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Omar Albach (center) and his team are trying to disspell the notion that Muslims are scary. He travels across North America to film reactions towards Muslims by Canadians and Americans. |
There's a video that a hit on the viral stream. A group of entertainers wanted to do a What Would You Do? segment about Canadians feelings towards Muslims.
They film in downtown Ottawa to see how some would react towards a man chastising a Muslim.
Last week there was an apparent attack on Parliament that killed a solider standing at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. The solider who was identified as Nathan Cirillo was killed by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau (formerly known as Michael Joseph Hall), who Prime Minister Stephen Harper condemned as a terrorist.
Zehaf-Bibeau was killed by the Sergeant at Arms who was the head of Parliamentary security.
We here at Journal de la Reyna send our condolences to the family of Nathan Cirillo.
The junk food media in America has already put a high alert on federal institutions this week in preparation for the U.S. Elections and holiday shopping season. The controversy has sparked conservative outrage towards President Barack Obama. The president condemns this attack but fails to mention Islam as the factor towards terrorism. That's gotten the conservative agitators and the racist right livid.
They conclude that the president is afraid to say terrorism. Of course, the very same ones who demand the president give credit to George W. Bush for the 2011 raid in Pakistan that led to capture of Osama bin Laden.
Not all Muslims wear formal garments. Most of the extremists have attacked wearing Western clothing. Notice that 9/11/2001 attack in the United States, 7/7/2005 attack in the United Kingdom, and the 12/25/2009 attack in Detroit. The individuals were dressed normal and acted normal.
Well Omar Albach had found out that Canadians are pretty tolerant. Well almost tolerant.
During filming a man assaulted one of the entertainers who was harassing the Muslim actor.
The Huffington Post reports that York University student Omar Albach assembled his cast — a young man dressed in Muslim garb and another pretending to be a Muslim-hater — the idea was simple: to gauge how average Canadians felt about Islam in the wake of several high-profile incidents.
Over and over again, the Muslim character was heckled loudly by the other character and told he couldn't get on the bus due to a terror threat.
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Filming in Downtown Ottawa. Two actors who portray a Muslim and a bigot confront each other. They are trying to see if Canadians react towards them. |
And, over and over again, the young man's efforts to get bystanders on the hate train met with failure. At every turn, the 'hater' was scolded, yelled at, shamed — at one point, a man said, "I'm sorry, but this is a friend of mine. I'm with him too."
Canadians appeared to have no taste for the Islamaphobia he was peddling. What's more striking perhaps is the setting Omar Albach, who is of Palestinian descent, chose for his social experiment — Hamilton, Ont.
That's where the body of Nathan Cirillo was laid to rest this week in a moving ceremony that drew onlookers from across the country. The soldier was killed by a lone gunman while guarding the National War Memorial in Ottawa the week before. The suspected gunman, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, was quickly denounced by the prime minister as a terrorist.
One of the crew members, the young man pretending to hate on the ostensibly Muslim man, later identified himself as Devin Giamou.
It seems, he felt the need to join the YouTube comment fray to clear things up.
"I'm the guy that got punched in the video, I thought I would clarify a couple things," he wrote in the video's comment section. "I'm not actually a racist asshole like I portrayed in this video. I knew the guy who played the part of the 'terrorist' and he's a cool guy who played his part very well."
Responses to his clarification range from correction — "Islam is not a race" — to approbation — "Please keep doing thought-provoking videos like this."
Posted on YouTube on Monday, the video has already been viewed more than 270,000 times. But this isn't Albach's first viral video. That distinction belongs to a video the 18-year-old produced in the summer, called "Hug A Terrorist."
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Albach created the Hug A Terrorist video to see reaction from Canadians. |
October 22, 2014, at Parliament Hill and nearby in Ottawa, Canada. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau fatally shot Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a Canadian soldier on ceremonial guard duty at the Canadian National War Memorial. He then launched an attack in the nearby Centre Block parliament building, where members of the Parliament of Canada were attending caucuses. Zehaf-Bibeau was killed inside the building in a gunfight with parliament security personnel.
Following the shootings, the downtown core of Ottawa was placed on lockdown while police searched for any potential additional threats.
The attack took place two days after another attack on military personnel in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, which also killed a Canadian soldier. Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper said both of these attacks serve as a "grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world."
Ottawa, Ontario is the national capital of Canada and second largest city in the province. The population of the city is 894,000 residents.