The U.K. a role model for political diversity

2023/04/14 Leave a comment

A more compete survey can be found here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01156/.

While the UK is far ahead of Canada in terms of political leaders, less so in terms of MPs: 10 percent visible minorities compared to about 16 percent in Canada:

History shows us that governments that are representative of all their people are often better run and more meritocratic. Representative governments tend to implement more inclusive policies while at the same time elevating a diverse set of role models. These leaders bring more creative insights to the policy-making table that can lead to alternative solutions and thus make decisions that better serve everyone.

While Canadian governments have been getting more diverse in their representation over the past few years, unlike in Britain, the top jobs in Canadian politics have largely eluded the grasp of racialized and new Canadians.

As India and Pakistan gained their independence just over 75 years ago, the stage was set for a rapid wind down of the British Empire over the next two decades. Britain benefited from its post-colonial relationships by attracting waves of African, Asian and Caribbean immigrants as a postwar labour shortage forced it to look beyond its shores in order attract the workers needed to keep its economy running. This migration changed the face of cities like London, Manchester and Glasgow during the latter half of the 20th century.

Yet it was not all milk and honey for these newcomers. On arrival, many often faced racism and discrimination, which was not officially outlawed in Britain until 1965. While the struggle against systemic discrimination continues, there is no doubt that at least when it comes to political representation, the descendants of these post colonial migrants have made their mark on British society in a big way.

Today, arguably the top three political jobs in the U.K., that of British prime minister, Scottish first minister and Lord mayor of London, are held by Rishi Sunak, Humza Yousaf and Sadiq Khan respectively. Their grandparents lived under British Colonial rule in South Asia.

More importantly, they each hail from different parties across the ideological spectrum and they all rose to political heights without facing significant backlash from a British society that appears to have moved beyond seeing race as a determining factor in selecting its leaders. Across the Irish Sea, Leo Varadkar, whose father was born in Bombay (Mumbai), has twice served as prime minister of the Republic of Ireland since 2017.

So, how do we Canadians fare in comparison to our cousins in the British Isles?

Despite our overt commitment to multiculturalism and the fact that Statistics Canada projects racialized Canadians will make up between 38 to 43 per cent of the Canadian population by 2041, Canada has never had a person of colour serve as a first minister, apart from Ujjal Dosanjh’s very brief stint as premier of British Columbia more than 20 years ago.

At the federal level, neither the Liberals, nor Conservatives, the two perennial governing parties, have ever had a serious leadership contender from a racialized background. Compare this to the U.K. Conservative party whose leadership race last summer saw people of colour make up half of the nominated contestants.

In Canada’s largest city Toronto, where half the population was born outside of Canada, every mayor since amalgamation has been white, middle aged and male. Its city council, until very recently has more closely resembled a 1980’s country club than the decision-making body of one of the most diverse cities in the world.

Despite this, progress, albeit slowly, is finally being made.

About a fifth of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government departments are now led by people of colour or those born outside of Canada, including key portfolios such as defence, trade and transport. In Ontario, that number stands at about 25 per cent of Premier Doug Ford’s executive council.

In Toronto the 2022 municipal elections saw a host of new and diverse candidates elected to city council, although the number of racialized and new Canadians is still not close to being representative of the city’s demographic makeup.

Unfortunately, many young Canadians from multicultural backgrounds still cannot fathom themselves sitting at the head of a major Canadian government. This needs to change if Canadian multiculturalism is to be viewed as anything more than symbolism. Governments and political parties need to work hard to create opportunity for talented Canadians of all backgrounds not just to participate in the political process, but to lead it as well.

If Britain can do it, so can we.

Omar Khan is a Canadian political strategist with over two decades of experience working in federal and provincial politics.

Source: The U.K. a role model for political diversity

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Arab Autocrats are Masking Repression with Religion

2023/04/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

On March 1, the Abrahamic Family House opened to the public on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. Hailed as a beacon of tolerance and modernity in the Middle East, the interfaith complex hosts the Imam al-Tayeb Mosque, St. Francis Church, and Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue.

The complex, part of a UAE government effort marketed as a way to foster interreligious harmony in a region that is regularly depicted as lacking such a quality, began development in 2019, following a visit by Pope Francis to the UAE during which he, along with the Grand Imam of al-Azhar in Egypt, Ahmed el-Tayeb, signed the “Document on Human Fraternity” with the hope of fostering interreligious unity.

Such government-directed initiatives—marketed as a mechanism to advance peace, tolerance, and moderation—have become increasingly common throughout the Middle East over the past decade, with countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and many others launching various international initiatives focused on interfaith dialogue, countering extremist religious practices and interpretations and promoting so-called “moderate Islam.”

However, despite outwardly projecting an image of tolerance and moderation, many of these same governments simultaneously employ religion to buttress their authoritarian rule, legitimize repression, limit their citizens’ freedoms, and justify aggressive policies abroad. For example, the UAE is not only fiercely repressive at home but is also one of the Middle East’s most interventionist states, pursuing policies that have prolonged the region’s civil wars, created humanitarian crises, crushed democratic aspirations, and fueled the underlying grievances that lead to unrest.

Increasingly, many Middle Eastern governments are wielding religion as a tool of soft power alongside other efforts—including sportswashing, greenwashing, and other PR campaigns—designed to absolve themselves of their culpability in human rights abuses and destabilization of the Middle East while maintaining the support of their Western benefactors.

A considerable proportion of academic and policy analyses examining the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle East tends to focus overwhelmingly on how Islam drives political outcomes in the region. Less attention is devoted to how politics often drives religious outcomes. The government-sponsored project of so-called moderate Islam is an example of politically driven religious messaging.

