In a rare instance of Internet justice, Victoria social networkers spontaneously banded together last Thursday to react against hate speech that was posted to a community Facebook page.
When "I ? Downtown Victoria" posted a picture of the newly constructed mosque on Quadra Street, Facebook user Dan Speed took the opportunity to express his feelings on the matter.
"That's not good," he declared, then proceeded to further elucidate his position: "Blast it with an 84-mm Carl Gustaf."
Unfortunately for Speed, his fellow Facebook users were unimpressed with his comments; people quickly responded with disgust, derision and pity.
"Ignorance and hate are such charming qualities," wrote Kristi Nelson, while Dorothy Mae Amero summed up the situation with, "I love it when bigots expose themselves to the world. Thanks for making it easy, Dan."
Faced with unanimously negative feedback, Speed has since deleted his comments from the thread, and the Victoria police are investigating the situation.
Apparently, threatening a mosque with a rocket launcher is not on.
Yet if we take this story of justice via Facebook to be a kind of litmus test for cultural and religious tolerance in our society, it becomes clear that we still have a long way to go.
While I won't deny that seeing a purveyor of hate speech being shamed and silenced by a group of downtown Victoria enthusiasts gives me the warm-and-fuzzies, you have only to look to the B.C. Muslim Association's response to see where we stand on the road to tolerance.
Musa Ismail, president of the BCMA, called the young man's comments "very concerning and troublesome," but he contextualized his words carefully.
"I know there are so many misinterpretations and misunderstandings about Islam," said Ismail, gently, before saying that he hoped the young man would seek out more information about the faith. He mentioned plans for an open house at the mosque, but clarified that the gesture was meant "not to preach to anybody but to let people know and learn about Islam."
The CBC also made sure to report that "the Muslim community has been present in Victoria for 50 years without incident." Indeed, the mosque on Quadra Street isn't a new institution, but is simply being rebuilt and expanded.
It's a shame these rhetorical moves are still required. Surely it's not necessary for the BCMA to reassure people that, on the whole, Muslims are a pretty peaceable bunch - unless you're a bigot, you tend to assume that "pretty peaceable" is the default setting for most people.
Yet I'll venture to guess that if this had been a Muslim man threatening to take a handgun to Christ Church Cathedral, our collective response would have been swifter and stronger, and we wouldn't have thought twice about it. When a white Christian says something violent, it's an exception, an anomaly; if a brown Muslim does it, it's indicative of the inherent violence of Islam.
So when we say that "the Muslim community has been present in Victoria for 50 years without incident," what we really mean is, without incident to us. It sure can't mean without incident to them, because Muslims in Victoria face discrimination all the time. Racism, classism and religious intolerance do not define the Muslim community's history in B.C., but they are intrinsic to it. Last Thursday, someone wished he could take a rocket launcher to their mosque.
That's an incident. The more diverse our society becomes, the more anxious some people feel. Some of us begin to fear that our rights are being compromised. But they aren't.
What's being compromised are our privileges. We're upset that we now have to share the space that we dominated for so long, indifferent to or ignorant of the ways in which other people had to adjust their lives to accommodate us.
And this makes us scared, because we've never had to compromise before.
I'll bet that Speed didn't expect to start a fight - I'll bet he thought people would agree with him, that others were as frustrated as I assume (perhaps incorrectly) he feels.
So while this story has a happy ending, I hope what we take from it is not "our work here is done," but the realization that we still have a lot of work to do - even if it begins on Facebook.
