‘Hip Hip Hooray!’ Cheering News for Free Speech on Campus

2023/02/04 Leave a comment

Funny but pointed analysis of the Stanford list of banned common words:

The following is a celebration of the cancellation of the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, an attempt by a committee of IT leaders at Stanford University to ban 161 common words and phrases. Of those 161 phrases, I have taken pains to use 45 of them here. Read at your own risk.

Is the media addicted to bad news? It’s not a dumb question, nor are you crazy to ask. After all, we follow tragedy like hounds on the chase, whether it’s stories about teenagers who commit suicide,victims of domestic violence or survivors of accidents in which someone winds up quadriplegic, crippled for life or confined to a wheelchair. We report on the hurdles former convicts face after incarceration, hostile attitudes toward immigrants and the plight of prostitutes and the homeless. Given the perilous state of the planet, you might consider this barrage of ill tidings to be tone-deaf.

Well, I’m happy to report good news for a change. You might call it a corrective, or a sanity check, but whatever you call it — and what you can call things here is key — there have been several positive developments on American campuses. The chilling effects of censorship and shaming that have trapped students between the competing diktats of “silence is violence” and “speech is violence” — the Scylla and Charybdis of campus speech — may finally be showing some cracks.

Matters looked especially grim in December, when the internet discovered the 13-page dystopicallly titled “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative. A kind of white paper on contemporary illiberalism, it listed 161 verboten expressions, divided into categories of transgression, including “person-first,” “institutionalized racism” and the blissfully unironic “imprecise language.” The document offered preferred substitutions, many of which required feats of linguistic limbo to avoid simple terms like “insane,” “mentally ill” and — not to beat a dead horse, but I’ll add one more — “rule of thumb.” Naturally, it tore its way across the internet to widespread mockery despite a “content warning” in bold type: “This website contains language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace.”

Before you get worked up, know this: A webmaster has taken the site down and the program has been aborted for re-evaluation. Last month, in a welcome display of clear leadership, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Stanford’s president, said the policy, brainchild of a select committee of IT leaders, had never been intended as a universitywide policy and reiterated the school’s commitment to free speech. “From the beginning of our time as Stanford leaders, Persis and I have vigorously affirmed the importance and centrality of academic freedom and the rights of voices from across the ideological and political spectrum to express their views at Stanford,” he wrote, referring to the school’s provost, Persis Drell. “I want to reaffirm those commitments today in the strongest terms.”

Could this be a seminal moment for academic freedom? Consider other bright spots: Harvard recently went ahead with its fellowship offer to Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch, which was earlier rejected, allegedly owing to his critical views on Israel. M.I.T.’s faculty voted to embrace a “Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom.” At Yale Law School, which has been roiled by repeated attempts to suppress speech, a conservative lawyer was allowed to appear on a panel with a former president of the A.C.L.U. after protests disrupted her visit the year before. And Hamline University, which had refused to renew an art history professor’s contract because she showed an artwork that some Muslim students may have found offensive, walked back its characterization of her as “Islamophobic.”

Finally, when an office within the School of Social Work at the University of Southern California banned the terms “fieldwork” and “in the field” to describe research projects because their “anti-Black” associations might offend some descendants of American slavery, U.S.C.’s interim provost issued a statement that “The university does not maintain a list of banned or discouraged words.”

It’s hard to know how much these shifting prohibitions distress students, whether freshman or senior, given how scared many are to speak up in the first place.

But we do know two things: First, college students are suffering from anxiety and other mental health issues more than ever before, and second, fewer feel comfortable expressing disagreement lest their peers go on the warpath. It would be a ballsy move to risk being denounced, expelled from their tribe, become a black sheep. No one can blame any teenager who has been under a social media pile-on for feeling like a basket case. Why take the chance.

Yet when in life is it more appropriate for people to take risks than in college — to test out ideas and encounter other points of view? College students should be encouraged to use their voices and colleges to let them be heard. It’s nearly impossible to do this while mastering speech codes, especially when the master lists employ a kind of tribal knowledge known only to their guru creators. A normal person of any age may have trouble submitting, let alone remembering that “African American” is not just discouraged but verboten, that he or she can’t refer to a professor’s “walk-in” hours or call for a brown bag lunch, powwow or stand-up meeting with their peers.

