The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, Canada just ordered a landlord to pay a harsh $12,000 to his former tenants on the grounds that he violated their religious freedom, but some are finding that the penalty was too extreme considering the details of the case.
The landlord, John Alabi, 52, had been renting out a portion of his Brampton home for the last fifteen years to help with his mortgage payments but is now facing severe economic consequences for what the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario thought was a violation of religious rights.
In an interview with the Toronto Sun, Alabi said, "I was humiliated, I was made to feel I have no rights, I was made to feel that I'm not wanted in society."
"I feel powerless. They rented my place for only two months. two months! It's just not fair," he continued.
According to the Toronto Sun, Alabi rented his apartment to Walid Madkour and his wife, Heba Ismail, in December 2014. After many disputes, the couple had decided to terminate the lease on February 28, only a couple months later. With the apartment spot needing to be filled, the landlord began looking for new renters to move in.
Early on Alabi let his tenants know that they would receive a 24-hour notice before he would show the apartment off to potential clients, but Madkour had requested an extra 1-hour notice of any showings. Alabi claimed to have abided by this rule but noted that because the tenants failed to respond to his messages, he entered the premises only complying with the 24-hour regulations.
Madkour had argued that Alabi couldn't show the apartment while his wife was home, despite her being unemployed and typically confined to the house. They also denied entry while they were praying which took place five times a day. This left Alabi with little time during the day to show off his space. Frustrated with Alabi's showings, Madkour accused his landlord of "racism and violation of our civil rights" for him to continue to come into the home without permission.
Alabi's response was a text message saying, Welcome to Ontario, Canada."
The Tribunal cited this message to show that Alabi was being discriminatory but he responded saying his reply only meant to explain that housing rules are a bit different in Ontario than they are in Toronto, the couple's previous home. After the "Welcome" comment, the couple called the police on Alabi for what they described as loud pounding on the steps. When police arrived, Alabi claimed he was only shoveling the snow, and later told the couple he was fully within his rights to show off the apartment after a 24-hour notice.
After all of this, the couple made Alabi's shoes an issue. They claimed that it was "disrespectful and an act of racism" to walk in their prayer space [the bedroom] with shoes on according to the Islamic faith. Alabi dismissed this claim saying the two never claimed it was a problem when he entered the space to make repairs, only towards the end in a move to prevent him from renting the space. Even more troubling is that the couple waited eight months to file the complaint to the Tribunal.
The hearing went very poorly for Mr. Alabi and the Tribunal favored the couple heavily in the case. Jo-Anne Pickel, an Ontario Human Rights Tribunal adjudicator, said, "Unfortunately, attempts by Muslims to practice their faith have increasingly been interpreted as an attempt to impose their way of life on others."
Pickel also said, "There was absolutely no evidence that the applicants' requests for additional notice and for the removal of shoes, in this case, were an attempt by them to impose their way of life on the respondent or anyone else. Far from seeking to impose their way of life on anyone, the applicants were merely making simple requests for the accommodation of their religious practices."
The Tribunal ordered Alabi to pay $6,000 to each of the tenants and ordered him to take an online course on human rights and rental housing. In his statement to the Toronto Sun, Alabi said "I don't have the money. I work very hard. If they go into my bank account right now, I don't have $12,000 there."
"It has just shattered me. I am broken. I am broken," he continued. "For the first time in my 20-something years in Canada, I am sorry that I came to this country."
Since the ruling, there has been a GoFundMe page to help Mr. Alabi pay the fine as well as his other legal fees. As of right now, the page has only been able to raise $450 of its goal.
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