Barriers to Belonging: Navigating Islamophobia and Anti-Palestinian Racism in Ontario Public Schools

Abstract

Muslims are the fastest growing religious minority in Canada. In Ontario, Muslim students account for over 20% of the total student body in some school boards. Research suggests that widespread anti-Muslim racism has been perpetrated by teachers in Ontario schools. Though numerous studies have examined the experiences of Muslim students and educators in public schools across Canada, little research has explored the experiences of students enrolled in teacher education programs (i.e., preservice teachers) and their preparedness for challenging anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian racism in Ontario schools. This study explores challenges, biases, and prejudices that Muslim students, Muslim educators, as well as students and teachers that sympathize with Palestinian solidarity face within Ontario public schools from the perspectives of preservice teachers who are in the process of beginning their careers as educators. Through a critical ethnographic approach, this study engaged in 32 semi-structured interviews with preservice teachers across 5 university teacher training programs in Southern Ontario. Participants in this study discussed Islamophobic experiences centred on archetypal perceptions of Muslim male students being discursively constructed as sexist and misogynistic and the policing and surveillance of Muslim prayer spaces and rituals. Anti-Palestinian racism manifested when students and educators’ solidarity with Palestinian rights were policed and silenced, as well as when students and educators felt compelled to self-censor their sympathies for Palestine. This study provides timely and critical insights related to the challenges faced by Ontario teacher training programs in light of growing religious and ethnic plurality in public schools and suggests approaches and strategies to address these obstacles.

1. Introduction

Muslims constitute the fastest growing religious minority in Canada, with Islam identified as the second most reported religion in the country in 2021 (Statistics Canada 2022). Over the past two decades, Canada’s Muslim population has more than doubled, increasing from 2.0% in 2001 to 4.9% in 2021 (Statistics Canada 2022). In the aftermath of 7 October 20231, there has been a steady rise in anti-Muslim racism, used interchangeably with the term Islamophobia (Bakali and Hafez 2022; Beydoun 2018) throughout the paper, and anti-Palestinian racism (APR) globally (Bakali 2024; Bakan and Abu-Laban 2024), as well as across Canada. Islamophobia and APR are intersecting phenomena affecting Canadians from Palestinian backgrounds (both Muslims and Christians), Muslims of various ethnic and national backgrounds, and those who stand in solidarity with Palestinian human rights, regardless of their own positionality. These intersecting forms of oppression have manifested within public institutions, including schools, where students and educators experience heightened surveillance, silencing and discrimination related to Muslim and Palestinian identities (Saleh and Awwad 2024).

A growing body of research over the last decade has examined the schooling experiences of Muslim students in Canadian public schools (A. Ahmed 2017; Bakali 2017, 2018), as well as the experiences of Muslim educators within these systems (Memon and Chanicka 2022). Despite these findings, limited attention has been paid to the perspectives of students enrolled in teacher education programs (i.e., preservice teachers), particularly regarding their preparedness to enact culturally responsive and relevant pedagogies that address the needs of Muslim students in Ontario. This gap is especially concerning given the documented rise in anti-Muslim racism, the growth of far-right and white supremacist ideologies in Canada (Perry and Scrivens 2019), and growing anti-Palestinian sentiment against the backdrop of the current political climate (Elbardouh 2024). Notably, the Ontario Ministry of Education’s Review of one of its largest and most diverse boards, the Peel District School Board, identified widespread Islamophobia perpetrated by educators (Logan 2022). Moreover, Saleh and Awwad (2024) point to multiple cases of APR incidences across Canada, including within schools, noting the ongoing bias and censorship targeting Palestinian and allied voices. Islamophobia and APR are ubiquitous in educational settings, underscoring the need for Ontario’s teacher education programs to intentionally develop strategies that confront and dismantle these intersecting forms of bias and racism. This paper explores preservice teachers’ experiences and encounters with anti-Muslim racism, also referred to as Islamophobia, as well as APR. This study fills gaps in the extant literature, as it grounds the intersectional cartographies of Islamophobia and the recent proliferation of APR, and the myriad ways that these central themes interact, inform, and perpetuate systems of exclusion within K-12 educational spaces.

Through a critical ethnographic approach, the research team conducted 32 semi-structured and open-ended interviews with preservice teachers attending five teacher education programs across Southern Ontario. The research team consists of five Muslim faculty and doctoral students at three universities. This study explores challenges, biases, and prejudices that Muslim student populations, Muslim educators, as well as students and educators that sympathize with Palestinian solidarity face within Ontario public schools from the perspectives of preservice teachers who are in the process of beginning their careers as educators in Ontario. Furthermore, this study provides critical insights related to the teacher training programs attended by participants to address these issues. Participants in this study discussed Islamophobic experiences centred on archetypal perceptions of Muslim male students being discursively constructed as sexist and misogynistic and the policing and surveillance of Muslim prayer spaces and rituals. APR manifested through policing tactics aimed at silencing solidarity with Palestinian rights amongst students and educators, as well as students and educators feeling the need to self-censor their sympathies for Palestine.