“You can’t say that” should not be the common refrain.

According to a 2022 Knight Foundation report, the percentage of college students who say free speech rights are secure has fallen every year since 2016, while the percentage who believe free speech rights are threatened has risen. Nearly two-thirds think the climate at school prevents people from expressing views that others might find offensive. But here, too, let’s convey some good news: The number of students who say controversial speakers should be disinvited has fallen since 2019. And one more cheering note: The editors of The Stanford Review, a student publication, poked gleefully at the document before it was taken down, with the shared impulse — irresistible, really — of using a number of taboo terms in the process.

Surely my ancestors from the ghettos of Eastern Europe couldn’t anticipate that their American descendants would face this kind of policing of speech at institutions devoted to higher learning. (While we’re on history, per the document, but news to all the Jews I know: “Hip hip hooray” was a term “used by German citizens during the Holocaust as a rallying cry when they would hunt down Jewish citizens living in segregated neighborhoods.”)

Consider what learning can flourish under such constraints. In a speech last fall celebrating the 100th anniversary of PEN America, the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie noted: “Many American universities are well-meaning in wanting to keep students comfortable, but they do so at the risk not just of creating an insular, closed space but one where it is almost impossible to admit to ignorance — and in my opinion the ability to admit to ignorance is a wonderful thing. Because it creates an opportunity to learn.”

It is reasonable to wonder whether any conceivable harm to a few on hearing the occasional upsetting term outweighs the harm to everyone in suppressing speech. Or whether overcoming the relatively minor discomforts of an unintentional, insensitive or inept comment might help students develop the resilience necessary to surmount life’s considerably greater challenges — challenges that will not likely be mediated by college administrators after they graduate.

Rather than muzzle students, we should allow them to hear and be heard. Opportunities to engage and respond. It’s worth remembering how children once responded to schoolyard epithets: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me.” Narrow restrictions on putatively harmful speech leave young people distracted from and ill-prepared for the actual violence they’ll encounter in the real world.

Source: ‘Hip Hip Hooray!’ Cheering News for Free Speech on Campus

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Ottawa’s contract for $200-million fund not transparent, Black business group says

2023/02/04 Leave a comment

Not a good look:

A prominent Black business group is accusing the federal government of running a rushed and opaque procurement process to administer a $200-million endowment program for Black-led charities and community organizations.

The Liberal government first announced the Black-led Philanthropic Endowment Fund in the 2021 budget, but only put out a request for proposals to run the fund last fall. Groups had until Nov. 25 to apply. The fund is meant to be self-sustaining for at least 10 years and the administrators have access to only $9.5-million of the fund for early operating and granting activities.

One group that applied is the Black Opportunity Fund (BOF), which was started by a coalition of Black executives in 2020 to tackle systemic anti-Black racism in corporate Canada and invest in Black-led organizations and businesses.

BOF is funded through programs with corporate partners, including Toronto-Dominion Bank and Walmart Stores Inc. It does not currently take government funding.

Executive director Craig Wellington said BOF had been one of many groups with whom the government had consulted in designing the philanthropic fund.

He said BOF wrote up a proposal of more than 500 pages to describe in detail how the fund could be used effectively, and had arranged a consortium of partners that included the Toronto Foundation and RockCreek, a global investment firm with $16-billion in assets under management.

He said after the group filed its application in November, it heard nothing until Jan. 27, when it was informed it was not selected for the fund in a short e-mail signed from “Service Canada.”

“We had received no phone calls, no communication, no e-mails, regarding the proposal. Not a question,” Mr. Wellington said.

He said the short timeline – compared with the length of time it usually takes the government to do its due diligence on large procurement processes – suggested to him that Ottawa already had a winner in mind.

“What we are starting to hear is that they’ve already selected the agent,” Mr. Wellington said. “Which would be shocking, because we’re talking about Nov. 25 to a week ago. You’re talking eight weeks total, including the holiday closure. For a $200-million procurement. That is not possible. The government cannot buy computers in six weeks.”

