By Kevin Dougherty

QUEBEC CITY (Reuters) – In the wake of Sunday’s fatal attack on a mosque in Quebec City, attention is turning to the role of populist talk radio stations and their possible role in whipping up resentment against Muslims.

The day after the massacre at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec, one local talk show host in Quebec City told his listeners several times that two hooded men shouting “Allahu Akbar!” had carried out the attack.

“Is this Islamophobia or an Islamist attack?” asked Sylvain Bouchard on station FM93. In fact, police that day charged a white Quebec man with six counts of premeditated murder and five counts of attempted murder with a restricted weapon for the attack.

Members of Quebec’s Muslim community suggest views expressed on what is known popularly as “radio poubelle” (garbage pail radio) may be encouraging extremist views in a province which has at times struggled to cope with immigration.

Quebec has seen a steady rise of right-wing groups, especially since a heated debate in 2007 about “reasonable accommodation”: how far the province should go to make immigrants feel welcome.

The province last year unveiled draft legislation to ban face-coverings in the public sector in a move criticized as marginalising Muslim women and potentially inflaming anti-immigrant tensions.

“This unhealthy climate is fed by garbage pail radio where you can say anything and where the hosts vomit all over Muslims, Jews — in short, everyone who isn’t ‘us’ but ‘them,” wrote Michele Ouimet, a columnist for the La Presse daily.

MORE:   http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/talk-radio–intolerance-in-focus-as-quebec-seeks-answers-after-shooting/42926420

(Additional reporting by Alastair Sharp in Toronto and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Writing by David Ljunggren; Editing by Alan Crosby)