There are two key elements to this government-sponsored moderate Islam.

First is the promotion of a politically quietist and statist conceptualization Islam that stresses absolute obedience to established authority. Governments depict obedience to the ruler of the state as a religious obligation. These governments embrace an interpretation of Islam that is subservient to the state, incapable of challenging the regime’s legitimacy or policies, while also delegitimizing alternative sources of religious or political authority.

Critical to such a strategy is the portrayal of all forms of Islamism—whether mainstream or more radical—and all forms of political opposition as manifestations of “extremism” and “radicalism” in order to eliminate all independent or dissenting religious and political voices capable of challenging state authority.

Aiding these efforts are strategically constructed anti-terrorism laws that have proliferated throughout the Middle East in two main waves: one following the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the other following the 2011 Arab uprisings. The language of such legislation was always designed in a vague manner in order to be capable of targeting almost any challenge to the status quo. This kind of legislation has been used to target all forms of dissent in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and elsewhere.

By painting challenges to the status quo as extreme and casting such opposition as a manifestation of religious radicalism, these governments are simultaneously able to deflect attention from how their authoritarian policies are often the underlying catalysts for regional instability and repress anyone they deem as a threat to their own rule under the guise of countering so-called extremist behavior. Such framing allows these governments to monopolize discussions surrounding Islam, reform, and politics in the Middle East.

Second, in the efforts to brand themselves as moderate, these regimes have also adopted the strategic usage of interfaith tolerance. In particular, outreach by these states to various Christian and Jewish communities, organizations, and figures has proved particularly effective. By framing their actions as in-line with Western initiatives designed to protect religious freedom and encourage interfaith relations, these governments have received regular praise from political leaders and religious groups in the United States. This has allowed them to project an image of tolerance while also currying favor with influential actors in certain key countries.

Engagement with other faith communities and leaders abroad not only advances the image of these governments as tolerant and progressive actors, but also presents an opportunity for these states to project themselves internationally as the sole legitimate representatives of the global Muslim community. The curation of such an image is designed to present these actors as stabilizing forces throughout the Middle East despite their repressive policies at home and aggressive foreign policies that contribute to the underlying sources of regional instability.

The government-sponsored project of moderate Islam is primarily a product of the post-9/11 era. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the West proceeded to construct arbitrary categories of what the scholar Mahmoud Mamdani referred to as “good” and “bad” Muslims. The Islam that autocratic regimes in the Middle East practice and promote is presented to the West as “good” and “moderate,” and is designed to depict these governments as the best—perhaps only—partners capable of working with the West to combat “bad” and “extreme” Islam.

As the United States began pouring money and weapons into the pockets of these governments under the notion of supporting counterterrorism, these regimes were able to harness these resources and utilize them in the widespread repression of any who challenged the status quo. These patterns were accelerated by the 2011 Arab uprisings as ruling elites jockeyed to delegitimize and repress opposition to their rule while maintaining Western support. Presenting themselves as upholders of stability, these autocratic governments have been able to deflect attention away from how their policies and the nature of their rule have contributed to the underlying sources of regional instability.

The project of moderate Islam is directed primarily toward the West, particularly the United States, which remains the security guarantor for many of the governments spearheading these projects. Successfully selling this image on a global scale is a critical component to other complementary soft-power initiatives and efforts to legitimize the domestic and international policies of these autocratic actors.

Two states in particular lead the enterprise that is moderate Islam: Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, hailedby many as a long-awaited reformer, made headlines upon his vow to return Saudi Arabia to moderate Islam. Domestically, the crown prince has made several changes, including attempts to distance official Saudi Arabian history from ultra-conservative Wahhabism; allowing women to drive, live alone without male permission, and travel without a male guardian; limiting the religious police’s powers; permitting public entertainment venues such as cinemas and concerts; and arresting religious clerics and scholars labeled as extremists by the regime. State religious figures and institutions continue to praise Mohammed bin Salman as a “modernizer” and “renewer,” and the Council of Senior Scholars, the preeminent religious body in Saudi Arabia, regularly endorses his controversial domestic and foreign policies.

Internationally, the crown prince has overseen the projection of moderate Islam to Western audiences. Institutions such as the Saudi-based Muslim World League, led by Secretary-General Mohammed al-Issa and representing a virtual extension of the Saudi state, have spearheaded such efforts, particularly outreach to Jewish and evangelical Christian communities. In November 2018, Saudi Arabia hosted a delegation of evangelical Christian leaders from the United States, who were received by Mohammed bin Salman and Issa. A similar delegation visited the kingdom again in September 2019. In January 2020, al-Issa led a delegation of Islamic scholars in an unprecedented visit to the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, accompanied by representatives of the American Jewish Committee. A year later, Pope Francis received Issa at the Vatican.

Likewise, the UAE under the leadership of Mohamed bin Zayed has projected an image of the Emirates as a beacon of tolerance, modernity, and stability in the Middle East. The UAE embassy in the United States stresses that “values of inclusion, mutual respect and religious freedom have been ingrained in the UAE’s DNA since before the country’s founding in 1971.” It notes the Emirates “has a forward-looking vision for the Middle East region—a path that promotes moderate Islam, empowers women, teaches inclusion, encourages innovation and welcomes global engagement.”

After the Arab uprisings, the UAE created a series of new institutions to cement this image domestically and promote it abroad, such as the Muslim Council of Elders, the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, and the UAE Fatwa Council; and in 2016, it established an official minister of tolerance position, currently held by Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak al-Nahayan. The year 2019 was proclaimed the “Year of Tolerance” in the Emirates, further advancing this image of the UAE as a source of stability and prosperity in the Middle East.