In a letter sent Monday to a group of Liberal ministers that includes Minister of Housing, Diversity and Inclusion Ahmed Hussen, BOF asked for the government to make a detailed account of how it is reviewing and selecting applications. BOF also asked the federal Auditor-General to review the procurement process.

“It was our expectation that the government would undergo a thorough, rigorous and transparent process to select the steward for the fund, particularly in light of recent controversies with respect to other procurement processes,” said the letter signed from BOF board chair Ray Williams, managing director and vice-chairman of National Bank Financial.

One of the most prominent federal initiatives for Black-owned businesses to date is the $160-million Black Entrepreneurship Loan Fund, which was slow to roll out funds after it launched in the summer of 2021. A frequent criticism from members of the Black business community has been that the entrepreneurship fund was rushed out the door before it was ready, and not enough due diligence was done in selecting the administrators, which led to poor results.

Brittany-Anne Hendrych, a spokesperson for Mr. Hussen, defended the selection process and said it built on earlier consultations the government had held with Black organizations on the design of the program.

“Let us be clear, all applicants were assessed by officials at Employment and Social Development Canada based on their capacity to deliver on the goals of the endowment fund in a fair, transparent and objective manner,” Ms. Hendrych said in a statement.

She said a fund administrator had indeed been selected and more information would be announced soon.

The Michaëlle Jean Foundation, which was a partner on the BOF application, said it supported the call for more government transparency.

“It is a deep disappointment that the federal government has not had any questions for BOF or its partners with regards to their well-considered and action-oriented proposal for this fund,” executive director Tara Lapointe said in a statement.

Mr. Wellington said he thinks the government is putting optics ahead of its concern for proper spending.

“They’re getting prepared to make an announcement during Black History Month,” he said. “So Black History Month, and making a photo-op or whatever, is more of a priority than a rigorous, transparent process.”

Source: Ottawa’s contract for $200-million fund not transparent, Black business group says

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Douglas Todd: The cure for religious extremism

2023/02/04 Leave a comment

Not sure how to achieve this “cure:”

What do the World Cup in Qatar, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, American gay, lesbian and transgendered people, Quebec’s government, Canada’s Indigenous residential schools, and India and China have in common?

They have all been embroiled in recent battles over religious freedom, a subject that can make a lot of eyes glaze over in secularized societies. That is unfortunate, because religious freedom is the remedy to extremism.

The ideal of religious freedom has taken on an especially sour taste in North America because it has been weaponized by some conservative Christians and others to defend their “freedom” to discriminate against gays, lesbians and transgendered people.

While this is a one-sided misuse of the concept, it shouldn’t take away from the value of religious freedom, which many maintain is the foundation of all human rights. That is even while it’s largely misunderstood in the West.

There is no ambiguity, however, in regard to the brutal way tens of millions of Muslims, Christians, Falun Gong members and Baha’i are subjected to harassment, imprisonment, forced labour and worse in Hindu-majority India, Buddhist Myanmar, Shia Iran, and atheist China.

Indeed, six of 10 of the world’s most populous countries — China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria — are home to severe religious extremism, says Brett Scharffs, director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies and a renowned specialist on religious freedom.

The four countries that round out the world’s 10 largest — the U.S., Brazil, Bangladesh and Mexico — are also on downward trajectories, says Scharffs. The U.S., for instance, has been battered by more massacres at churches, synagogues and mosques, which are also often targeted for vandalism and arson.

In Canada, a gunman killed six people at a Quebec mosque in 2017. And in 2021, scores of Catholic and other churches in Canada were vandalized or burnt to the ground. These attacks occurred following misleading media reports of the discovery of “mass graves” of children next to the sites of former Indigenous residential schools, which were federally funded and church-run.

It’s not too hard to point to where religious freedom is threatened — including via Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church is dangerously backing Vladimir Putin’s attempt to erase the preferences of Ukrainian Orthodox people, who want to be independent of Moscow’s oppressive Orthodox leaders.

The concept of religious freedom was also central to a more nuanced issue: Western complaints about anti-homosexual laws in Qatar during the World Cup soccer spectacle.

While it is entirely legitimate to criticize the leaders of countries hosting major global events, Scharffs wonders whether the army of Western critics of Qatar were harder on the Muslim-majority country than on homophobic Putin when he hosted the World Cup in 2018. And when China held last year’s Winter Olympics, Scharffs believes it got off lightly for persecuting Uyghur Muslims and Christians.