This study begins with a brief review of the literature related to anti-Muslim racism and APR within Canadian schooling spaces. Thereafter, the paper will explore central concepts and theories related to Islamophobia and APR to better understand the experiences of participants in this study. After briefly describing the methodological approaches employed in the study, the paper will then engage in a thematic analysis of participants’ experiences in relation to the two primary themes of Islamophobia and APR that emerged through the interview process. The paper will conclude with a discussion related to these central themes, addressing the challenges uncovered by the study and considering potential ways forward based on the findings.

2. Literature Review

Islamophobia and the systematic exclusion of Muslims have been well-documented in the Canadian context (Wilkins-Laflamme 2018). Research indicates that Muslims in Canada worry about visually and verbally self-identifying, out of fear of facing discrimination, assault, prejudice, and disrespect (Jamal et al. 2022; Soufi 2025). Moreover, this fear of visibility experienced by Muslims contradicts Canada’s reputation as a global human rights leader with an official multicultural policy. Following the aftermath of the events of 7 October 2023, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian-identifying students and educators experienced heightened scrutiny when engaging with or expressing solidarity around Palestine. Within educational spaces, this climate has contributed to what is described as Anti-Palestinian Racism (APR), a distinct and intersecting form of racism that renders Palestinian identities, histories, and political expressions as suspect (Faroogh 2025). A recent report entitled Documenting the Palestine Exception (Islamophobia Research Hub 2025) suggests that these perceptions fluctuate in response to media narratives and political discourses, contributing to spikes in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate and surveillance. Educational institutions are not immune to these shifts; rather, they often reproduce dominant political narratives that constrain how Palestine can be discussed, if at all, in classrooms (Faroogh 2025). Such constraints are evident in reports of school-aged children experiencing surveillance, censorship, or even discipline due to their opinions or lived-experiences in relation to Palestine (Saleh and Awwad 2024). This is troubling considering Articles 12 and 13 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantee children the right and agency to form and express their own views and opinions (Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights [OHCHR] 1989).

Niyozov and Pluim (2009) argue that non-Muslim teachers working in Ontario public schools enact the following traumas on Muslim students: racism and Islamophobia, lowered expectations, cultural and religious insensitivity, as well as an overall lack of knowledge and understanding of Islam and Muslims (Niyozov and Pluim 2009). Furthermore, in a study carried out by Zine (2004) on the experiences of Muslim students in Toronto area schools, it was revealed that Islamophobia is often compounded by teachers’ disenfranchising of Muslim students. More contemporary studies conducted by Amjad (2018), Alizai (2017) and A. Ahmed (2017), echo Zine’s earlier findings and centre on widespread post-9/11 Islamophobic attitudes of teachers towards Muslim students in Ontario. Emerging scholarship on APR extends this analysis by demonstrating that Palestinian students and educators experience parallel and overlapping forms of marginalization (Faroogh 2025). Additionally, teachers report feeling afraid to address Palestinian rights and freedoms due to institutional pressure and the conflation of Palestinian advocacy with antisemitism (Bhabha 2023). This culture of fear ultimately curtails students’ abilities to engage in critical discussions around human rights, settler colonialism, and international law, and reinforces inequitable dominant narratives.

While equity and inclusive education policies have become increasingly anti-racist, there continues to be a policy implementation gap between what the policies advocate for and what transpires in Ontario schools (Chadha et al. 2020). Faroogh (2025) argues that this gap is particularly visible in relation to Palestine, where institutional commitments to equity often collapse under political pressure, resulting in the silencing of educators and the marginalization of Palestinian students and families. Both Islamophobia and APR operate in alignment, requiring Palestinian and Muslim students and educators alike to engage in constant self-monitoring and emotional labour to ensure their safety and professional survival within school spaces (Hassan and Khan 2023). The manifestations of Islamophobia and APR as described above can be better understood through various theoretical framings that will be poignant for the analysis of preservice teachers’ experiences in proceeding sections.

3. Theoretical Framing

This study is located at the confluence of intersecting theoretical perspectives that are aimed at challenging and dismantling systemic forms of bias and racism in society. These are the areas of Critical Race Theory (Ladson-Billings 2009), Orientalism (Said 1978), and decolonial approaches to education (Bakali and Memon 2021).