Internationally, the number of interfaith initiatives spearheaded by the UAE or involving institutions based in the Emirates is considerable. Programs such as the UAE’s Alliance of Virtue seek to “bring together religious leaders of good-will for the benefit of humanity”; the alliance’s steering committee is composed of leading Muslim, Christian, and Jewish individuals from around the world. The newly formed Jewish Council of the Emirates serves as the representative body of Jews within the UAE and, in 2019, New York University Chaplain Yehuda Sarna was named the country’s first chief rabbi.

More than any of the other interfaith efforts the UAE has pursued, the crowning jewel remains the Abraham Accords. The accords were marketed as a way forward for the Israel-Palestine conflict and a broader framework for Middle Eastern peace. When the Abraham Accords were announced, signatories emphasized how this historic declaration would be a tool for “maintaining and strengthening peace in the Middle East and around the world based on mutual understanding and coexistence.” The UAE described the accords as “catalyst for wider change in the Middle East” and a mechanism to “promote regional security, prosperity, and peace for years to come.”

Yet, despite these initiatives, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are among the most autocratic governments in the world. Bothcountries are engaged in widespread human rights abuses at home and support a wide array of autocratic actors throughout the region engaged in similar abuses.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the vanguards of the authoritarian resurgence taking place across the Middle East. At home, they are fiercely repressive, forcibly silencing any form of dissent or opposition to the policies pursued by the government. Both states are witnessing a strengthening and intensification of personalistic rule whereby Mohammed bin Salman and Mohamed bin Zayed have sought to eliminate institutional constraints and amass an unprecedented amount of power.

Abroad, these two leaders spearheaded an ongoing military offensive in Yemen that has resulted in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, continue to pour financial and military resources into supportingallied authoritarian actors engaged in gross abuses, and are engaged in sophisticated campaigns of transnational repression and surveillance targeting activists and dissidents around the world. Additionally, they have played critical roles in supporting China’s repression of its domestic Muslim communities, and both Saudi Arabia and the UAE continue to engage in illegal activities within the United States.

Despite many of the interfaith initiatives being marketed as a way to promote moderation, tolerance, and peace, they have increasingly paved the way for expanded cooperation and collaborationon strategic issues. For example, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have increasingly coordinated their lobbying efforts in Washington to advance mutually-shared objectives in the Middle East and across the globe, namely the preservation of the prevailing illiberal status quo and regional balance of power.

The Abraham Accords in particular did not represent a breakthrough for peace in the Middle East, but rather the solidification of a top-down, imposed regional order designed to advance the interests of political elites. Instead of a mechanism to promote peace, interfaith initiatives for Middle East actors are often steeped in shared political objectives between actors with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Interfaith initiatives and the promotion of religious moderation and tolerance are themselves not problematic and should be encouraged. The problem is autocratic regimes are using the government-sponsored project of moderate Islam as a mechanism to whitewash their repressive, aggressive domestic and foreign policies while projecting a false image to their Western benefactors. The initiatives pursued by these regimes are inherently political, designed to support the domestic and geopolitical objectives of these autocratic governments instead of actually countering specific religious interpretations or practices.

Jon Hoffman is research director at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). Twitter: @Hoffman8Jo

Source: Arab Autocrats are Masking Repression with Religion

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François Legault shares racist article, reveals hypocrisy on secularism

2023/04/12 Leave a comment

Sigh…

Quebec Premier François Legault shared an article by infamous Journal de Montréal columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté about the importance of Catholicism in Quebec, revealing his hypocrisy on secularism and a willingness to overlook barely disguised racist sentiments in the material he shares.

In his column, timed with Easter weekend, Bock-Côté praises Quebec’s Catholic heritage, noting that  “Catholicism, from the origins of New France, gave a particular impetus to our adventure in America” — kind of like how the Catholic Church’s Doctrine of Discovery encouraged Europeans to crush Indigenous communities in their travels? Bock-Côté also says, “It is this same sense of the collective that leads us today to resist the fragmentation of society under the pressure of multiculturalism” — a gratuitous slam on multiculturalism as being the root of all our problems.

Legault quoted another piece of the Journal article on Twitter: “Catholicism has also engendered in us a culture of solidarity that distinguishes us on a continental scale.” As Montreal comedian Sugar Sammy pointed out, “Secularism is important except for this one tweet.”

Secularism has been identified by the Legault government as one of Quebec’s core values, and used as justification for Bill 21, which supposedly treats all religions equally in terms of banning religious symbols.

Source: François Legault shares racist article, reveals hypocrisy on secularism

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Lisée: Le droit au monologue

2023/04/11 Leave a comment

A noter:

Ce n’est pas tous les jours que 388 professeurs, auteurs et personnalités se donnent la peine de signer une lettre commune, publiée mardi dans Le Devoir (« Ce ne sont pas que des mots »), pour nous avertir de « dérapages inquiétants, de plus en plus nombreux » dans le débat public au Québec.

M’étant plusieurs fois exprimé, y compris dans ces pages, sur la nécessité d’un débat qui, s’il peut être robuste, doit toujours être respectueux, j’ai été étonné que ma signature n’ait pas été sollicitée. J’ai compris pourquoi une fois avoir soigneusement examiné de quoi il était question.

