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Should an assault on an atheist activist be prosecuted as a religious hate crime? After being attacked at Ryerson university last Tuesday, Justin Trottier thinks so.

"They should be prosecuted the same as if a member of a religious minority had been targeted," said the 24-year-old U of T graduate of the two young men he said attacked him. "I just want consistency."

Trottier, a leader of the Freethought Association of Canada and an outspoken atheist, said he was assaulted on Tuesday night as he and a colleague, Peter Aruja, were hanging posters advertising a lecture by Victor Stenger, author of God: The Failed Hypothesis.

Two men approached them and asked for a poster. Trottier said that he and his friend gave them one and continued walking. He alleges that the man who took the poster mumbled under his breath and threw the poster to the ground, at which Trottier yelled back, "You could have recycled that."

Media Credit: MIKE GHENU Justin Trottier inside Ryerson University's Jorgenson Hall, where he was attacked last Tuesday night while he and a colleague put up posters like the one above for an upcoming talk. "It has the most controversial title we've had, that's for sure," Trottier said.

Twenty minutes later, the two men approached Trottier in the tunnels underneath the university. He recalled the men being out of breath, as if they had been running. Trottier claims the two men initiated a fight.

"The first individual smacked me in the face twice and said 'watch your smart mouth.' I said, 'Don't touch me,' at which point he head-butted me hard in the face."

Trottier's nose was cut by the brim of one of their hats.

When the police reached the scene 30 minutes after Trottier called 911, the perpetrators had fled. With no other witnesses to the assault, the two alleged assailants have not been caught.

Though he said he considers it an isolated event, Trottier voiced concerns that the attack would be taken too lightly. He said he believes the assault was motivated by the same hatred and stereotyping as Islamophobic or anti-Semitic attacks.

"I think they thought we were arrogant atheists," Trottier said yesterday. "Are they saying that we can't have our own beliefs?"

Ryerson officials and the Toronto Police Department are treating the incident as an assault, but Trottier calls it a premeditated hate crime.

"This happens all the time to other belief groups. Why should an attack on an atheist not be taken with the same level of seriousness?" he asked.

Trottier compared the attack against him to the attacks on Muslim students at U of T last spring, referring to a report on Islamophobia on Ontario campuses recently released by the Canadian Federation of Students.

"This stuff that's happened to us is that same kind of stuff outlined in that report," he said.

Student leaders have stopped short of using the word "hate."

"There's no doubt he was targeted for his beliefs," said SAC chairperson Jen Hassum. Still, she disagreed with Trottier's calling the assault a hate crime.

"That definition isn't for us to discuss. It's a legal term," Hassum said.

SAC will, however, be issuing a message of solidarity to express concern over the incident.

The Toronto Secular Alliance, a student group started at U of T in 2005, has now grown into the Freethought Association of Canada, which is now the primary representative group for secular humanists in Toronto.

"We think that all belief systems should be treated equally," Trottier said. "That's one of the central tenets of secularism."

According to Trottier, posters advertising his group's talks on the U of T and Ryerson campuses have been torn down in the past. He claimed that the problem has been worse than usual at Ryerson this year, with his posters being torn down down as fast as they could be tacked up.

"The worst thing they could have done would have been to rip down our posters, but now they have given us a story to tell."