Normally, in Canada, religious freedom also tends to play out subtly, since the nation is not yet as polarized as many others, even while some seem to want to make it so.

Many English-speaking Canadians accuse Quebec’s popular governing party of bigotry, Islamophobia and even racism for its 2019 religious neutrality law, Bill 21, which bans public employees in positions of authority from wearing visible religious symbols on the job. But do many fail to understand the French concept of “laicite”?

This week, politicians in Quebec’s Assembly called for the dismissal of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new appointee, Amira Elghawaby, as Canada’s representative on combatting Islamophobia, since she had earlier claimed “the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law but by anti-Muslim sentiment.” She apologized late Wednesday.

Quebec points to how laicite attempts to keep religion out of public affairs, while enshrining the right to believe or not believe. It’s restrictions apply to not only the Muslim hijab, but also the Jewish kippa, Christian cross, and Sikh turban.

Laicite does not tend to get a tolerant hearing in Anglo-American cultures such as Canada, which, as Scharffs says, are arguably the most “permissive” in regard to public religious symbols. Scharffs took note at a conference when French intellectuals unanimously defended laicite in the name of women’s rights. “They had a strong sense that women wearing a hijab was not a sincere expression of autonomy, but was the result of coercion on the part of husbands, fathers and brothers.”

And while Scharffs, a law professor at Brigham Young University, says it is true that women are generally compelled to wear headscarves in many Muslim-majority countries, such as Saudi Arabia, he says in North America the hijab is more an expression of choice. While Scharffs understands Quebec’s attempt to make secularism the over-riding public system, he prefers a more pluralistic position, which allows space for the expression of multiple religious worldviews.

When it comes to the over-heated U.S., Scharffs worries the populist religious right and populist secular left are becoming more extremist, showing little concern for each others’ freedoms. Conservative Christian nationalists, for instance, don’t care about the freedom of minority faiths. And many proponents of identity politics, whether on gender or sexual orientation, are determined to shut down the speech of religious people. That is even while both sides claim they support the principle of non-discrimination.

“The trouble is LGBQT people are scared. And religious people are scared,” said Scharffs. “I see much of today’s polarization driven by fear.”

No wonder the ideal of religious freedom is threatened.

Source: Douglas Todd: The cure for religious extremism

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Shree Paradkar: For Amira Elghawaby, surviving this witchhunt won’t be through civility — she needs to stick to the ugly truth

2023/02/04 Leave a comment

Understand the political pressures to apologize. Still doesn’t justify walking back from her and Farber’s legitimate take on Bill 21 and the Quebec analysis by Leger (virtually all surveys by various companies highlight Quebec’s lower acceptance and tolerance of Canadian Muslims. Other comments, yes:

Take a look at these two quotes.

“Anti-Muslim sentiment appears to be the main motivation for those who support a ban on religious symbols, a new poll has found.” — a Montreal Gazette report in 2019.

“Unfortunately, the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment.” — an Ottawa Citizen opinion piece a couple of months later.

Can you find the difference between this news report and this commentary? There isn’t much, in substance at least, if you analyze the Leger Marketing poll the quotes reference. But only one of them is at the centre of newly manufactured national outrage.

That second quote appeared in an opinion piece that Amira Elghawaby, then a journalist, co-wrote with Bernie Farber, then CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

The first quote is received as information. The second, we’re given to understand, is prejudice.

Elghawaby, whom the Trudeau government appointed only last week as its special representative on combating Islamophobia, is the target of a bizarre witchhunt for the apparent sin of offending an entire province for having repeated the outcome of a poll — three years ago. She apologized for it this week.

She never should have.

Gather around, folks, to hear the story of the most inane politicization of an innocuous political posting, to understand what the cowardice of power looks like and to learn why one must never apologize for speaking truth to that power.

See, it begins in June 2019, when Bill 21, which bans public servants from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs, passed into law.

No, make that 2017, with Bill 62, which decreed nobody was allowed to cover their face while providing a public service. Or maybe 2013, with Bill 60, a supposed “Charter of Values,” calling for a ban on all “ostentatious” religious symbols. Or better still 2010, when the more blatant Bill 94 tried to ban women wearing the niqab and burqa while receiving or delivering public services.

