Ontario man left powerless after 'ISIS' licence plates made him a target

An Ontario man who fled Afghanistan amid the threat of a militant takeover says his life was endangered multiple times because of a licence plate resembling the word ISIS that he never asked for and that the province refused to change until he was nearly killed. 

Nouman, 26, came to Canada as a refugee with his mother and brother just over a decade ago. His father had died a few years earlier, and life for a single mother in Kabul wasn't safe at the time.

Canada, they hoped, would give them safety and "peace of mind." But a set of licence plates he wound up with last year would put him right back in danger again. CBC News is identifying the 29-year-old by his first name only over concerns for his safety.

When Nouman bought his first motorcycle from a dealership last summer, he didn't pay much attention to the fact that the bike bore plates with 1S1S6 on them 

But after multiple death threats and accusations that he was a supporter of the terror group, Nouman asked the provincial service provider Service Ontario to change his plates. Instead of issuing him new ones, he says he was brushed off and left vulnerable to being targeted again. 

"Not only has my life been threatened at that point but I'm also mocked for that very same thing by a government worker," he said. 

"It puts you in a really powerless place."

It's not the first time the province has fallen under scrutiny for not screening out potentially offensive plates. In 2018 and 2019, CBC Toronto reported on vanity plates that appeared to pass under the radar despite having graphic meanings in a variety of languages including Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu.

But this particular licence plate should have raised obvious flags given ISIS is a well-known designated terror group in Canada that's made headlines for the atrocities it has committed, says one sociology professor. 

Momin Rahman, a professor at Trent University who studies racism and Islamophobia, says the plates Nouman flagged would have been "obviously stigmatizing" for him and that the province should have known better.

Just two months after buying the bike, Nouman says someone accosted him outside Toronto Metropolitan University asking what his licence plate was supposed to mean and yelling slurs at him. Nouman dismissed it as one-off. Winter was around the corner and he'd be putting his bike away soon anyway.

But this past spring, the threats began again. In May, he says, three men pushed him around outside the school, threatened him and said, "We know you're a supporter."

After that, Nouman says he filed a police report and went to a Service Ontario location in Etobicoke to ask for the plates to be replaced. He says the attendant dismissed his concerns and said he would be charged $59 for the change.

Nouman refused, saying the plate should have never been put into circulation given how closely it resembled the word ISIS. After all, the province prohibits licence plates "determined to be objectionable" for a host of reasons, including: those with words that are sexual in nature, vulgar, abusive, derogatory, referencing religion, promoting violence, containing political opinions or expressing hate against a person or group.