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)

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Summary
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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.

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Montreal's Muslim Community Calls for Dialogue, Tolerance
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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

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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.

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Montreal's changing immigrant population
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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.

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Countries of origin of little importance to students
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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.

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Comment
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9. (C) The arrests in Toronto have made Montreal's residents

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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