Whatever the bill, whichever the party, whatever the stated purpose — “it affects all religions,” “it respects our secularism” — it is an example of majoritarian excess. That’s true even taking into account that the separation of church and state has been hard-earned in Quebec. And while various religious minorities felt the impact of Bill 21, it has been most devastating for Muslim women.

A survey last August found two-thirds of Muslim women interviewed said they’d either been a victim of or witnessed a hate crime.

In general, I don’t put much stock in the oppression-fighting powers of government appointees. But if the mandate of this representative is to provide expert advice to ministers on combating Islamophobia, you’d think, at the very least, those who appointed her understood that this expert’s views were legitimate.

However, because Quebec is an important battleground for votes, federal politicians are loath to stand against it. Which means majoritarian sentiments, not fairness or principle, dictate political calculus.

It explains why the Liberals appear reluctant to stand by even the mildest of rebukes of Quebec; there was nothing provocative about what Elghawaby and Farber wrote.

Islamophobia literally kills Canadians, and fuels various other forms of violence. But go on, make it about the hurt feelings of the majority instead.

Which is exactly what La Presse began when it reported that the prime minister’s new appointee had once painted Quebec as “anti-Muslim.”

This is why you have Quebec’s nationalist ruling party, Coalition Avenir Québec, scooping a handful of nothing, swirling it in the air, and releasing it with the triumphant flourish of a magician’s revelation. You have opportunistic federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre gleefully swooping in to grab the invisible magic dust and professing great affront by it, and you have the Liberals dithering, contemplating: is the scandal nothing or is it worth something, trapped in the eternal question: what is the value of zero?

At various times, the prime minister has distanced himself from her comments; appeared to stand by her; and apparently facilitated a meeting with the Bloc leader without consulting her.

No doubt other sections of the media are trying to get a bite out of the nothingburger, investigating penetrating handwringers such as “how was she appointed in the first place?”

Photographs published in the past few days could well be a metaphor for her isolation. On the day of the announcement of her appointment, Jan. 26, a photo tweeted by Diversity and Inclusion Minister Ahmed Hussen features himself along with Elghawaby and Transport Minister Omar Alghabra among others. On Wednesday, Elghawaby is seen going to meet Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet and facing a swarm of journalists, by herself.

She hasn’t even begun the job. As my colleague Raisa Patel reported, Elghawaby’s start date is Feb. 20. “That also means she currently does not have her own staff, nor is she being paid to take part in such meetings.”

And we wonder why women, especially those marked for identity-based hostility, stay away from public positions?

Those who challenge power are often chided for being belligerent, unreasonable, uncivil. It’s as if all it requires for the powers that be, and those who influence them, to ensure equality is to be asked politely.

Want civility? Elghawaby apologized Thursday. Said she was sorry for having “hurt the people of Quebec.”

“I’m glad that she apologized but she still has to resign,” said Jean-François Roberge, Quebec’s minister responsible for the French language.

So much for conciliation. Lesson learned.

Source: Shree Paradkar: For Amira Elghawaby, surviving this witchhunt won’t be through civility — she needs to stick to the ugly truth

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Immigration increase alone won’t fix the labour market, experts say

2023/02/03 Leave a comment

Still thinking inside the box of increased immigration rather than other policy measures to address labour shortages:
Experts say Canada’s plan to increase immigration may ease some pressures in the labour market, but bigger changes are needed to ensure new permanent residents are matched with the jobs that most need filling.
With the unemployment rate at historic lows, many companies are “starved” for workers, and new immigrants will help fill some of the need, said Ravi Jain, principal at Jain Immigration Law and co-founder of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association.

Source: Immigration increase alone won’t fix the labour market, experts say

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Yakabuski: Trudeau’s anti-Islamophobia adviser’s job is to preach to the converted

2023/02/03 Leave a comment

Another relevant commentary on the politics of the appointment. As noted earlier, there appointment has drawn criticism from the more secular Muslims, and Iranian Canadians protesting the mandatory hijab in Iran and the Iranian regime:

The noxious effects of identity politics have been on full display in Canada since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Jan. 26 nomination of Amira Elghawaby as his government’s Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia.

