Salam friends,

A year ago, I sat with Aymen Derbali at the third anniversary of the Quebec City Mosque shooting.

On January 29th, 2017, six Muslims were murdered at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, a mosque in the Sainte-Foy neighbourhood of Quebec City, Canada.

Three years ago, on a cold night, our hearts broke when a man entered the Quebec City Mosque, and began to fire on our congregants on January 29.

Russian troll activity on Twitter aimed at influencing public opinion has attracted a lot of attention in the United States and other western democracies. Canadians may feel it’s not an issue here. But a recent examination of Twitter data suggests there are reasons to be concerned as the country heads into a federal election.

It’s been a little over two years since the terrorist attack on the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec. Since then, many Muslim communities have been making efforts to heal.

Quebec mosque shooting survivor Aymen Derbali attended the commemoration of the January 29th Quebec Mosque Shooting at the Centre Islamique de l'Outaouais (CIO) in Gatineau, Quebec on January 29, 2019.

Like all of the victims of the Quebec mosque shooting, Mamadou Barry's death not only impacted his family-leaving behind a widow, two young orphans, and his recently widowed mother who had just come to live with her son in Quebec City- it crushed the dream of access to clean drinking water for his village in the West African country of Guinea.

Barry was raising funds to install a 100-meter-deep well in his village, located outside of Labe, Guinea's second-largest city.

On February 8th, Alexandre Bissonnette was sentenced to 40 years in prison before being eligible for parole for the murder of Ibrahima Barry, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Khaled Belkacemi, Aboubaker Thabti, Abdelkrim Hassane, and Azzedine Soufiane, and the attempted murder of 35 other worshippers, in the attack at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec (CCIQ) on January 29, 2017.

Hate crimes targeting Canadian Muslims increased 151% in 2017. The data released by Statistics Canada on November 18, 2018 indicated a significant increase in hate crimes against most racial, religious and other minority groups. Two year later, Canadians are still reeling from the terrorist attack in Quebec that claimed six lives and injured 19 others when Alexandre Bissonnette opened fire on worshipers in a Quebec City mosque on January 29, 2017.

The Québec City mosque massacre, the worst mass murder to take place in a house of worship in Canadian history, was a shock to Canada’s multicultural utopia.