British Columbia: Canadian Muslims and Assistance Hotline

british columbia: But I think we need to start pushing the envelope and being comfortable talking about things such as racism and Islamophobia and xenophobia, to name a few things, in a more open and public manner, he told a news conference Tuesday, according to Vancouver Observer. Alam said a range of legal groups in British Columbia started the hotline last March after the National Council of Canadian Muslims reported a significant increase in Islamophobic incidents. Hasan Alam, a community liaison for the Islamophobia Legal Assistance Hotline, said Canadians often feel that race or faith-based discrimination are taboo topics and they should stick to the language of diversity and multiculturalism. The hotline gives people targeted by Islamophobia access to free legal advice in multiple languages and across a number of legal fields including immigration, employment and human rights law. Now, Canadians are being exposed to a more extreme form of this rhetoric from the U.S, he said. He said the reasons for the rise in Islamophobia are complex and many, but during the last federal election a divisive form of Islamophobic rhetoric was used to single out Muslims as a threat, including the so-called barbaric cultural practices tipline floated by the Conservatives. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.