In Quebec, the reaction to Ms. Elghawaby’s appointment has gone far beyond the boilerplate outrage that usually awaits external critics of the province’s efforts to preserve its language, identity and values. This time, the indignation is real and proportional to the offence Mr. Trudeau committed in promoting someone who has perpetuated stereotypes about Quebeckers as hostile toward “others.”

At its core, the controversy over Ms. Elghawaby’s nomination represents a clash of two forms of identity politics practised in Canada that are equally corrosive. One seeks to validate claims of Canada as a country founded on oppression and racism, with both continuing to permeate our institutions and society to the point of inflicting relentless pain on Indigenous, racial, religious and sexual minorities. Practitioners of this kind of identity politics question whether Canada Day is even worthy of celebration, as Ms. Elghawaby herself has done.

Mr. Trudeau rarely misses an opportunity to give succour to those who hold such views. His very appointment of Ms. Elghawaby is an affirmation of this clenched-fist approach to fighting discrimination, which leaves little room for compromise or dialogue. It takes its cues from the radical American left that infiltrates university campuses and silences free speech. And it is embraced by progressive politicians to mobilize their bases.

Ms. Elghawaby’s brand of identity politics has now entered into direct collision with Quebec nationalism, arguably Canada’s oldest form of identity politics and one based on Quebeckers’ perception of themselves as an endangered (and historically oppressed) cultural minority in North America. They take offence, often far too easily, whenever their survivalist reflexes are criticized by others as inward-looking or worse.

It was this kind of identity politics we witnessed on Tuesday when the National Assembly adopted a unanimous resolution calling for the repeal of Ms. Elghawaby’s nomination. MNAs from the far-left Québec Solidaire, which practises American-style identity politics with a Québécois twist, abstained on the vote.

Exhibit A in the case against Ms. Elghawaby’s appointment is a 2019 Ottawa Citizen op-ed on Quebec’s religious symbols ban, co-authored with her Canadian Anti-Hate Network colleague Bernie Farber, in which the duo wrote: “Unfortunately, the majority of Quebeckers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment.” They went on to refer to a Leger Marketing poll that found that the vast majority of Quebeckers with negative views of Islam supported Bill 21, which prohibits public employees in a position of authority, including teachers, from wearing religious symbols on the job.

It is dangerous to rely on a single poll on a subject as emotionally charged and personal as religion to make a sweeping statement about the motivations of Quebeckers for supporting Bill 21. Besides, one can hold negative views of Islam without being anti-Muslim or Islamophobic. Just as one can criticize Papal doctrine on homosexuality, women and contraception without being anti-Catholic.

The op-ed in question was hardly an isolated incident. In her role as a contributing columnist for the Toronto Star and on social media, Ms. Elghawaby has regularly made uncharitable comments about Quebeckers. In a 2013 column, she saidphilosopher John Ralston Saul “might as well be writing about today’s Quebec” when he referred, in a 2008 book, to the “fear of loss of purity – pure blood, pure race, pure national traits and values and ties” in the Western world.

The cherry on the sundae, if you like, was the tweet (now deleted) that Ms. Elghawaby posted in response to a 2021 Globe and Mail op-ed by University of Toronto philosophy professor Joseph Heath, who had argued that “the largest group of people in this country who were victimized by British colonialism, subjugated and incorporated into Confederation by force, are French Canadians.” Ms. Elghawaby’s tweet did not mince words. “I’m going to puke.”

Ms. Elghawaby is, as the saying goes, entitled to her opinions. But one wonders how she can promote understanding of and tolerance toward Muslims among Canadians if she starts out from the defensive crouch she has taken in her writings. Tolerance is a two-way street.

Then again, Ms. Elghawaby’s appointment has little to do with any attempt by Mr. Trudeau to foster meaningful dialogue. Her nomination is meant to delight outspoken interest groups whose support is critical to Liberal political fortunes.

On Wednesday, Ms. Elghawaby, who will be paid between $162,700 and $191,300 a year in her new post, apologized to Quebeckers for “the hurt [she] caused with her words.” And Mr. Trudeau said he understood Quebeckers’ “distrust” toward organized religion, given the Roman Catholic’s Church’s dominance before the Quiet Revolution. But it was mostly all damage control.

