“I’ve actually never been as frightened as I am now,” says Senator Mobina Jaffer.

She’s no stranger to the issues, having been appointed Canada’s first Muslim senator just one week after 9/11. She said she “immediately got pushed into these issues” back then, when the security-versus-privacy debate was just heating up — but she wasn’t as scared then as she is now.

Today, the Anti-Terrorism Bill 2015, known commonly as C-51, is the law of the land — but the debate the preceded its passage was fraught with the kind of rhetorical excesses that led to accusations that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet were using ‘islamophobic’ language about mosques and head coverings to get the bill passed.

Nobody felt this more deeply than Muslim Canadians, who fear they’re being used as political props in a fear-fueled debate. And the anxiety goes all the way to the highest levels of Canadian society— to people like Senator Jaffer.

On a recent trip to Minnesota to speak to a Muslim-American group, the senator noticed the label ‘SSSS’ on her boarding pass. Her hosts told her that it was a security designation — that she’d been earmarked by airport security for additional screening.

“Everywhere I went they thoroughly checked me, stopped me and wouldn’t let me line up for boarding. I’m probably just imagining it but it even felt like someone sat behind me while I waited,” she said. “Who am I a threat to?

“I, who have a lot of support and am very cherished and have a great job, felt frightened. Imagine a young person who may not have any of that and how they would have felt? There is absolutely a fear, and it does not help when the prime minister and his ministers equate women in niqabs with terrorism. It’s not helping at all.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was roundly attacked for saying publicly that the practice of wearing a Muslim niqab, or face veil, is “rooted in a culture that is anti-women. That is unacceptable to Canadians, unacceptable to Canadian women.”

Citizenship and Immigration Minister, Chris Alexander, has since added fuel to the fire. Asked in an interview with VICE about the government’s decision to appeal a court ruling that permits the wearing of face coverings during citizenship ceremonies, Alexander said that Canadians “don’t want their co-citizens to be terrorists.”

“I’m just thankful there’s an election coming,” said Jaffer.

The threat of terrorism in Canada is a personal concern for Jaffer; she works closely with Muslim communities across the country and argues the government isn’t doing enough to reach out to those communities. She worked closely with then-PM Jean Chretien when Canada developed its anti-terrorism legislation after 9/11, and said the two government’s approached the problem from different angles.

“He listened to us,” she said of Chretien. “He had an open mind.”

She said the Harper government exploited last October’s attack on Parliament Hill to validate excessive and dangerous legislation that hurts Canada’s reputation internationally.

“This was not a terrorist attack, what happened to us,” she said. “Come on, people are laughing at us around the world. This was some young man who had mental issues. I know his mosque, because I helped build it.

“I know the mosque where he was and they didn’t throw him out because he had some terrorist issues, they threw him out because he was stealing and breaking in to the mosque every night to sleep there. Even they knew he was a disturbed person. And now, as the result of one person with mental issues, a whole community is suffering.

“It’s an excuse.”

Though no longer officially a Liberal senator since Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau ejected the Senate caucus, Jaffer has written to Trudeau several times on the subject and plans to write to Tom Mulcair and the whole NDP caucus about what could be done to repeal C-51.

“Now that I’m independent, I can write to whomever I want,” she said.

“But I believe if I were in caucus, I would not have let this happen. I would have driven him crazy. I’m not happy with the position he (Trudeau) took and he knows it,” she said, referring to Trudeau’s controversial decision to support C-51 while promising to repeal portions if he forms a government in October. She is not the only Liberal to have voiced disapproval over the decision.

Senate ‘Liberals’ voted against C-51, along with two independent senators, but the final vote was still 44-28 in favour.

“I knew this was a really bad bill and honestly, amendments have not been something this government accepts. So, after the amendments happened in the House, there was really no hope of any happening here,” said Jaffer, referring to four minor changes made before the bill was sent to the Senate.

“But there weren’t enough of us in caucus to tell him how wrong it was.”

@Claire_Wahlen

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