changing immigrant population -------------- ¶5. (SBU) Until the early 1980's, most of Quebec's immigrants came from Judeo-Christian communities in Europe (see reftel),but the trend over the last twenty years has shifted towards more diverse origins of immigrants. Quebec now hosts a large number of "visible minorities": immigrants from Haiti (there are some 125,000 residents of Haitian descent in Quebec); North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt); Latin America (especially Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Peru, and Argentina); and South and Southeast Asia (South India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia). Montreal is a diverse city, both ethnically and linguistically; according to the most recent report from Quebec's Ministry of Immigration and Cultural Communities, 27.6% of the population of the Island of Montreal is foreign-born. ¶6. (SBU) Unlike most Canadian provinces, Quebec has negotiated bilateral agreements with Ottawa to manage its own immigration program. While the Federal Government still sets criteria for Family Reunification and Refugee migrants, Quebec also selects immigrants based on education, skills, investments, and their capacity or willingness to live in a Francophone culture. The province also administers (using Federal money) the integration programs for newly-arrived immigrants. Quebec's immigration policy has been very proactive over the last ten years, as the government tries to address the province's low population growth rate, labor shortages, and aging demographic profile. ¶7. (C) A poll taken by the firm Leger Marketing between June 7 and 11 revealed that most Quebeckers feel comfortable with "multiculturalism" in Quebec, but that two-thirds of respondents consider themselves "dissatisfied" with the government's immigration policies. Several business contacts have told Econoff that they have begun to question the emphasis placed by Canada on the "Charter of Rights and Freedoms" during the immigration and naturalization process, and that a balance needs to be struck between "rights" that Canadian citizenship includes and the "obligations" that those rights bring with them. According to the Leger poll, 57% of those polled indicated that they were "satisfied" with the government's policies concerning safety and security. -------------- -------------- Countries of origin of little importance to students -------------- -------------- ¶8. (C) On June 9, Econoff and Public Affairs LES visited a high school in Cote St. Luc whose students come from diverse origins. The school's principal said that 107 nationalities (and 65 religions) are represented among the school's 1700 students. She noted that the conflicts in students' countries of origin rarely come into play in their interactions with other students. "When there are conflicts in the Middle East, or in many other countries, they are not mentioned here. At heart, the students are united by their age, by the fact they are adolescents." Acknowledging the school's bare-bones amenities and broken desks, the principal noted that the school is hard-pressed for funding, since the extra monies available to schools from the Quebec government are allotted on the basis of education levels of parents. Ironically, the school does not qualify for these extra funds, because many of the parents sending their children to this school had very high levels of education in their countries of origin. Further, these educated parents often do not have well-paying jobs, because their overseas diplomas are often not accepted by Quebec professional associations. As a result, the school itself remains cash-poor, although many of its students are extremely driven and have won awards at national math competitions for a number of years. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶9. (C) The arrests in Toronto have made Montreal's residents MONTREAL 00000676 003 OF 003 begin to question how vulnerable their own city might be to similar plots. There still appears to be a conscious effort, on the part of the media, to encourage tolerance of cultural differences and promote inter-cultural dialogue, although, as Mr. Elmenyawi points out, the words "jihad" and "Islamist" are hot-button words for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Many Quebeckers like to think of their society as firmly "secular," a sentiment that can trace its roots to the "Silent Revolution" of the 1960's in which French Quebeckers rebelled against the Catholic Church. Quebec is still struggling to rationalize its perception of itself as a secular society with the "mosaic model" of multiculturalism in which immigrant groups are free to retain their own culture and openly practice their religion. The lasting impact of the arrests in Toronto on Montreal's public opinion remains to be determined. However, due to the fact that Montreal's natural population growth is minimal, and that Quebec suffers from negative interprovincial migration, the city of Montreal is likely to continue relying heavily on immigration for population growth. This is an issue we will continue to follow. SHEAFFER