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is rooted in critical legal studies and aimed to critique the persistence of racism in the US legal system, which persisted after the civil rights movement (Delgado 1995). This framework was taken up by scholars in the field of education to deconstruct the racial power hierarchies embedded in educational systems and curricula, which disadvantaged racialized communities and privileged the white majority (Ladson-Billings 2021). The assumptions embedded in CRT from this perspective are that schools are spaces which perpetuate white supremacy (Ladson-Billings 2009) and that educational curricula promote master scripting (Swartz 1992), which is the silencing of various perspectives and voices to reinforce and legitimize white, upper-class male voices as the normative standard of knowing. CRT acknowledges racism as embedded within institutional practices, rather than as an aberration. Consequently, the experiences of marginalized communities within the schooling system are shaped through historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral decisions and policies that have created educational deficits for racialized minorities (Ladson-Billings 2021). When exploring APR and racialized perceptions of Muslims and experiences of anti-Muslim racism within schooling spaces, a central concept that helps contextualize these phenomena is the longevity of Orientalist tropes and perspectives.

Said’s (1978) work, Orientalism, highlights the binaries imposed by the West/Occident toward the Muslim East/Orient. According to Said (1978), Orientalism is “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between the “Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident”” (p. 2). Said noted the presence of Orientalist thought in the works of European scholars, artists and academics throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Through analyzing canonical European literary works from this era, Said (1978) asserted the existence of misrepresentations, over-simplifications and binaries which constructed the West as being diametrically opposed to the East. The discursive polarization of Muslims and the West is reinforced by dichotomous terms and characterizations that depict the Occident as civilized, progressive and advanced, while the Orient is constructed and fetishized as uncivilized, backward, and barbaric. Colonial constructs like Orientalism have shaped hegemonic perspectives of Muslims in Western spaces including schools, which may inhibit the preparedness of teachers to be responsive to their Muslim students (Bakali 2016). These same colonial logics underpin APR, wherein Palestinian existence is frequently erased or rendered conditional within Western educational discourse, while Zionist narratives are positioned as neutral or uncontested (Faroogh 2025). Gendered Islamophobia (Zine 2006) speaks particularly to the ways that Muslim women and girls are situated within the nexus of racism and sexism (Alimahomed-Wilson 2020; Faury 2024). Muslim women and girls in particular are continuously obfuscated through a “white saviour” perspective, and perceived as lacking agency, rather than being active advocates of their education (Abawi 2023a, 2023b). We argue that gendered Islamophobia also manifests itself through problematic stereotypes and assumptions about Muslim males; notably, that they are prone to be radicalized, present a threat to Western civilization and are ideologically incompatible with Western society (Akseer 2018; Ali 2025; Nagra and Maurutto 2023). Similarly, Palestinian students are often denied epistemic agency, with their lived experiences and political realities excluded from legitimate knowledge production in schools (Saleh and Awwad 2024).

Decolonial approaches to education seek to critically interrogate and dismantle educational systems and curricula that reproduce white normativity and colonial logics, creating space for plural and marginalized ways of knowing to emerge (Grosfoguel 2011; Bakali and Memon 2021). From this perspective, classrooms are understood not as neutral sites of learning, but as spaces that continue to transmit “longstanding and ongoing colonial and imperial practices” (Cote-Meek 2014, p. 91). Drawing on Said’s (1978) ideas, decolonial scholars argue that knowledge production within Western institutions, including schools, is historically characterized by distorted and racialized representations of the “Orient”, positioning Muslims and Arabs as inferior and oppositional to Western progression and modernity (Bakali 2022; Zine 2006). These Orientalist narratives remain imbued within curricula and pedagogical practices, reinforcing Eurocentric worldviews and sustaining what Andreotti (2016) describes as “epistemic blindness” (p. 104) of whiteness (Abawi 2021; Pirbhai-Illich et al. 2017). Decolonial approaches therefore extend beyond individual strategies to challenge the systemic and structural inequalities that shape educational institutions (Grosfoguel 2011). Within conditions of ongoing coloniality and white supremacy, Muslims have experienced Islamophobia across multiple societal institutions, in this case, education (Bakali 2018; Zine 2004). Schools, as key sites of knowledge legitimation often reproduce these racialized and orientalist assumptions through deficit narratives, curriculum design, and disciplinary practices that marginalize Muslim identities and experiences. As such, deconstructing Eurocentrism and coloniality in education spaces necessitates pedagogical approaches that affirm students’ cultural knowledge and lived realities. Having explored the theoretical underpinnings that frame the analysis of this study, the paper now turns to explain the methodologies employed in this project to understand preservice teachers’ perceptions of Islamophobia and APR in Ontario schools.

4. Methodology

This was a qualitative study that employed a critical ethnographic methodological approach with the purpose of better understanding preservice teachers’ perceptions in relation to meeting the needs of Muslim students in Ontario schools. This critical ethnographic approach involved interviewing subjects, creating a record of observation, and collecting field notes (Carspecken 1996). The research team engaged in 32 semi-structured interviews with preservice teachers in five teacher training programs. Semi-structured interviews provided an appropriate forum for open-ended questions to facilitate a dialogical approach with the participants (Rubin and Rubin 2005). The interviews aimed to capture: (a) experiences within Ontario preservice teacher training programs, (b) preservice teachers’ perceptions about how their programs address issues of race and racism, and (c) if any training in understanding the lived realities of Muslim students was provided within their preservice teacher programs.

