Two years after the killing of six worshipers at a mosque in the Canadian city of Quebec, the city's Muslims are still struggling to live with this incident, where the offender was sentenced on Friday to life imprisonment.
In its report, the Wall Street Journal says the holes left in the glass of the building of the Islamic Cultural Center in Quebec are still clear.
Muhammad Yangui, who was the imam of the mosque at the time, had trouble entering him to pray. Khadija Thabti, who lost her husband in the attack, still has to take her 5-year-old daughter to the front door to see her locked before she goes to bed.
"Our lives have changed upside down," Thabeti said. "I can not believe my husband died."
The judge in the city of Quebec on Friday sentenced 29-year-old Alexander Bessonetti to life in prison after being sentenced to 40 years in prison. The motive for the crime was racism and hatred, not terrorism.
The attack on the mosque in January 2017 in a rare mass murder in Canada shocked the Muslim community and showed that the country was not at times immune to violence coupled with growing immigration.
As many try to digest what happened two years after the incident, the Wall Street Journal says tensions over debt and integration continue, citing the victory of the conservative coalition, Aviner Quebec, in last October's election after an anti-immigration campaign.
Quebec's new Prime Minister Francois Léollet has vowed to ban religious symbols, including Muslim headscarves, and sparked criticism last week when he said Islamophobia no longer exists, before his office backs down.
"Muslims in Quebec are living a difficult time," said Ihsan Gardi, director of the National Council of Muslims in Canada.
According to Canadian statistics, the number of hate crimes against Muslims more than doubled during the year of the shooting of the mosque, which also received a distorted copy of the Koran, and set fire to a car belonging to the official.
According to the Wall Street Journal, national statistics for 2018 are not available, but local police confirm a decline in the number of reports of hate incidents in Quebec last year from 85 to 27, including 18 against Muslims.
On the other hand, there are many who stand by the Muslims in Quebec, especially after the attack. A fundraising campaign was launched which contributed to the purchase of a wheelchair for a worshiper paralyzed by the accident. Local donors collected hundreds of messages from supporters of the Muslim community and distributed copies to the families of the victims .