Ron Kuipers in America: The Jesuit Review

The recent shooting at the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Centre elicited reactions of both shock and solidarity from a diverse array of Canadian citizens.

At the same time, this horrific crime prompts us to ask deeper questions about our society, including how deeply Islamophobia runs throughout the whole population. A recent roundtable discussion pubished in the Toronto Star reveals that Canadian Muslims all too frequently experience acts of hostility and discrimination, and that they understand these murders as arising out of, and to a certain extent encouraged by, that context.

Canadian Interfaith Conversation member Ronald A. Kuipers, Director of the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics at the Institute for Christian Studies, was recently interviewed by America: A Jesuit Review to give his thoughts about how this violent act relates more generally to Canadian attitudes toward religious pluralism. "It's very easy to condemn a mass shooting," says Dr. Kuipers, "and it's a lot harder to ask 'How welcoming are we as a polity?'" Read the rest of the story here.