Participants for this study were recruited from Ontario Teachers Colleges at Faculties of Education from Southern Ontario. There are a total of 17 teacher training universities in Ontario (Ontario College of Teachers n.d.). Ten of these teacher training universities are located in Southern Ontario, stretching from Ottawa to Windsor. Several municipalities in this region have high Muslim population densities, above the national average of 4.9% (Statistics Canada 2022). Preservice teachers were recruited from five two-year Bachelor of Education programs at various universities to ensure the data was reflective of a wide breadth of municipalities and regional nuances. As these educators were at the cusp of beginning their careers as Ontario educators, their insights were vital for understanding the challenges that early career educators face with regard to increasingly racially and religiously diverse Ontario schools. Initial participant recruitment was through listservs at various teacher training institutions. Thereafter, purposeful snowball sampling (Patton 2015) was employed and drew from a key informant approach (Marshall 1996), which sought individuals who have access to perspectives or observations not always accessible to the researcher (Goetz and LeCompte 1984). Twenty-six participants identified as females, five identified as males, and one participant identified as transgendered. Nineteen participants identified as non-Muslim and thirteen identified as Muslims. Twenty participants identified with racialized communities, and twelve identified as white. While we acknowledge that preservice teachers’ experiences are not homogenous due to intersectionality, we classified all participants into more generic identity categories of racialized, non-racialized; Muslim, non-Muslim; geographical location and year of preservice education program.

The research team engaged in 45–60 min virtual interviews, posing open-ended questions related to preservice teachers’ attitudes towards preparedness for teaching Muslim students, their experiences working with Muslim students, as well as approaches employed by Faculties of Education to address issues of race, racism, and white supremacy in convergence with Islamophobia in Ontario schooling contexts. All participant comments quoted in the paper have been de-identified to ensure confidentiality of participants. Participation in the study was voluntary and all participants had the chance to withdraw at any time before, during or after the interview. Following the interview and transcription process, all participants were given the opportunity to review their transcripts to ensure ethical representation and guidelines were adhered to.

The data collected for this study consisted of transcripts of audio/video recordings of the virtual meetings and notes taken by the interviewers for each of the questions posed to participants. Using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) framework for thematic analysis, the researchers engaged in a process of familiarization, coding, generating themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and writing up the themes vis-à-vis the research questions. Dedoose 10 data analysis software was utilized in this process. Two of the major themes that emerged from the above-mentioned steps that will be explored further in this paper can be broadly defined as “Islamophobia” and “anti-Palestinian Racism (APR)”. The sub-themes of the first category included Islamophobia in relation to archetypal portrayals of Muslim males being oppressive and misogynistic towards women and the policing of Muslim prayer spaces and practices. The subthemes of the second category of APR included policing tactics aimed at silencing solidarity with Palestinian rights amongst students and educators, as well as students and educators having to self-censor their sympathies for Palestinians in their schools. The paper now turns to a detailed exploration of these subthemes.

5. Results

The data collected from this study yielded important insights related to teacher education programs, preservice teachers’ experiences in Ontario schools, and how educators can be responsive to their Muslim student populations. The analysis of the data collection begins with an exploration of the theme of Islamophobia followed by APR in Ontario schools. The paper then discusses the findings and concludes with suggestions to move forward that are grounded in culturally responsive paradigms to cultivate more inclusive school-community eco-systems that honour and centre the positionalities of Muslims, Palestinians and Palestinian-adjacent students, educators and families.

5.1. Islamophobia

The salience of Islamophobia was interwoven in participant responses through two central sub-themes. The first described how Muslim male students were perceived as innately oppressive and misogynistic. The second emerging sub-theme highlighted the policing of Muslim prayer spaces and religious practices. The suspicion of and regulation of Muslim populations has been instrumental to processes and practices that “Other” Muslims, framing them as threats to western norms and civilization (Kundnani 2015).

5.1.1. Muslim Male Students as Sexist and Misogynistic

Gendered Islamophobia (Zine 2006) is often weaponized to marginalize Muslim males and females alike through binary epithets. The dangerous Muslim male student stereotype materialized several times throughout the interviewing process. The theme operates as a central prong of Islamophobia, whereby the myth of the violent Muslim male in the context of the War on Terror has been utilized to justify military imperialism (Razack 2008; Bakali and Hafez 2022). The gendered assumptions of Muslim bodies, male and female alike, are saturated with binaries of colonial/racial logic (Thobani 2010); whereby Muslim males are oppressive and dominating and Muslim women and girls are passive and weak (Alimahomed-Wilson 2020). These discursive constructions portray Muslim women and girls as in need of rescue from the confines of their violent men.

