A viral audio clip of an Edmonton teacher admonishing a Muslim student for avoiding Pride events perfectly encapsulates a dilemma that’s worth wrestling with. How does one tolerate — or, better still, tackle — the intolerance of some members of a group that has itself faced so much intolerance.
At least part of the answer is simple: not with the very discrimination you rail against.
Less simple, and also wrapped up in the answer, is a layered understanding of how religion, a source of support for many, can also be a basis of discrimination.
In the two-minute audio clip from last month, an unnamed Londonderry Junior High School teacher told a student his behaviour was unacceptable, and referenced Uganda, where intolerance and criminalization of homosexuality has been boosted by evangelical Christians.
She also pointed out there were no complaints when Ramadan was acknowledged at school.
“It goes two ways. If you want to be respected for who you are, if you don’t want to suffer prejudice for your religion, your colour of skin or whatever, then you better give it back to people who are different from you. That’s how it works,” said the teacher.
She should have stopped there.
It’s not uncommon to see individuals from equity-seeking groups aligning with discriminatory actions; the plaintiffs in front of the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down affirmative action last week were Asian-American.
Of course, Muslims are not a monolith. Nor are they the only faith group to denounce LGBTQ2+ teachings at school. On June 27, a group of Muslim, Jewish and Christian parents of students at a Montgomery county school demanded that their kids be able to opt-out of the sex-ed curriculum.
But Muslim opposition to Pride in Canada and the U.S. is not restricted to one Edmonton student’s choice to skip Pride-related events, or students routinely using provincial exemptions and not attending sex-ed classes, or parents leading protests against school boards for gay-inclusive teachings and other forms of gay expression.
It also affects policy. Residents of Hamtramck, Mich., who celebrated their multiculturalism when they voted in a Muslim-majority city council during Donald Trump’s Islamophobic campaign rhetoric in 2015, were dismayed to find that council passing legislation in June that banned flying the Pride flag on city properties.
It has become a knotty issue involving religious beliefs, political expediency and flirtation with outright hate. It raises questions about whether freedom of religious expression is more important than freedom from discrimination and paves a pathway to shaking hands with the devil.
It is notable because individual intolerance was in a way sanctified by a statement by North American Islamic scholars that declared queer life sinful. In addition, at least one senior member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an important civil rights advocacy group, supported parents seeking book bans and opt-out options.
Perhaps these examples of opposition come from a loud minority among Muslims or perhaps the sentiments are more mainstream. In any case, these actions risk being weaponized for a larger, insidious cause that could end up hurting Muslims here in the long run.
Even if sex-ed exemptions are allowed in Alberta, I’m glad the Londonderry teacher challenged the disdain toward LGBTQ2+ groups.
But she didn’t end it there. Instead, what she said next has been gleefully and understandably seized upon by conservatives as proof of hypocrisy among progressives.
She said, “We believe people can marry whoever they want. That is in the law. And if you don’t think that should be the law you can’t be Canadian. You don’t belong here.”
I think we can all agree that we can’t beat homophobia with Islamophobia or racism. What are the odds that a homophobic white child would have been told “You don’t belong in Canada”?
The National Council for Canadian Muslims lambasted the teacher’s comments as “deeply Islamophobic, inappropriate and harassing behaviour.”
But it did not weigh in on the question of whether the student should have dodged Pride events.
Intolerance against queer identities has surfaced over fear of a “woke gender ideology” — a fear manufactured and stoked by the white Christian far-right, expressed under the guise of protecting children.
In this twisted thinking, children being aware that a small minority of people are not heterosexual or that an even smaller minority doesn’t identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, is considered indoctrination or even pornographic corruption. (But gay and trans children and adults being surrounded and ridiculed by heterosexual cis people is apparently totally safe.) A miniscule fraction of that minority who might regret transitioning or might have had bad experiences with gender-affirming medical procedures is amplified as proof positive of hell having broken loose.