Les signataires nous y aident en donnant, au total, quatre exemples de ce qui leur paraît intolérable. Il s’agit d’abord d’une entrevue donnée à Stéphan Bureau par Léa Clermont-Dion. Elle y décrit son groupe social d’origine à Rawdon comme étant du « White trash ». Une expression dure, rarement utilisée au Québec, mais courante aux États-Unis pour désigner une population blanche marginale, peu éduquée. Bureau lui demande si elle oserait aussi parler de « Black trash ». « Ben non, ça marcherait pas », dit-elle.

L’échange a été capté par un chroniqueur de Québecor, Mathieu Bock-Côté (MBC), qui y a vu un exemple de « racisme anti-blanc ». (Détail savoureux : ce sont les esclaves noirs du sud des États-Unis qui ont inventé le terme pour dénigrer ces Blancs). L’argument du deux poids, deux mesures se tient, mais la charge de MBC est un peu lourde, d’autant que Clermont-Dion s’amende, dans l’entretien, d’avoir utilisé le terme. Puis, le reproche lui en a été fait sur les réseaux sociaux. J’y reviens.

Les signataires renvoient ensuite à un gazouillis où une autrice et éditrice écrivait ceci : « Les élections et leurs hochets habituels — et même certains dont nous croyions qu’ils appartenaient à un vieux Québec ranci et révolu : l’immigration, l’identité, le vilain étranger, les maudits intellectuels ». Je ne la nomme pas parce que les signataires s’insurgent que de tels propos entraînent une riposte ad hominem, mais surtout parce qu’elle a retiré la publication. Le gazouillis serait passé inaperçu si MBC n’avait pas jugé dans son blogue qu’il « est difficile de trouver un propos plus méprisant à l’endroit des centaines de milliers de Québécois qui prennent la question identitaire au sérieux ».

Pour moi, c’est clair : les deux positions ont droit de cité dans notre débat public. L’autrice a le droit de penser et d’écrire que ces thèmes reflètent un « Québec ranci et révolu », d’autres ont droit de répliquer que cette opinion suinte le mépris.

Le troisième cas concerne l’auteur et vice-président de la Ligue des droits et libertés, Philippe Néméh-Nombré. Dans Seize temps noirs pour apprendre à dire kuei, (Mémoire d’encrier), il écrit : « Une autopatrouille qui brûle est une promesse. » Ce qui lui vaut, toujours par MBC, une accusation de glorifier la violence antipolicière. Cette phrase est prise « hors contexte », écrivent les signataires. Je suis allé le lire. J’ai bien trouvé cet autre extrait : « Détruire des ordinateurs, fracasser des vitrines, brûler des autopatrouilles, bloquer des ponts, des voies ferroviaires. » Mais je n’ai trouvé aucun contexte qui puisse laisser entendre que ces phrases ne doivent pas être prises au premier degré. Il s’agit, au mieux, d’une normalisation de la violence, au pire, de sa glorification. Que les signataires estiment que cela devrait passer comme une lettre à la poste laisse songeur.

Finalement, la lettre nous emmène en 2018, dans la foulée de l’attentat à la mosquée de Québec. Dans un texte publié dans La Presse, la prof et psychiatre Marie-Eve Cotton estime troublant que certains se montrent empathiques envers les troubles psychiatriques de l’accusé, Alexandre Bissonnette, mais n’en fasse pas autant envers les tueurs islamistes qui ne sont, écrit-elle, « pas moins désespérés, apeurés, perdus, et habités d’une colère qui cherche un objet sur lequel se déverser ». Cette fois, c’est Richard Martineau qui monte au créneau, estimant qu’il faut distinguer « un massacre perpétré par une personne déséquilibrée et dépressive et un attentat sanguinaire commis au nom d’une cause par un terroriste qui revendique fièrement son geste ». Ici encore, les deux positions doivent avoir droit de cité. (Je trouve pour ma part des parcelles de vérité dans les deux textes.)

Les signataires se plaignent que la force de la riposte est disproportionnée, de deux façons. D’abord, parce que des chroniqueurs et animateurs ont des tribunes dont l’empreinte est très large; ensuite, parce que leurs critiques entraînent sur la Toile un flot de commentaires souvent haineux qui traumatise l’auteur du texte critiqué. Personne n’est préparé pour le torrent de réactions qu’une première déclaration tranchée peut provoquer. Mais tous ceux qui mettent le petit orteil dans le débat public doivent savoir que cette tempête permanente existe. Il n’y a que deux façons d’y survivre : pour les menaces, on appelle le 911, pour toute violence verbale, on bloque jusqu’à ce que la racaille disparaisse de nos fils.

Mais la lettre ouverte appelle les propriétaires de médias à mettre leurs chroniqueurs et animateurs en laisse. Ils devraient s’abstenir de relever qu’untel parle d’un « Québec ranci » et que tel autre sourit à la vue d’une autopatrouille en flamme. Au nom de quoi, exactement ? Du droit de ne pas être contredit ? Du droit au monologue ?

Je remarque, dans la liste des « victimes » citées et les signatures, des gens qui, à répétition, ont écrit que ceux qui n’étaient pas de leur avis sur la question de la laïcité étaient, nécessairement, des opportunistes et des racistes. On comprend que, du haut de leur certitude d’être les seuls porteurs de la raison, ils voudraient que leur intolérance et leur irrespect de l’autre ne soient relevés par personne, ou alors qu’on taise leurs noms dans les répliques, même lorsqu’ils persistent et signent dans l’insulte.