Gendered preconceived notions and beliefs about Muslim male students came up through conversations between preservice teachers and their associate teachers2, including comments made in the staff room and lived experiences of preservice Muslim teachers themselves. Participant A3 described an experience where a teacher made remarks about Muslim male students which invoked Islamophobic tropes, notably, sexism and misogyny: “[s]he proceeded to say that these male Muslim students would, because of their culture and because of their religion were trained to be disrespectful to women and not respect their authority”. Participant A7 echoed Participant A3’s experience concerning teacher attitudes about Muslim male students being innately sexist towards women and girls. Participant A7 described an interaction with her associate teacher, “they’re a little sexist towards women, which is something they were warning me about…a lot of his [associate teacher’s] opinions about [Muslim male students] were…offhanded comments, like, it’s like this because they’re, you know, Muslim.”

The gendered constructions of Muslim male students in the excerpts speak to Islamophobic ideations that Islam is an inherently sexist religion and that Muslim males are barbaric and backward (Abu-Lughod 2013). The preservice teachers outlined the correlation of student identity as Muslim and male with sexism. The comments made assumptions on the im/possibility of Muslim boys respecting female teachers and peers. They also reinforced colonial conjectures concerning the incompatibility of Islam with a white western ethos.

Participant A10 who identified as Muslim, spoke about some of the gendered microaggressions toward Muslims she personally experienced by an associate teacher during her practicum.

he would make comments constantly in the staff room about Muslims. And I don’t think he realized I was a Muslim…I don’t look like a Muslim woman to his eyes. But he kept making comments…once about like, oh, Muslim men don’t respect their women because Muslim men are, they think they’re better than them, that’s why they get arranged marriages.

In this example, the preservice Muslim teacher was subject to Islamophobic commentary by a mentor who openly harbored anti-Muslim sentiments. The participant stated that she did not appear to be ‘Muslim’ to him suggesting that participant A10 did not conform to his preconceived gendered notions of Muslimness. The associate teacher felt empowered in his racist diatribe to speak up for Muslim women, while reinforcing the Otherness of a Muslim woman whom he was mentoring in the process. Khandoker et al. (2024) refer to this phenomenon as the “Western-liberal anti-Muslim discourse” (p. 2), whereby the well-meaning Western white saviour claims to support liberation and freedom for Muslim women and girls, whilst simultaneously speaking for them and erasing their agency. In addition to reinforcing Orientalist and Islamophobic tropes related to Muslim male misogyny, Participants also described how Muslim accommodations were policed and challenged in Ontario schools.

5.1.2. Policing Muslim Prayer Spaces

This sub-theme speaks to the policing of Muslim prayer spaces and religious practices, which collide with wider social and political structures and geographies of surveillance and securitization. The findings suggest that teachers displayed reluctance to accommodate Muslim students during religious events and downplayed the significance of their religious practices. Indeed, the reluctance to provide accommodations was not limited to students in K-12 practicum schools but also extended to preservice Muslim teachers themselves who felt they were not appropriately accommodated. The Othering of Islamic religious practices served to create a wedge between Muslims who were portrayed as racialized and regressive juxtaposed against white western exceptionalism (Beydoun 2020). Skepticism, mistrust and the gendered hyper-visibility of Muslim males through the Western, white Eurocentric gaze reinforced both the desire to regulate, as well as interrogate Muslim subjectivities (Thobani 2010). Participant A9, a preservice Muslim teacher found that their associate teacher downplayed the importance of prayer in the Muslim faith and showed a general lack of understanding and reluctance to accommodate students when they requested to observe prayer, “he made a comment in front of me about how I don’t think these Muslim people actually pray. They just want to skip class”. Participant A9 also described how teachers mistrusted Muslim students, questioning their whereabouts and interrogating them when they wished to pray during school hours, “I’ve caught a teacher once telling a student that you’re not going to prayer, you’re going to go [roam] around the hallways”.

Selod (2018) draws on the concept of ‘racialized surveillance’ (p. 24) to describe the monitoring of certain racialized bodies based on coded racial cues. The racialization of surveillance of Muslim students, particularly Muslim males often materialized into intrusive practices by teachers, such as the policing of how and when students practiced their religion. In alignment with the experiences of Muslim students in Ontario K-12 schools where participants were carrying out their teaching practicums, some Muslim participants also shared the barriers they encountered when trying to access their own religious accommodations within their preservice education programs. As Participant C4 mentions, “the Dean of the program told us that we can’t accommodate for all this [referring to prayer spaces]. Like, this is not something that is embedded within our policies or whatever. It’s hard for us to accommodate this”.

The surveillance and profiling of Muslim subjectivities is a central aspect of Islamophobia from the macro (state) level right down to the micro-level, in this case, elementary and secondary schools. Racist and anti-Muslim tropes drawn from assumptions about Muslims frame laws, policies and practices to control, monitor their movements, and disenfranchise them (Kundnani 2015). Surveillance measures, to tackle ‘homegrown terrorism’ (Elbih 2018; Saletan 2015) from the U.S. Patriot Act to the Harper government’s ‘Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act’ have cast Muslims as a fifth column in society (Nagra and Maurutto 2023). As participants’ discussed, within schooling contexts, this manifested through the policing of religious practices and rituals, which undermine Muslim civil rights (Monaghan 2014), viewing the observance of Muslim religious rituals in schools with suspicion and mistrust. The second critical theme explored in this study is APR. The subthemes illuminated from APR include policing and self-censorship of expressing solidarity with Palestine.