And what do Islamic experts say about the issue? Some 300 Islamic scholars and preachers across North America co-signed a statementlate in May to clarify their religious position on sexual and gender ethics. It was damning: homosexuality and transgenderism are not permissible.
“By a decree from God, sexual relations are permitted within the bounds of marriage, and marriage can only occur between a man and a woman,” said the statement titled Navigating Differences: Clarifying Sexual and Gender Ethics in Islam.
I’m not qualified to offer a theological critique of Islamic beliefs. But this is a column about justice for the most vulnerable, and I don’t believe justice can be served by relying on principles of the past to moralize today.
That sentence by the Islamic scholars echoes the beliefs of the World Congress of Families created by American conservatives back in 1997, which now exists as the International Organization for the Family.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the congress “pushed for restrictions to LGBT rights under the guise of the defense of the ‘natural family’ — defined as heterosexual married couples with their biological children.”
The organization, which was created by the Christian right-wing, is another example of how religion is used to discriminate against others and it exists today, as the SPLC says, “as a political power broker as an anti-LGBT group in its own right.”
That group of people who blame gay lifestyles and feminist liberation for a declining white population also subscribe to the conspiracy theory of the Great Replacement of white people by Black and brown people.
In this process of rejecting LGBTQ2+ rights, conservative Muslims have linked hands with the very people who demonized them for decades.
But Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a deputy director at CAIR, calls the idea of that alliance “ludicrous,” and said parents were standing up for their religious rights “without prompting from the right and without fear of backlash from the left.”
“What matters is whether the cause itself is just,” he said in a Twitter statement.
Not only does his stance risks isolating gay and trans Muslims, the scholars’ statement that they are sinners could well be psychologically crippling at a time of rising hate against people like them.
The logical extension of the Islamic scholars’ argument is also damaging for all Muslims in North America.
For instance, the statement says, “As a religious minority that frequently experiences bigotry and exclusion, we reject the notion that moral disagreement amounts to intolerance or incitement of violence.”
By that token, could a law banning head coverings — based on a moral disagreement with seeing veiled Muslim women — no longer be criticized as being intolerant?
When it says: “Peaceful coexistence does not necessitate agreement, acceptance, affirmation, promotion, or celebration,” could that not be turned around to mean religious accommodation in schools or celebrating Muslim holidays is not required to signal acceptance of Muslims?
It says, “there is an increasing push to promote LGBTQ-centric values among children through legislation and regulations, disregarding parental consent,” as if this exact same objection could not be used by the far-right to decry depictions of Muslims in schoolbooks as a sample of wokeness.
But leaders of the white far-right, sensing weakness in the solidarity of rights groups, have switched tacks for the moment.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham, a far-right hero, who once said the “dual loyalties” of Muslim refugees to the Qur’an that would lead them to “to try to blow us up” is now praising Muslim parents who are opposed to their children reading books with LGBTQ2+ themes.
For white supremacists, expanding their base this way, or even appearing to grow support for their “causes”, offers a two-pronged advantage. One, images with visibly Muslim people in their midst make for an effective cover, similar to when the Proud Boys propped up the African-Cuban Enrique Tarrio as their “chairman” as if to say: See, no white supremacy here.
And two, it’s an effective divide-and-conquer strategy. When they need to invoke the Great Replacement fear again, the anti-racist rights-seeking groups will have already been disorganized and weakened.
To be clear, Muslims who support ultra-conservative ideologies around sexuality are not naïve dupes. They are simply being as closed-minded as conservatives of any religion.
Where is the compassion and mercy that religions are so famous for?
I don’t much care for religion nor do I particularly want it flapping in my face. Even so, I stick my neck out to speak up for the freedom of believers.
In times of disaster and injustice, in my experience, Muslims (and Sikhs) are often the first to show up to give support. That may be why I’m doubly disappointed by this not insignificant opposition to LGBTQ2+ rights.
As the Londonderry teacher pointed out, respect is reciprocal. The right to practise religion cannot trump the human right to sexuality. Because ultimately, religion and religiosity are a choice. Sexual orientation and gender identity are not.
Multicultural Meanderings 