L’argument de la disproportion des voix aurait de la valeur si l’espace médiatique québécois n’était pas si diversifié. Toute personne outrée peut publier sa prose sur son blogue ou ses réseaux avec l’appui et le relais de sa communauté de vues. Des lettres ouvertes sont acceptées dans tous les médias. J’admets qu’il manque de signatures et de tribunes, disons, « woke », à Québecor, mais ce n’est pas le cas dans ce quotidien-ci, ni à La Presse ni à Radio-Canada.

On pourrait débattre, chiffres à l’appui, de la présence médiatique relative des deux grandes tendances intellectuelles qui s’affrontent. Il faut cependant savoir qu’en politique comme dans le débat d’idées, chacun est toujours convaincu que l’autre camp a trop de visibilité.

J’ai jugé particulièrement significatif de constater que le signataire principal de cette lettre, Mathieu Marion, dénonçant le manque de retenue et de respect et les attaques ad hominem, un prof de l’UQAM, a affirmé quelques jours auparavant sur Twitter que la pensée de MBC s’apparentait à de la « pink slime » — cette viande artificielle dont la vue lève le cœur. Ce qui me rappelle vaguement une histoire de paille et de poutre.

Source: Le droit au monologue

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Goal of IHRA anti-Semitism definition is to target human rights groups, says proponent

2023/04/10 Leave a comment

Of note. However the main author of the definition, Kenneth Stern, has been vocal in his opposition to its “weaponization”:

A prominent advocate of the controversial and inaccurate definition of anti-Semitism created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) has acknowledged that one of its purposes is to target and silence human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) and others documenting Israel’s human rights abuses.

“The purpose of the IHRA working definition was to prevent the illegitimate demonization of Israel, the singling out of Israel, and the antisemitic aspects of the attacks on Israel, which is exactly what these NGOs are doing,” said a key proponent of IHRA, Professor Gerald Steinberg, the founder of pro-Israel, NGO Monitor.

Steinberg made the remark in response to 60 human and civil rights organisations who on Tuesday released a joint open letter urging the UN not to adopt the IHRA. Steinberg told the Algemeiner that the letter, which was also signed by HRW, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and B’Tselem, is an act of “political warfare against Israel”.

According to Steinberg, the NGOs are doing the very thing which the IHRA was designed to prevent. But critics have pointed out that the IHRA is not preventing anti-Jewish racism and instead has had a chilling effect on free speech and has further undermined the work of the international human rights community.

In the letter to the UN, the groups warned that if the world body endorsed the IHRA then its officials who work on issues regarding Israel and Palestine may find themselves “unjustly accused of anti-Semitism based on the IHRA definition”. A case could also be made for “numerous UN agencies, departments, committees, panels and/or conferences, whose work touches on issues related to Israel and Palestine, as well as for civil society actors and human rights defenders engaging with the UN system,” to be smeared as racist.

The targets of accusations of anti-Semitism based on the IHRA definition have included university students and professors, grassroots organisers, human rights and civil rights organisations, humanitarian groups and members of the US Congress, who either document or criticise Israeli policies and who speak in favour of Palestinian human rights.

Rights group have constantly dismissed the claim that “illegitimate demonization of Israel” and “singling out Israel”, is anti-Semitic. If that principal was accepted in a definition of racism than by that logic, a person dedicated to defending the rights of Tibetans could be accused of anti-Chinese racism, or a group dedicated to promoting democracy and minority rights in Saudi Arabia could be accused of Islamophobia.

IHRA’s qualification that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic” has not offered any protection to the constant smearing of critics of Israel. “In practice,” said HRW, “these disclaimers have failed to prevent the politically motivated instrumentalization of the IHRA definition in efforts to muzzle legitimate speech and activism by critics of Israel’s human rights record and advocates for Palestinian rights.”

Source: Goal of IHRA anti-Semitism definition is to target human rights groups, says proponent

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Quebec Muslim associations denounce government ban on prayer rooms in schools

2023/04/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

A group representing Muslim associations in Quebec wants the provincial government to rescind a directive prohibiting the presence of prayer spaces in elementary and high schools.

On Wednesday, Education Minister Bernard Drainville banned school service centres from transforming classrooms into places of prayer.

In a joint statement issued Thursday evening, representatives from several mosques with the Table de concertation des organismes musulmans (TCOM) expressed their shock and indignation at the decision.

Source: Quebec Muslim associations denounce government ban on prayer rooms in schools

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Women are poised to make up 50 per cent of federally appointed judges in Canada 

2023/04/10 Leave a comment

Of note. Numbers have also increased for other groups: visible minorities from 2.0 to 9.7 percent, Indigenous peoples from 0.8 to 3.1 percent:

Women now make up nearly 50 per cent of full-time judges on Canada’s federally appointed courts, a milestone achievement that until recently seemed a distant dream.

Of 913 full-time judges in the country, 438 are women, according to data from the Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs. That amounts to 47.97 per cent, or just 19 judges short of the historic mark.

And the remaining disparity could soon be erased because more men than women are nearing retirement.

Legal observers say the milestone is deserving of celebration, but that courts have further to go to truly reflect Canada’s diversity.

Ellen Anderson, a lawyer who wrote an authorized biography of Bertha Wilson, the first woman named to the Supreme Court of Canada, said Ms. Wilson would have been happy, but not satisfied.

“I am sure she would be delighted but she would also be rooting for representation for BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and persons of colour] candidates, Indigenous candidates, gay candidates, the whole diversity of human experience,” Ms. Anderson said in an interview.

Federal data show that those groups still lag behind their numbers in the community, though they have made strides in the past few years.

It was Ms. Wilson, appointed to the Supreme Court in 1982, who gave a speech eight years later titled “Will women judges really make a difference?” The answer, says Justice Michele Hollins of the Alberta Court of King’s Bench, is yes, they have.