5.2. Anti-Palestinian Racism (APR)

Anti-Palestinian racism (APR) manifested in two interrelated ways. Firstly, participants consistently noted that APR within Ontario schools occurred through policing students, faculty, and preservice educators’ views related to Palestinian solidarity, and secondly participants engaged in self-censorship of their views on Palestine, fearing that they would face punitive consequences for voicing their opinions. It is worth noting that data collection for this study took place between Spring and Winter of 2025, the height of what many human rights organizations and genocide scholars have described as a genocide in Gaza (Tondo 2025). As such, solidarity with Palestinian human rights was particularly relevant during this period.

5.2.1. Policing Solidarity with Palestine

Several participants described feeling hostility directed towards them when expressing solidarity with Palestinian human rights in light of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. This occurred when preservice teachers and in some instances students at the schools in which preservice educators were doing their practicums were informed that they were expected to censor their beliefs and feelings. Participant D7 described how teachers working at the school explicitly informed students that they were not allowed to express support for Palestine:

I’ve seen a student with a sticker on his locker and he got chastised for that by the school…I heard a teacher say to a student, “I wouldn’t wear a kufiyah [Palestinian cultural scarf] in school. I wouldn’t wear that”…. However, you know students from other ethnic backgrounds are allowed to wear whatever they want to wear.

Participant D7 noted an obvious contradiction. Students from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds were allowed to “wear whatever they wanted”; however, when it came to Palestine, there was an exception. This aligns with the notion of Palestinian exceptionality within Canadian schooling spaces (Islamophobia Research Hub 2025). The Palestine exception was not limited to stickers and cultural clothing items, but national symbols such as the Palestinian flag were also treated with hostility. Here the issue was not a sticker that may have had a message that could have been construed to be supportive of radical or violent resistance, or a cultural symbol like the kufiyah, which may be worn by passive or radical supporters of Palestinian rights. Rather, there was resistance to the Palestinian flag, a symbol of Palestinian statehood, which has been recognized by most nations globally including Canada (Gollom 2025).

The teacher was telling me that there was a student that wants to draw a specific flag [Palestinian flag] and not each student really agrees with that flag…and the teacher was telling me that, like, “I don’t understand these Arabs at school… they think they always have the right over something”.

(Participant A9)

In the example cited above, the teacher expressed concern with the potential discomfort that a Palestinian flag may have for students in the class. What was strikingly absent from this teacher’s areas of concern were students who identified with that symbol and how they would perceive removal of it. In this situation, an authority figure in the school was willing to exercise their power to invisibilize students who were in a constant state of discomfort by virtue of their Otherness within Canadian schooling spaces (Bakali 2022). The mere thought of these marginalized students demonstrating affiliations with a national symbol that the teacher or other students did not agree with caused her to voice frustrations about how “these Arabs” felt they had the right to be empowered and express themselves. The comments of the teacher relate to Thobani’s (2007) conception of Exaltation, which is the process of attributing certain qualities which characterize the nationality of a people, deemed to be nationalist subjects. Those who do not embody these qualities are considered to be strangers to the national community. The teacher in the example above viewed herself to be a nationalist subject able to determine who/what did belong in the school community and the Otherized subjects that did not. Beyond symbols of the Palestinian state, students of Palestinian descent also faced resistance when expressing their cultural identity in school.

There was a concert going on. And a tradition of the concert was that they would have a few students present like cultural dances…one of the dances was students from Palestine. And a teacher complained…And unfortunately, I had to get into quite a bit of a tiff with them and kind of go up to the principal and fight on behalf of these students. And, you know, really reiterate the point that they’re representing their culture…not a [political] cause.

(Participant A7)

Participant A7 described how the students were initially granted permission to perform the dance. However, their ability to do so came into question because of the discomfort of one of the teachers in the school. Similar to the previous example, authority figures within the school were exerting their power to determine what did and did not belong in the school. This incident exposes the performative nature of multicultural initiatives in schools, as such events aim to create the illusion of voice and agency for students, while reinforcing existing power hierarchies (Ladson-Billings 2021). Cultures that are deemed Other and outside the acceptable limits of the national imaginary are faced with resistance and not celebrated through these performative spectacles. As educational spaces in Canada have policed and targeted solidarity with Palestine through Palestinian exceptionalism (Ahmad and Baiton 2026), it has created an atmosphere where educators and students do not need to be explicitly told to censor their views to silence them. Rather, individuals are compelled to engage in self-censorship of their beliefs fearing disciplinary measures and punitive consequences.

