What is most shocking about hate in Canada is how mundane it can be. How it resides in the atmosphere, building up, until it strikes suddenly and seemingly randomly.

Just a week ago, the Afzaal family — mother, father, grandmother, son and daughter — were out on an evening walk, the kind of post-dinner sortie a lot of us can identify with. This pandemic and its lockdowns have been long, and the recent warm weather we’ve been having promised reprieve and beckoned us into the outdoors. But during their family stroll, the family was targeted and attacked because they were visibly brown and visibly Muslim.

In making sense of these horrific and violent incidents, we try to rationalize them as anomalies — random occurrences that aren’t representative of Canadian culture. But as they recur, there is one clear line that connects these incidents. What’s implicated here are the Canadian social, political and cultural systems that normalize racism and discrimination against Black, Indigenous and racialized people, providing the fertile ground for Islamophobia to take root.

Politicians advocate for discriminatory laws and bills, and mainstream news media coverage provides skewed representations of those perceived to be Muslim. It is past due the time to examine and hold to account these institutions that actively and consistently work to marginalize and problematize.

For your weekend reading, I've assembled a collection of stories we published this week on the terror attack in London, Ont., as well as some articles from the archives of the global network of The Conversation that offer insight into the many ways Islamophobia persists here and around the world.

I would also encourage you to find some time on the weekend to listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast, which features a segment by my colleague Haley Lewis on the ongoing situation in Kamloops, B.C.