Justice Hollins was a single mother of two-year-old twins when she studied law in the early 1990s at the University of Saskatchewan.

“I do think it’s incredibly important to have all kinds of perspectives,” she said in an interview. “You’ve got a much better chance of having someone who will understand you.”

Her personal experience “gave me a different perspective than a lot of my classmates, and even my colleagues now, on parenting, finances, employment, education – what it really took to get through those years.”

Beverley McLachlin, who in 2000 became the first woman to serve as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, said: “I think it’s been a huge difference.” Part of that difference was in how the public viewed the judiciary: “They saw it as approachable, as representing them to some extent, and not just a uni-gendered, monolithic-like body of middle-aged, middle-class white men.”

The authority to appoint judges is one of the least-discussed, least-transparent exercises of government power. Non-partisan committees across Canada screen applicants and create a pool of qualified candidates. But it is up to the federal cabinet to choose from that pool.

The federally appointed courts include the appeal courts of provinces, the top trial courts (which go by names such as the Court of King’s Bench, Supreme Court or Superior Court), Federal Court and the Tax Court of Canada.

Since the Liberals came to power and began appointing judges in 2016, with the stated goal of increasing the representation of women and minorities, women have received 56.48 per cent of the 370 judicial appointments, or 209 in total. During that period, women made up 47.8 per cent of the 2,511 applicants, according to data from the judicial affairs office, an agency that provides support services for the judiciary.

The figures represent a sea change from the 10 years of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, 2006 to 2015, when women made up just 30 per cent of applicants and appointments.

As recently as 2014, 63 men were appointed (including promotions of sitting judges to higher courts), compared with just 26 women. Under the Liberals, men exceeded women in appointments just once, from October, 2021 to October, 2022, by a margin of 30 to 28.

Ms. McLachlin said that when she started out as a judge in B.C. in 1981, “there was a real sense of hope in the air.” Someone sent her a bouquet of flowers from their garden (security had to check out the bouquet). Male colleagues were helpful and supportive.

“I had a wonderful career for a very long time being a judge. It was absolutely the best thing that could have happened to me.”

By contrast, Bertha Wilson found the Supreme Court of Canada a boys’ club when she joined in 1982.

Male judges lobbied one another on the golf course or in other sports arenas, from which she felt excluded. It was one reason she pushed to expand the number of intervenors in Supreme Court hearings, to broaden the court’s knowledge of the social context of the cases before them, Ms. Anderson said. (In one hearing last month, there were 29 intervenors.)

Also, there was no women’s washroom for judges at the appeal court or the Supreme Court when she joined.

Ms. Wilson told Ms. Anderson that she felt “doomed to failure,” because no one could have lived up to the expectations placed on her by her well-wishers.

“Change in the law comes slowly and incrementally. That is its nature,” Ms. Wilson told her.

Still, the difference she made was striking. In Lavallee, a 1990 case, she wrote a judgment for the court recognizing battered women’s syndrome in how self-defence is understood in Canadian law. In Morgentaler, in 1988, she was the only judge to declare that a woman has a fundamental right to choose.

Under Ms. McLachlin’s leadership as chief justice, ending late in 2017, the Supreme Court established a right to physician-assisted dying, struck down prostitution laws as heightening the dangers faced by sex workers, and restored voting rights for federal prisoners.

In Justice Hollins’s view, change on the bench has been slow, given that her law-school class three decades ago was 54 per cent women.

“On the one hand, I’m elated,” she said, referring to women nearing 50 per cent of the federal judiciary, but “it’s sometimes hard not to be discouraged by how slow progress seems to be.”

She said women still face barriers in creating top-notch applications: They are not equal at the partnership tables of law firms, or in terms of assignments, opportunities and seats on corporate boards. And those with children tend to do more of the household work.

“It’s just that much harder for women to advance in their careers at the same pace,” Justice Hollins said.

Rosemarie Davis, vice-president of the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers, said more work remains to be done.

“There are more women, yes, and that’s laudable, but what we’re looking for even within those numbers is more diversity, more women of colour and more women who identify as Black, more women who identify as Indigenous.”

Source: Women are poised to make up 50 per cent of federally appointed judges in Canada 

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Exclusive: New Data Shows the Anti-Critical Race Theory Movement Is ‘Far From Over’

2023/04/07 Leave a comment

Of note:

It’s been more than two years since President Joe Biden revoked Donald Trump’s Sept. 2020 executive order aimed at banning the teaching of “divisive concepts” in federal offices’ diversity training—a response to the increase in anti-racism sessions in workplaces and schools in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. But Biden’s decision galvanized conservatives, who successfully pushed to replicate the ban in state laws and school board measuresand wage an all-out war against “critical race theory”(CRT), which looks at the way legal systems and other aspects of society perpetuate racism and exclusion.

Now, for the first time, a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) study provides a snapshot of the effort to regulate how race is discussed in the U.S. by putting a number on these acts at the federal, state, and local level, and quantifying their impact.
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In the report “Tracking the Attack on Critical Race Theory,” provided exclusively to TIME, a team at the law school tracked legislation, executive orders, state attorney general letters, and statements by governors and local school board officials, and found that between Jan. 1, 2021 and Dec. 31, 2022, federal, state, and local government officials introduced 563 anti-CRT measures. Nearly half—241—were enacted or adopted.

“The anti-CRT movement is very far from over,” says LaToya Baldwin Clark, one of the authors of the report and an assistant professor at UCLA School of Law. “It’s going strong, and it’s not slowing down.”

