Just six months after several worshippers at a Quebec City mosque were shot and killed in a mass shooting, the Islamic center has reportedly received hate mail and a package containing a defaced Quran.
According to the CBC, the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City discovered a package last week with a note suggesting members use a hog farm for a cemetery — a blatant attempt to offend Muslims, who do not consume pork for religious reasons. The package, which members say also included a defaced Quran, arrived two days before a scheduled vote in a nearby town regarding whether to allow the construction a Muslim cemetery. Residents ultimately voted against the creating burial ground.
“There was silence because [everybody] inside was upset. They thought to themselves ‘Again? Again?’”
According to Mohamed Labidi, head of the mosque’s board of directors, the initial response to the package was shock.
“There was silence because [everybody] inside was upset. They thought to themselves ‘Again? Again?’” Labidi told the CBC.
The hateful incident was especially harrowing for a community still mourning the deaths of six people allegedly killed by an openly Islamophobic man. Although Canada has a better reputation for combating anti-Muslim vitriol than the United States, the northern nation still grapples with Islamophobic hatred that has permeated many Western societies.
Islamophobia may also be spilling over from Canada’s southern neighbor. According to a report released this week by the Council of American-Islamic Relations, anti-Muslim hate incidents are up 91 percent this year in the United States, priming 2017 to be the worst year on record for Islamophobic attacks. This is in addition to the sharp rise in anti-Islam incidents that ThinkProgress has tracked for the past two years, a harrowing trend that has only worsened since Donald Trump was elected president.
The defaced Quran incident wasn’t even the first time the Canadian mosque has received hateful deliveries. In June 2016, someone left a severed pig head in front of the mosque. Attached was a note that read “Bon appétit.”