Girl’s False Claim of Hijab Attack Brings Ugly Response

It didn’t take long for anti-Muslim sentiments to surface Monday after it was revealed that news reports about a young girl whose hijab was cut up by a stranger were false.

But Victoria Talwar, a professor in the department of educational and counselling psychology at McGill University who has studied why children make up stories, said it’s common for kids from all cultures to tell tall tales.

“She could not anticipate that it would receive such media attention to the point that the prime minister would comment upon it,” Talwar said. “Many children don’t fully understand this viral world that we have where things can get picked up and go.”

Last week Toronto police announced they were investigating a report from the 11-year-old girl who said she’d been attacked by an Asian man wielding scissors who cut up her hijab, a piece of religious garb used by Muslims to cover a woman’s head and shoulders.

The young girl, who The Tyee has chosen not to identify due to her age, was brought out before reporters at her Toronto school to tell the story.

The initial reports stoked fears of Islamophobia in Canada and even drew a rebuke from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who said the attack doesn’t represent Canada.

But Monday morning police issued another release saying the incident didn’t happen.

Despite the girl’s age, the incident was used as an excuse for veiled and open attacks on Muslims.

On Twitter people demanded she be charged, which isn’t possible for children under 12 in Canada. Others went as far as to suggest the 11-year-old was part of a government conspiracy.

One mainstream columnist demanded the young girl’s family “apologize” to the entire country and suggested the public’s response was “overkill” even when people believed a young girl had been attacked with scissors.

The comment section for the article featured calls for the girl and her family to be deported and allegations police were taking it easy on the 11-year-old because she is a Muslim.

Some right-wing media tagged the story as the “hijab hoax.”

Talwar said the girl might have made up the story for some other reason without realizing how out of control it would get.

“She could have been telling it to receive attention, or have sympathy from someone for some reason, or she could have been telling it to deflect attention away from something else she was doing that was bad,” Talwar said. “There’s a number of reason[s] why sh[e] could have told that.”

The girl wouldn’t have realized how it could spiral away from her, Talwar added.

Talwar said studies show the same patterns of fabricating stories across cultures, calling it a “universal human behaviour.”

Whatever the reason the child had, she got no sympathy from those bent on attacking the Muslim community, said Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of civil rights group the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

“Just a reaction to the story has underscored this is a conversation that needs to be had and this is a very real issue that Canadian Muslims and other communities are facing,” Gardee told The Tyee.

The organization is thankful the incident didn’t happen and Gardee said the response from Canadians was “heartening.”

But that doesn’t negate the reality of bigotry in Canada, he said.

“As much as people want to use a one-off instance to try to claim otherwise, you can’t argue with the data,” he said.

According to a Statistics Canada report from November, there was an increase in reported hate crimes across Canada from 2015 to 2016. Though crimes specifically against Muslims dropped slightly, they still account for one third of the 1,400 hate crimes reported in 2016.

Hate crimes were also becoming more violent, the report said.

Gardee pointed to the number of attacks in Quebec City alone as an example.

A year ago six men were gunned down by a Quebec university student at a mosque in the city. Statistics Canada figures show in the year leading up to the massacre hate crimes had doubled in the city.

In October, the Quebec government passed a law prohibiting people from accessing public services if they are wearing a niqab, another piece of Muslim clothing that covers the face.

A judge has stayed the provision.

Gardee said it’s important children feel they will be believed if they are the victims of a hate crime. He stressed that while he doesn’t want to excuse the girl’s actions, such things happen from “time to time” and a child’s background has nothing to do with it.

“I think it’s important we avoid vilifying this young girl who is a child who made a mistake,” he said. “Which one of us can honestly say we haven’t made bad choices?”