5.2.2. Self-Censorship of Expressing Solidarity with Palestine

Participants in this study expressed that they, their colleagues, and students felt the need to self-impose censorship of their views related to Palestine in Ontario schools. As participant D5 notes, the impetus for this self-censorship was self-preservation and feeling unsafe to voice their personal opinions and beliefs, “it’s a dangerous…environment for anyone to speak on anything in regard to Palestine, Gaza …You might have good ideas and good intentions, but you wouldn’t last one day if you were really outspoken and as vocal as you wanted to be”. Participant D5 described how support for Palestine was “dangerous” within schooling environments. The language employed above may seem hyperbolic, however, it is not unwarranted. Within media and popular discourse related to Palestinian solidarity, broader narratives of the “Muslim terrorist” that have emerged in the context of the War on Terror are routinely conflated with Palestinian solidarity, particularly within Canadian educational spaces (Ahmad and Baiton 2026). Preservice teachers are in positions of vulnerability, as they do not hold permanent positions in schools and are working towards their teacher certification. As such, voicing solidarity with Palestine can be “dangerous” for individuals in this position, as it can curtail future employment opportunities or perhaps even disqualify someone from receiving their teaching license. The pressure to self-censor was not only felt by preservice educators, but as some participants alluded to, their colleagues working in the field:

having fellow educators, who I consider friends feeling like they’re not able to share situations that are happening to their families back home, or share things online for fear of being persecuted by fellow educators or the school system…I definitely think that I’ve seen among my colleagues this unsettling nature of, you know, can I post? And, you know, these aren’t things that they’re posting that are offensive. These are real issues and situations that are happening directly to their families.

(Participant A7)

Participant A7 felt that the intimidation and the need for self-censorship extended beyond the walls of the school. Expressing one’s opinions and thoughts on social media could bring about negative repercussions as well. The sentiments were particularly disheartening, as Participant A7 was alluding to the fact that people with family members that were in Palestine and were undergoing tragic conditions that have been categorized as a genocide (Tondo 2025), felt unsafe in Canada to post messages in solidarity because of potential consequences. This pattern of self-censorship was observed by another participant, who noted contradictions between social justice causes that were celebrated and legitimized and others that were policed in schools.

with the genocide going on in Palestine, there’s still people like actively denying that what’s going on is wrong, and you can’t wear the kufiyah to school, and teachers can’t be seen being Pro-Palestine, and it’s like when there was the whole thing between Ukraine and Russia...it’s obviously bad...But it’s like, how come when it came to that, like people were actively like, what Russia is doing is bad, Ukraine is like under attack.

(Participant B13)

Participant B13 felt a clear distinction between issues educators were allowed to voice concern and support for and those they were not. Despite the many parallels that can be drawn in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, in relation to occupation, imperialism, disproportionate force, and what Israel’s actions in Gaza and Palestinian occupied territories have amounted to, it seems logical that being able to freely express concerns over one of these conflicts would not preclude voicing concerns over the other. However, in the context of the War on Terror, Brown lives have become expendable. The violence inflicted upon Brown bodies are a consequence of their own doing and an unpleasant by-product of policing the dangerous Muslim (Bakali and Hafez 2022). As such, there is trepidation towards expressing sympathies for these dangerous Others. This reality is compounded by the Palestinian exception that is operationalized in Canadian schools (Islamophobia Research Hub 2025).

6. Discussion

Despite Canada’s reputation as a global human rights beacon, coupled with widespread institutional commitments to equity, diversity and inclusion from school boards across Ontario, Muslim and Palestinian students, educators and communities continue to be an exception to this commitment and are pushed to the peripheries of exclusion (Hassan and Khan 2023). S. Ahmed (2012) writes extensively about exclusion within institutional life, particularly when it comes to issues of diversity, or lack thereof. She describes the barriers and resistance encountered within institutional confines when taking on equity, diversity and inclusion work. While Ahmed’s work contextualizes the performativity of institutional diversity from the perspective of higher education, much of these issues are echoed in the interviews with participants, such as the fundamental resistance to and silencing of racialized, Muslim and Palestinian voices, lived experiences and agency. In this vein, diversity, equity and anti-oppression discourse are tolerated with the exception that the narrative is controlled by whiteness.