By all accounts, Ms. Elghawaby’s job mainly involves preaching to the converted. She has already shown herself to be very good at that.

Source: Trudeau’s anti-Islamophobia adviser’s job is to preach to the converted

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Glavin: Amira Elghawaby seemed the perfect appointee to combat ‘Islamophobia’ — except for all the politics 

2023/02/02 Leave a comment

Of note, Glavin’s assessment of the political targeting considerations:

It’s profoundly unfair to Amira Elghawaby that she was engulfed in a whirlwind of opprobrium and hurt feelings and disgust pretty well from the moment the Trudeau government announced last week that she’d been chosen to serve as Canada’s first Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia.

No matter what you might think about Elghawaby or about her harshest detractors — among whom you can count members of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s own cabinet — the appointment was doomed to turn out badly, no matter who’d been picked for the post. The whole point of Elghawaby’s job — who she’s supposed to represent, exactly, and what she’s expected to be combatting — has been obscured in a shambles of pious boasts, half-truths and cynical disinformation.

According to Trudeau’s announcement last week, Elghawaby is intended to be Canada’s representative in the matter of this thing that has come to be called Islamophobia. But after certain of his Quebec lieutenants and the Quebec government erupted in umbrage owing to indelicate insinuations she’d appeared to have made about Quebeckers, Elghawaby went from being a representative of the Government of Canada to what Trudeau called “a representative to the Government of Canada.” On Monday, Trudeau put it this way: “She is there to speak for the community with the community and build bridges.”

This is not quite throwing Elghawaby under the bus. Neither is it a case of Trudeau having unfairly set up a Muslim woman in the first place to challenge Quebec’s entrenchment of laïcité secularism, which clearly disfavours devout Muslim women in the public service.

At the same time, it’s not hard to make the argument that Trudeau hasn’t shown much mettle in forcefully challenging Quebec on this front himself. Today, Elghawaby told Quebeckers she was sorry that her words “have hurt the people of Quebec … I have heard you and I know what you’re feeling.”

The trouble isn’t just Elghawaby’s views about Quebec’s Bill 21, which the Canadian Civil Liberties Association reasonably describes as a “horrendous law that violates human rights and harms people who are already marginalized” because it prevents teachers, police officers and other public servants from wearing hijabs and turbans and yarmulkes and crosses.

Part of the problem is this: If a job description in a federal posting called for the composite stereotype of a faintly obnoxious and earnest upper-class social justice enthusiast from one of the leafier Liberal strongholds of the Greater Toronto Area, Elghawaby would be the ideal candidate — except she’s an Ottawa resident.

As an activist and frequent opinion-pages contributor, Elghawaby has adopted all the respectable standpoints with just the right degree of transgressive élan, rarely too strident or too squishy. She’s called for removing the Queen as Canada’s head of state and dismissed Canada Day as a festival of “Judeo-Christian storytelling.” She’s been gushing in her praise for Trudeau and backs the Trudeau government’s extremely contentious moves to regulate commentary on the internet. She has argued in favour of Muslim prayer rooms in schools, and once blasted the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper as having done more harm to the image of Canadian Muslims than al-Qaida’s atrocities in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.

That last claim was clearly over the top, but fair enough. In certain high-fashion “progressive” circles, that’s the sort of thing one is expected to say.

More worrisome is Elghawaby’s apparent contentment with the conflation of anti-Muslim bigotry with genuine and justifiable alarm among liberal Muslims and national security agencies arising from the presence of reactionary, grossly antisemitic and foreign-influenced Islamist elements within Canada’s Muslim leadership itself. For years, the Trudeau government has used the spectre of “Islamophobia” to dismiss these concerns.

It’s a pattern that began in the traumatic days of January 2017, after six Muslims were massacred at a mosque in the Quebec City suburb of Sainte-Foy. Back then, the Trudeau government sacrificed all-party consensus around a definition of the term Islamophobia, leaving it sufficiently open-ended to include a mere disdain for the Islamic religion itself or even high-pitched opposition to the theocratic-fascist ideologies of Islamism — which is not the religion, Islam.

