CAIR-CAN calls for hate crime charge in new U of T attack

For immediate release

The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) today called on Toronto police to treat the latest in a series of incidents at the University of Toronto as a hate crime and to lay the strongest possible criminal charges. CAIR-CAN is also calling on the university to take concrete steps to address racial hate and Islamophobia on campus.

“The University of Toronto has been known for its tolerance and accommodation of religious needs. Now the university must take a strong stand to show that all forms of hate and racism, including Islamophobia, will not be tolerated on its campus," said Riad Saloojee, CAIR-CAN's executive director. He added that the university must take action to ensure the safety of its Muslim students.

In the latest incident, four witnesses told CAIR-CAN that a man attempted to run down four Muslim students with his car on the university campus on Sunday after yelling racial slurs at them. One of the students was reportedly hit by the car and taken to a nearby hospital by paramedics.

In another complaint, a female Muslim student at the university told CAIR-CAN she was pushed and called a terrorist on March 7. Earlier complaints received by CAIR-CAN concerned at least two different flyers promoting Islamophobia that were distributed at both York University and the University of Toronto. One of the flyers contained a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.

The victim of the March 7 incident told CAIR-CAN that she believed the "Know Radical Islam" week-long event organized by a student group at the university in February may have also contributed to the recent rise of Islamophobia on campus.

For more information about allegations of Islamophobia on campus, see:
http://www.caircan.ca/itn_more.php?id=2383_0_2_0_C

Last week, CAIR-CAN sent a letter to David Naylor, president of the University of Toronto, asking that the university take a strong stand against hate. CAIR-CAN reiterated that request this weekend.