Twenty-eight states took some kind of statewide anti-CRT action—whether it was a letter from the state attorney general or a resolution, for example—and 16 of those states enacted anti-CRT legislation. In every state except Delaware, at least one anti-CRT measure was introduced.

The researchers found trends among red states (states that voted for the Republican presidential candidate in the last two elections) versus blue states (states that voted for the Democratic candidate). In blue states, anti-CRT measures are more likely to occur at the local level, including through school boards, while in red states, the efforts are more likely to be at the state level. Wyoming is the only red state that has not enacted a statewide anti-CRT measure.

The political divide is sure to become more pronounced as the 2024 presidential race heats up: presumed GOP candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to ban discussion of critical race theory not only at the K-12 level but also at public colleges and universities, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has announced a run for President, has called CRT “un-American.”

Researchers found the activity was roughly consistent year over year in the first two years of Biden’s Administration: In 2021, 280 anti-CRT measures were introduced, and in 2022, 283 were introduced.

Forty-one percent of the 563 measures borrow a line from Trump’s executive order that defines a “divisive concept” as a teaching that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.”

Most of the measures focus on regulating classroom teaching and curricular materials in K-12 schools and colleges and universities. The researchers calculated that the adopted anti-CRT measures affect more than 22 million American public school children— almost half of the public school children in the entire country. Yet actual critical race theory, which originated in law school, is rarely taught below the graduate level. Other measures most likely to be adopted were ones that targeted the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which reframed America’s origin story around the legacy of slavery.

The fervor also extends beyond classroom discussions of race. In political discourse, CRT has become an umbrella term for teaching anything progressive, such as issues of LGBTQ identity. The same political activists fighting anti-racism training in schools and workplaces have been working to ban books they think are too explicit, like works by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, and call the new Advanced Placement African American Studies class “indoctrination,” as DeSantis put it.

In 2023, the movement against CRT continues. Three months in, UCLA researchers have tracked at least 50 new anti-CRT bills, and they expect to see a lot more activity through the 2024 presidential election cycle.

Source: Exclusive: New Data Shows the Anti-Critical Race Theory Movement Is ‘Far From Over’

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‘A beautiful community:’ Universities open lounges for Black students

2023/04/05 Leave a comment

Of note. Not sure that this trend improves social cohesion, inclusion and integration but appears inevitable:

Spaces designated for students from marginalized backgrounds are spreading across Canadian universities, as officials say they are a necessary and overdue response to decades of racism on campus.

Toronto Metropolitan University officially opened a space late last month for students who self-identify as Black.

Cheryl Thompson, an associate professor at the university, said the need for such lounges became increasingly clear following the death of George Floyd, whose 2020 killing by a white Minneapolis Police Department officer sparked protests worldwide.

“Something did shift in 2020 institutionally … when the world witnessed the inhumanity in that George Floyd video,” Thompson said about the Black man who was seen in a video using his last few breaths telling the officer kneeling on his neck, “I can’t breathe.”

“The demands Black students have been making for decades have finally been heard.”

Eboni Morgan, a spokesperson for TMU’s lounge, said the decision to create the room stemmed from a recommendation in a 2020 Anti-Black Racism Campus Climate Review Report that surveyed Black members of the school community. It found they continue to face systemic racism by institutions and their peers.

The lounge — equipped with a kitchen, other facilities and a mural painted by a Black student artist — can fit up to 25 students at a time.

“It’s a beautiful community to watch unfold,” Morgan said. “It’s been loud, exciting and students are constantly in the space.”

Thompson said that in the lounge, “you can let your guard down and have conversations about things you’re going through … like support groups for people who have suffered trauma.”

“One of the reasons why young people struggle with their mental health is because they think they’re the only ones to go through what they’re going through,” she said. “Having these spaces makes you more confident and say, ‘oh, I’m not alone.”

Across the city, York University — Canada’s second-largest — launched a lounge for Black students in January. The University of Winnipeg’s BIPOC lounge for students who are Black, Indigenous and people of colour opened in 2018.

The University of British Columbia launched a space for Black male students last year, said Ainsley Carry, a university spokesperson.

Carry said UBC’s Black Male Initiative, is “believed to be the first-of-its-kind program at a Canadian university,” and was designed to provide “a confidential space on campus for members to connect to other Black male students where they can share their lived experiences.”

She said the pilot program has been well received.

“We recognize there is underrepresentation of the Black population at UBC, and that Black community members may feel isolated or face challenges not experienced by their non-Black peers,” Carry said.

“That is why UBC is taking steps … to help foster a sense of belonging … for Black community members.”

Thompson said TMU has received emails blasting its lounge as “segregationist.”

She dismissed that charge as “foolishness,” arguing such accusations were written by people who had no knowledge of what a system of segregation is.

Thompson said the type of racism Black people experience is different than other marginalized groups

“Anti-Black racism is not dependent on even being Canadian. It has nothing to do with your citizenship.”

Providing students with safe spaces is crucial to fostering their development, she said.

One critic of the lounges is Adaeze Mbalaja, the president of the York Federation of Students. She has accused school administrators of using the spaces to mend reputations tarred by years of underfunding Black student groups.

“This is a trend of performative justice, performative activism by institutions across Canada,” she said.

Mbalaja said that based on her discussions with other Black student associations in the Toronto area, she believed universities were creating spaces for Black students but leaving Black students groups underfunded “to fend for themselves.”

“If you’re going to support Black students, do that in a way that is genuine and in a way that desires to actually uplift and amplify the community.”

Thompson said such criticism was “healthy.”

