How making their mosque safer is helping Quebec City Muslims turn the page on tragedy

When visitors approach the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City's Sainte-Foy neighbourhood, they're no longer greeted by the large picture windows that used to face the street, before a deadly shooting five years ago.

It's been replaced with a concrete wall with smaller windows, in case someone tries to ram the building with a truck.

Security cameras face all the entrances, including the one a gunman used on Jan. 29, 2017, when he walked in and opened fire in a prayer room, killing six worshippers and wounding 19.

Mohamed Khabar had stopped by the mosque that night, as he often did after closing his barbershop. After prayers, he was chatting with friends about soccer: Morocco's loss to Egypt at the Africa Cup of Nations. 

"We were talking about … the mistakes the referee and the coaches had made," Khabar said. "We were just chatting about that, when we heard a big noise.''

Khabar says he froze as he watched the gunman shoot at men and children around him. He was shot twice, in the leg and the foot. 

As he lay there bleeding he says he thought, this is it. He wouldn't be able to get away if the gunman came closer. 

"At that point, I thought of my son who was two months old. I thought of my wife, I thought of my family," he said.  

Khabar managed to make it to the stairs with a few others and hopped down on his good leg to the basement, to hide in the electrical room. Still, he feared the gunman would follow his trail of blood. 

But the gunman didn't return.

"After the tragedy some people were very afraid to come to the mosque," said Mohamed Labidi, the mosque's past president. 

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Even before the shooting, the community had had plans to reinforce the building's security, he says, as they were alarmed by escalating acts of vandalism and hate, such as graffiti and a pig's head that was left on the mosque's steps.

The renovations and security upgrades were completed in March 2021.