Hawzah News Agency (Quebec - Canada) - During a ceremony at Montreal City Hall Thursday to launch Muslim Awareness Week, thoughts were focused on a horrific event that took place in a Quebec City mosque three years ago.

“For us, it’s very important this week because it started 29th of January 2017,” Boufeldja Benabdallah, founder of the Quebec City Islamic Centre, said after the launch.

On that day, a gunman entered Benabdallah’s mosque during evening prayers and opened fire. Six people were killed. The murders shocked the province and terrified members of the province’s Muslim communities.

The incident was commemorated the following year, but some people wanted more.

“OK, we are commemorating, we remember, Quebec remembers,” said Ehab Latoyef, coordinator of the Muslim Awareness Week organizing committee.

That’s why he helped to launched the first annual Muslim Awareness Week in 2019 to build bridges between Muslim and non-Muslim groups.

“It is only by hard work, by reaching out, by, let me say, exposing ourselves so that people would know us, so that they would stop hating us,” he told Global News.

The week runs from Jan. 25 to 31. Activities include conferences, round table discussions and films. Many mosques, including the al-Madinah Centre on Stanley Street in downtown Montreal, will host open houses.