A local group is teaming up with the region’s Crime Prevention Council to work on ending race and social justice issues in the community.
The topic of islamophobia was front and centre at Thursday’s police services board meeting.
A 2011 national household survey indicates that Waterloo Region is home to close to 19,000 Muslims, or 3.8 per cent of the region’s population. That number has likely gone up in the past eight years.
A group of local Muslim women say islamophobia is very real and very disturbing in the region.
The latest Statistics Canada report cited a 207 per cent increase in reported hate crimes against Muslims in the province. Waterloo Region showed a similar trend, statistics from 2017 show.
“Some people do [report incidents] and then, when they contact the police, they are told, ‘No, this is a personal dispute,’ and those incidents are not documented or kept track of,” explains Sarah Shafiq, project coordinator for the Coalition of Muslim Women of KW
A new report by the organization and Waterloo Region Crime Prevention says a lot of work needs to be done in the community to stop the local incidents.
That starts with more education and better leadership.
Information for the report was gathered after a consultation held in Kitchener in November of 2018. More than 100 people attended.
