FEMYSO Meets Canada’s Special Representative on Islamophobia

On 25 March 2025, the Forum of Euro­pean Mus­lim Youth and Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tions (FEMYSO) pub­lished a press release stat­ing that its lead­er­ship had met with Ami­ra Elghawa­by, Canada’s first Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Com­bat­ting Islam­o­pho­bia, to dis­cuss shared chal­lenges and glob­al strate­gies. Accord­ing to the press release:

FEMYSO’s lead­er­ship engaged in crit­i­cal dia­logue with Ami­ra Elghawa­by, Canada’s inau­gur­al Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Com­bat­ting Islam­o­pho­bia. Their dis­cus­sion high­light­ed the inter­sect­ing chal­lenges Cana­da and Europe face in address­ing sys­temic Islam­o­pho­bia and the urgent need for coor­di­nat­ed, glob­al strate­gies. From pol­i­cy reform to cross-cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion is key to fos­ter­ing inclu­sive soci­eties. Grate­ful for insights that remind us: com­bat­ting hate begins with col­lec­tive action.

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Key Points:

• FEMYSO lead­ers met with Canada’s Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Islam­o­pho­bia to dis­cuss shared challenges.
• The dia­logue empha­sized the need for glob­al strate­gies to com­bat sys­temic Islamophobia.
• Pol­i­cy reform and cross-cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion were high­light­ed as key areas for collaboration.
• FEMYSO said the meet­ing under­scored the impor­tance of col­lec­tive action in fos­ter­ing inclu­sive societies.

In Feb­ru­ary 2023, the GIOR report­ed that Ami­ra Elghawa­by had been appoint­ed amid con­tro­ver­sy about her alleged his­to­ry of mak­ing “anti-Que­bec, anti-Jew­ish and anti-police” remarks. From 2012–2017, Elghawa­by, a jour­nal­ist for the Toron­to Star, served as Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor of the Nation­al Cana­di­an Coun­cil of Mus­lims (NCCM), the Cana­di­an branch of the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR).

The Forum of Euro­pean Mus­lim Youth and Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tions (FEMYSO) is the youth/student arm of the Fed­er­a­tion of Islam­ic Orga­ni­za­tions in Europe (FIOE), and is reg­is­tered as an NGO in Brus­sels. FEMYSO has devel­oped rela­tion­ships with the Coun­cil of Europe, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, and a host of oth­er sig­nif­i­cant orga­ni­za­tions at the Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al lev­els. One of the impor­tant lead­ers of FEMYSO over the years has been Ger­man Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader Ibrahim El-Zay­at. In recent times, its lead­er­ship has been drawn from the fam­i­ly of influ­en­tial Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers, includ­ing the daugh­ter of Rachid Ghan­nouchi. In Novem­ber 2020, the GIOR report­ed that Kau­thar BOUCHALLIKHT, then FEMYSO Vice-Chair­man and an MP for the Dutch EFA mem­ber Groen­Links, was like­ly the daugh­ter of one of the most influ­en­tial lead­ers of the GMB in the Netherlands.

For his­tor­i­cal back­ground on FEMYSO, go here.

Dis­claimer: The GIOR uti­lizes AI to gen­er­ate sum­maries of news items, includ­ing the intro­duc­tion and the key points that fol­low. Any text fol­low­ing the key points is con­text added by GIOR edi­tors. Please ver­i­fy all infor­ma­tion before using. Images are also AI-gen­er­at­ed and are for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es only—they are meant to rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als con­cerned but should not be under­stood as “real world” photography.