The findings from this study were indicative of the existence of a polarized threshold of what was, and subsequently, what was not tolerated within Ontario schools. Those within the parameters of such a threshold were accepted as the ‘good ones’, or the non-radicalized students and educators who had the potential for assimilation into whiteness. Those who challenged the duality of standards in terms of constructions of humanity, deservingness and belonging were rendered as an Other and excluded. As such, accommodating for Muslim rituals was permitted; however, such religious practices and observances were surveilled and viewed with suspicion. Cultures could be celebrated and platformed, to the extent that they conformed to the hegemonic erasure of unwanted Others. S. Ahmed (2007) describes this phenomenon as ‘happy diversity’, which requires interaction between and among diverse communities to reach a future point of national happiness premised upon a central concept of whiteness. So long as one conforms, works hard and is talented, inequities will be rendered obsolete, provided that one is a loyal subject of the nation-state—in this case, a settler-colonial state. Happy diversity conjures up imagery and narratives of ‘feel-good’ diversity, whereby power structures, racialized hierarchies and Canada’s continuing status as a settler-colonial state are masked and left un-interrogated. The narrative of ‘happy diversity’ is intentional and is often weaponized to exclude and Other those who break away from, challenge and push the normative boundaries imposed by whiteness, while professing institutional commitments of inclusion. Therefore, Muslim, Palestinian and Palestinian-adjacent students, educators, families and communities are welcome so long as they do not transcend the threshold of tolerance. The consequences of if the threshold of tolerance is overstepped, invoked censure and punishment, creating an atmosphere of censorship both imposed and self-inflicted.

Participants from this study stipulated the need for and the importance of allyship as a means for change. Participant A7 described how students who faced imposed censorship needed a voice to speak up on their behalf even if this came at a personal cost, “I was convinced I was gonna…lose my future career or something fighting for these students to do their cultural dance…but in my mind, it was like…if I have to die on that hill, I’ll die on it”. As the findings demonstrate, boundaries of tolerance in Ontario schools were rooted in white supremacy, coloniality and white normativity. Change can only meaningfully take root when authorities and school leadership have the courage to challenge these hegemonic structures. To promote equitable opportunities for success for marginalized students, educational leaders need to operationalize culturally responsive pedagogical practices to leverage students’ cultural capital and lifeworld knowledges and not silence these voices. This helps address the challenges of belonging, integration, and success for all learners in K-12 schools (Khalifa 2018).

Another key theme deciphered in the study was the importance of representation. In alignment with the theoretical framework of CRT, counter-narratives are fundamental to de-centering harmful stereotypes, representations and understandings of racialized communities that have and continue to be marginalized by agencies of the state, in this case, education (Ladson-Billings 2009). Participants mentioned that a critical step forward to empower marginalized voices in schools was to increase representation within the faculty and leadership of these institutions to better reflect school demographics. Interviews with preservice Muslim teachers alluded to the importance of Muslim educators for Muslim students in carving out spaces of understanding, belonging and high expectations—an essential space free from reductionary epithets, surveillance and questions of loyalty. Extant research speaks to the overrepresentation of whiteness in the teaching profession in Ontario and Canada more broadly (Eizadirad et al. 2023; Ontario College of Teachers 2024). Whiteness within the teaching profession is by no means accidental but a policy of intentionality as a way to socialize whiteness and white supremacy on racialized students. Whiteness also shapes discursive constructs and norms of who can be a teacher, and who is best suited to take on these roles (James and Turner 2017).

7. Conclusions

Islamophobia and APR have become issues of global concern (Bakali 2024; Bakan and Abu-Laban 2024). This study discussed a microcosm of this global phenomenon through exploring its manifestations within Canadian schooling contexts. The experiences and perceptions of Ontario preservice teachers from this study suggest that both Islamophobia and APR are significant issues facing Muslims and Palestinian students (Muslim and Christian alike) and those who stand in solidarity for Palestinian liberation. This research underlines the discrepancies between teachers, their students and communities and the urgent need for more Muslim and racialized teachers overall. As we uncovered, Muslims who do pursue teacher education programs encounter constant hostility and microaggressions by both their associate teachers and faculty within their programs. The findings demonstrate a continuation of censorship, surveillance, and processes of Othering in K-12 education and post-secondary education spaces. Gay (1997) refers to ‘cultural brokers’ as those teachers who operate as cultural mediaries between school and home culture to support student belonging and success in school. She articulates the critical role teachers play in defining school experiences and opportunities. We argue that the presence and visibility of Muslim teachers would be pivotal in cultivating equitable school-community ecosystems for newcomer, immigrant, Palestinian and Palestinian-adjacent, and other marginalized students to thrive.

This paper aimed to provide important and timely insights; however, there were some limitations to the study. This study only explored the experiences of preservice teachers within teacher training programs in Southern Ontario. This geographic location was chosen because of the high Muslim population density in this region relative to the rest of Canada. A future study could explore the themes of Islamophobia, APR, and preservice teachers’ preparedness and experiences with these phenomena throughout other regions of Ontario with lower Muslim population densities to understand the similarities and differences in experiences. Furthermore, a more in depth study could examine the experiences of preservice teachers across Canada to explore the nuances of these issues beyond the province of Ontario. Nonetheless, the findings of this study are significant as many countries of the Global North have experienced increased Muslim demographics and face challenges of Islamophobia and APR. Inclusive education systems that are culturally responsive to Muslim students are vital for developing equitable education systems. The findings of this study aim to work towards this end.