The Quebec politicians now fighting against a proposal to commemorate last year’s massacre of six Muslim men at a Quebec City mosque as an annual day of action against Islamophobia provide clear proof of the idea’s merit.

As with last year’s absurd debate over M-103, the federal anti-Islamophobia motion, the opposition to the National Council of Canadian Muslims’ proposal appears to be a proxy for, or an attempt to pander to, more disturbing views. The toxic political culture in which Islamophobia thrives – the culture this proposal seeks to expose and redress - is clearly alive and well.

Quebec’s two main opposition parties, the Parti Québécois and its surging right-wing rival, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), both oppose the proposal on dubious grounds.

The CAQ says the anniversary should commemorate the victims, but not politicize their deaths by making mention of Islamophobia. What, then, would they say about the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, an annual commemoration of the murder by an anti-feminist zealot of 14 women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique?

On that day, we honour the victims not only by remembering their names, but also by considering the social ill that contributed to their tragic deaths. It is an annual opportunity, in remembrance of misogyny’s victims, to reflect on the progress we’ve made in the fight against abuse of women – and the work still to be done. No one suggests this is a disservice to those who were killed. Quite the contrary.

The Parti Québécois, meanwhile, claims that the term “Islamophobia” is “too controversial,” that it could be seen to denote the views not only of bigots, but also of well-intentioned people who hold legitimate concerns about the practices of radical Islam. But surely the fear that the word might be misunderstood should not preclude the denunciation of anti-Muslim bigotry.

The PQ also contends that the proposal is redundant, given that there is already an international day for the elimination of racism. In other words, why should Islamophobia get special treatment? This was one of the bogus arguments used against M-103 and, as the Star argued then, it sounds too much like the petty grievances of the All Lives Matter movement, Heterosexual Pride Day, the Men’s Rights movement and other crypto-bigoted counter-movements that seek to protect privilege in the guise of promoting equality.

Of course all religions deserve to be equally protected and racism of all kinds should be equally rebuked. But allowing these truisms to obscure the ways in which they remain unreflected in our society is perverse if we really mean them. By emphasizing a particular problem, we don’t deny that other problems exist. Inclusion is not a zero-sum game.

In fact, there’s good reason to specifically address Islamophobia when discussing intolerance in Canada today. It is true that Muslims are not the religious group most victimized by hate crimes (Jews continue to hold that unfortunate distinction), but crimes against Muslims have been rising at an alarming rate. Between 2012 and 2015, they doubled. And in the days after the mosque shooting, police in Quebec say they saw another sharp spike.

Especially as tens of thousands of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, mostly Muslims, settle into Canada, the message that this evidence of rising intolerance reflects a fringe view, explicitly rejected by government, is an important one. Yet these politicians, ostrich-like, refuse to acknowledge this real and emerging problem and in the process compound it.

In Quebec, in particular, politicians should know better. In the wake of the Quebec City massacre, the province’s Liberal premier, Philippe Couillard, made a powerful speech of rare cultural introspection. He said Quebec, like all societies, must deal with its “demons” – and “these demons are named xenophobia, racism, exclusion.” He spoke these words alongside his chief political rival, Parti Québécois leader Jean-François Lisée, who appropriately took some personal responsibility for the rising anti-Muslim sentiment.

Yet just a few days later the premier was pushing his niqab ban for those providing or receiving public services, a shameful sop to nativist voters that Lisée said at the time did not go far enough. Now Couillard says he’s not sure about commemorating last year’s murder of six Muslims in their place worship as a day of action against Islamophobia. His political rivals argue it’s a bad idea. Their flimsy pretexts prove the opposite.