Protests and other forms of pushback erupted in the United States in the wake of president Donald Trump’s executive order to ban citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries from coming into the U.S. for 90 days, all refugees for 120 days and Syrian refugees indefinitely.
New Brunswickers will also be demonstrating with a march happening on Saturday in the province’s capital city against Islamophobia and deportations. Dr. Abdelhaq Hamza of the Fredericton Islamic Association says generally muslims in N.B. feel safe and welcome, but:
“You’ll definitely have anomalies every once in a while, we are not immune from these anomalies, we are absolutely not immune from these anomalies,” says Dr. Hamza.
“There are instances where some people have expressed their Islamophobic type of ideas.”
He says that a lot of people aren’t cultured in what exactly the religion of Islam is and what it stands for, so if you have someone like Donald Trump tweeting that muslims are terrorists:
“It’s a generalization that if you had a little bit of culture, or a little bit of knowledge about what Islam is, you’d know that the guy or the person that is uttering these words is just a fool,” says Dr. Hamza.
The march is happening on Saturday at 12:30pm at City Hall at the corner of Queen and York.
You can hear reporter Laura Lyall‘s interview with Dr. Hamza on our weekly news information program Pulse NB this Sunday after the 9am news and once again at 9pm.
(photo via Google)
