A local imam is grateful for a show of respect towards the Muslim community after a Qur’an was ripped up and stomped on during a heated school board meeting last week.

About 80 protesters showed up to a board meeting last Wednesday to demonstrate against providing religious accommodations at schools, specifically space for Muslim students to pray as a group on Fridays. The practice, called Jummah, has been recently targeted by critics who want it to be banned.

One protester at the meeting ripped up a copy of the Qur’an and then stomped on it.

“For the Peel District School Board to go out of the way to at least take care of the Qur’an until they’d reached out to someone, that was something the whole community really appreciated,” said Shaykh Omar Subedar.

“They could have just picked it up and thrown it away. But instead, they took great care in putting it together to the best of their abilities.”

Subedar said he will be burying the Qur’an at an undisclosed location.

Brian Woodland, director of communications for the Peel board, said an email was sent to several imams asking what should be done with the Qur’an.

“My director asked us to reach out to imams on two fronts – first to apologize for what happened and to express our condemnation of what we saw, and in a second email to ask what is the right choice in terms of the torn Qur’an,” Woodland said.

“We do not see a need to comment further on this despicable act.”

Subedar said the local Muslim community is still full of emotion after last week’s meeting.

“For this to happen here in Peel, and all these protests, it really hurts because we’ve spent so much time trying to build bridges, trying to build relations and now it feels like we’ve gone 20 to 25 years back,” Subedar said.

The morning after the meeting, two provincial ministers spoke out in support of schools providing space for Muslim students’ Friday prayers.

Subedar hopes that the community will work together to fight against those he says are trying to divide it.

“We’ve been working together for all these years, we’ve accomplished so much, why do we want to tear everything apart and undo all the good,” he said.

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“Working together is going to make us progress, not working against each other.”

With files from Kristin Rushowy

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