The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has canceled an event featuring Nadia Murad, an ISIS survivor.
Murad was to attend a book club event where she would discuss her book “The Last Girl: My Story Of Captivity” with students from the TDSB. The book explains how she escaped ISIS, which captured and subjected her to sexual slavery at only 14 years of age.
The TDSB announced that its students would not be attending the event after complaints surfaced on social media.
Board superintendent Hellen Fisher has since apologized for “canceling” Murad, but still won’t allow her students to listen to her.
She insisted that the book promoted “Islamophobia” and would, therefore, be offensive to Muslim students.
Tanya Lee, a parent and the founder of A Room Of Your Own Book Club (the book club that was hosting the event featuring Murad) blasted the TDSB for canceling the event.
“This is what the Islamic State means. It is a terrorist organization. It has nothing to do with ordinary Muslims. The Toronto school board should be aware of the difference,” Lee told The Telegraph.
This was not the first time Fisher “canceled” the TDSB from an event because of featuring an author that would potentially offend students. In October, she said TDSB students would not go to an event organized by A Room Of Your Own Book Club for featuring Marie Henien, a lawyer who defended Jian Ghomeshi who was facing sexual assault charges at the time. The TDSB denied students the opportunity to attend the event even though Ghomeshi was acquitted of all charges.
TDSB’s decision to cancel Murad was met with criticism on social media.
One Twitter user sarcastically said: “I guess all the Holocaust survivors who have spoken at schools were promoting hatred of Germans – any response to your idiotic position on nadia Murad?”