“Universities, instead of dismissing that, need to really ask themselves, ‘Oh, where are they coming from?’ ‘Maybe we do need to have more open lines of communication.'”

Source: ‘A beautiful community:’ Universities open lounges for Black students

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Daphne Bramham: Muslims and Sikhs of Indian descent want Canada to do more to protect them

2023/04/05 Leave a comment

Of note:

Like Canadians of Chinese, Uyghur, Tibetan, Russian and Iranian descent, organizations representing the Indian diaspora say their members have been subject to foreign intimidation and have seen evidence of India attempting to interfere in elections here.

They’re urging Canada to set up a foreign agents registry and add India to the list of governments exerting undue influence here.

“Canada’s racialized communities are simultaneously some of the most targeted — and vulnerable — for foreign interference, intimidation and harassment in pursuit of securing the policy objectives of foreign states,” says a March report released by the B.C. Gurdwaras Council and the Ontario Gurdwaras Committee.

That’s echoed in a joint report by the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the World Sikh Organization of Canada, also released in March.

While the reports are aimed at raising awareness, they also underscore just how complicated the issues of foreign interference and diaspora politics are.

The World Sikh Organization has been linked to the Sikh separatist movement. As recently as 2018, “Sikh extremism” was mentioned in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service annual assessment of domestic terror threats. The reference to Sikh extremism was later removed because it “unintentionally maligned certain communities.”

During Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit to India in 2018, concerns were repeatedly raised about Sikh separatists in Canada, and included the four Sikhs in his cabinet.

It’s a link so deeply embedded in the Indian consciousness that after a father was stabbed to death outside a Vancouver Starbucks last week and Inderdeep Singh Gosal was arrested, a Delhi-based journalist tweeted — without evidence — that it was “a shocking murder by a Khalistani radical.” Other Indian media websites posted similar descriptions.

The two March reports blame the continued stereotyping of Sikhs and Muslims on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-first policies and its attempt to spread its message to the Hindu diaspora through a network of organizations aligned with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014, human rights groups have raised concerns about the erosion of civil rights, arbitrary detention of activists, journalists and critics, and the use of counterterrorism laws to silence dissent.

In 2022, Amnesty International reported that the Indian government “selectively and viciously cracked down on religious minorities, and explicit advocacy of hatred by political leaders and public officials towards them was commonplace and went unpunished.”

It noted that “punitive demolitions of Muslim family homes and businesses were carried out with impunity.” Peaceful protests were treated as a threat to public order, and minority and marginalized communities continued to face violence and entrenched discrimination.

The joint Muslim and Sikh report alleges the Indian government — through its diplomats and an expanding network of aligned organizations — is attempting to spread the message through “bold and often public stereotyping of Muslims and Sikhs as anti-Indian, anti-Canadian, and Hindu-phobic terrorists working to discredit the BJP’s reputation and accomplishments across the world.”

The gurdwaras report echoes that concern, alleging that Indian diplomats and intelligence agencies are trying to “persuade Canadian policymakers to criminalize and prosecute Sikh political advocacy in Canada under the guise of ‘countering extremism.’”

Among the evidence cited of Indian government interference is a CSIS document filed in a 2018 immigration case. Global News reported in 2020 that CSIS said the Indian citizen, an editor known only by his initials, was involved in espionage.

It said he attempted to sway politicians into supporting Indian government interests following more than two dozen meetings in Canada with agents from India’s two main intelligence branches.

Since 2014, the joint Sikh and Muslim report says, there has been a rapid expansion of both the radical Hindu nationalist network called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Overseas Friends of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is listed on the American’s registry of foreign agents.

In 2018, the Canadian Overseas Friends of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its chapters in B.C., Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario changed their name to Canada India Global Forum.

According to the forum’s website, its mission is to “utilize the Indo-Canadian diaspora in Canada to help promote and strengthen the economic, bicultural and political ties.”

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh played a key role in Modi’s party winning successive majorities in 2014 and 2019. Quotes from its founders and early leaders citing Nazi Germany as an inspiration are included in the report. It warns that the Indian government’s nationalist policies pit Hindus against other religious minorities and that message is being exported here.

It also says that the “sectarian, discriminatory, and often hateful antipathy toward those framed by RSS and Hindutva ideology as enemies … pose a direct threat to Muslim and Sikh communities, as well as to the social fabric of Canada.”

It singles out Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh as part of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s Canadian network, noting that photos on the group’s Facebook page include images of some of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s earliest leaders “often strewn with flowers.”

Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh is a tax-exempt charity with 25 Canadian chapters or shakhas including some operating out of public schools in Ontario.

According to the its website, it encourages “maintaining Hindu cultural identity in harmony with the larger community” through structured programs of regular athletic and academic activities that develop leadership skills “emphasizing values such as self-discipline, self-confidence and a spirit of selfless service for humanity.”

Coincident to foreign interference in Canada widely discussed last month, hundreds of people gathered in Vancouver outside the Indian consulate and rallied in Prince George to protest mass arrests, internet and mobile phone shutdowns in Punjab as police hunt for activist Amritpal Singh.

Singh has been described as the leader of a renewed Sikh separatist movement and is being sought by police for attempted murder, obstruction of law enforcement and creating disharmony.

If this is a harbinger of rising Sikh separatist sentiment in Canada, Canada will have to respond, adding a further complication to the knotty problem of protecting Canadians from foreign interference, while also ensuring all citizens’ right to speak freely and be free from discrimination.

Source: Daphne Bramham: Muslims and Sikhs of Indian descent want Canada to do more to protect them

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