Canadian Press complains not enough being done to ‘tackle Islamophobia’ 25 years after 9/11

The story centered on the thoughts of advocates in the area, with the outlet writing, “Twenty-five years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center spurred widespread surveillance and hostility against Muslims around the world, the work of countering Islamophobia in Canada still rests largely on those it targets.”

The article cited Safwan Choudhry, spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Canada, who said that while there exists more avenues for outreach and public education regarding Islam today, “it feels as though nothing has changed and we’re not further ahead.”

The article cited an increase in reported hate crimes against Muslims, jumping from 11 reported by the Canadian Islamic Congress in the year that led up to 9/11, which jumped to 173 in the year that followed. In 2025, 204 cases were reported to Canadian police forces, up from 142 in 2021.

Amira Elghawaby, who previously served as Canada’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, said, “I often think to myself, thank goodness that we didn’t have the same online climate (in 2001) that we have today because there was an ability to actually create sort of local connection and reconnection and allyship in our communities after 9/11, which was so valuable and helped to stem the hate.”

“We were hoping that 25 years on ... our kids wouldn’t have to deal with the stigma, with the suspicion, with all that we had to do at that time,” said Elghawaby.

Per Statistics Canada, in 2021, the latest data available, there were over 1.7 million people who reported being Muslim, up from 579,000 in 2001. In 2001, 2 percent of the population was Muslim, and in 2021, that number rose to 4.9 percent.

This comes after the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation told its reporters not to refer to 9/11 as a “terrorist attack,” but should rather say, “The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes.” The guidelines received pushback, with the RNC banning the CBC from attending its midterms convention. The CBC later walked back its guidelines.

The article from the Canadian Press drew parallels to an ongoing joke from the late comedian Norm Macdonald. He wrote in 2016, "What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?" He similarly joked in 2017 that his friend's "biggest fear" about the prospect of terrorist groups getting their hands on a dirty bomb and exploding it, is how "then, the blowback against innocent Muslims would be absolutely terrible."