Abdelwahed Mekki-Berrada
We are proud to announce that CSLP member Abdelwahed Mekki-Berrada will be hosting a symposium at Laval University entitled: “Islamophobie pseudo-savante et médiatique”. The event will host several academics from various countries with the goal of understanding the role columnists across Canada, Belgium, France, and Portugal have in contributing to the aversion and hatred directed towards Muslim citizens due to their religious beliefs.
Abdelwahed Mekki-Berrada Will be opening the event with a general introduction of the symposium and will also participate in the first panel of the day. In this panel he will explore the concept of pseudo-savant islamophobia and the place it occupies within the francophone communities in Quebec, as well as how many of these roots can be traced back to transnational sources stemming from academics in France.
Our co-director Vivek Venkatesh will also be a part of a later panel, where he will discuss research from a comparative analysis of more than 1,000 online news articles from Quebec's French and English on-line news articles — as well as their readers' responses — about Islamophobia. It reveals that readers often echo the discourse presented by columnists, among other illuminating results.