According to the definition set out in the contentious federal anti-racism strategy, Islamophobia is defined this way: “Includes racism, stereotypes, prejudice, fear or acts of hostility directed towards individual Muslims or followers of Islam in general. In addition to individual acts of intolerance and racial profiling, Islamophobia can lead to viewing and treating Muslims as a greater security threat on an institutional, systemic and societal level.”

So whatever Islamophobia is, it includes these things.

Two years ago, at the national Summit on Islamophobia where the establishment of the post Elghawaby has taken up was first proposed, the main matter at hand was the Canada Revenue Agency’s audits of certain Muslim-centred charities. At that summit, Trudeau said the CRA was targeting Muslims, and it should stop. “Institutions should support people, not target them,” Trudeau said.

This puts the prime minister squarely at odds with Canada’s national security agencies and the Research and Analysis Division of the CRA’s Charities Directorate. Based on the Finance Ministry’s 2015 Assessment of Inherent Risks of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in Canada, the “most likely” destinations for Canadian funds supporting terrorism were Afghanistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Palestinian Territories and several other mostly Muslim-majority countries. Terrorist groups with “a Canadian nexus” in the assessment included several Islamist fronts associated with al-Qaida, the Islamic State (ISIL), Hamas, Hezbollah and so on — terrorist groups that rely on an Islamic cover story for their savagery.

Trudeau ordered the CRA Office of the Taxpayer’s Ombudsperson to inquire into the claim that the CRA’s audits of certain Muslim charities constituted “systemic Islamophobia,” but the review has been stymied by the Ombudsperson’s inability to ferret out specific national-security information from the relevant agencies.

The Muslim Association of Canada and the National Council of Canadian Muslims — Elghawaby’s employer during the Islamophobia summit — are now demanding that the CRA audits be called off altogether. They also want the Ombudsman’s review to scrapped because it’s apparently useless. They certainly have a point there.

The whole thing is a mess, and it’s just as jumbled and fractious as Elghawaby’s appointment, which is as Trudeau described it — to “build bridges.” But it’s to build the Liberal Party’s bridges to Muslim voters.

In a 2017 opinion piece for the Ottawa Citizen, Elghawaby quite reasonably described the Quebec government as a bully that was “out to gain votes off the backs of vulnerable minorities.” That’s at least arguably exactly what the Trudeau government is doing here, too.

As Trudeau himself said of Elhawaby: “Her job now is to make sure she’s helping the government.”

Source: Glavin: Amira Elghawaby seemed the perfect appointee to combat ‘Islamophobia’ — except for all the politics 

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Labelle: Amira Elghawaby et le 59% de racistes québécois

2023/02/02 Leave a comment

The poll referred to in the Elghawaby/Farber op-ed was in 2019, not 2007, and discomfort with Muslims in Quebec has polled somewhat higher than elsewhere in Canada over various polls and time periods.

Quebec periodically has these debates, as Labelle is right to remind us, and of course polling reflects the issues and controversies of the day, and the specific formulation of questions:

Les déclarations de l’ancienne journaliste Amira Elghawaby, nommée au poste de représentante spéciale du Canada chargée de la lutte contre l’islamophobie, suscitent un tollé, avec raison. Elle a, entre autres fausses nouvelles, fait référence aux résultats d’un sondage réalisé en 2007 par la firme Léger selon lesquels 59 % des Québécois se considéraient comme racistes. En tant que journaliste, elle aurait pu examiner de plus près ce sondage pour en constater les failles. Mais un quelconque objectif plus ou moins caché l’aura sans doute emporté sur son éthique de travail.

Le fatidique sondage de 2007

Le 15 janvier 2007, en plein contexte de débats intenses sur les accommodements raisonnables, après que le conseil municipal d’Hérouxville eut adopté un code de conduite ciblant les accommodements religieux, Le Journal de Montréal publiait un sondage réalisé par la firme Léger Marketing par le biais de deux sondages Internet, entre décembre 2006 et janvier 2007, avec un titre choc : « 59 % des Québécois se disent racistes ».

Or, à l’instar de mes collègues Rachad Antonius et Jean-Claude Icart, chercheurs spécialisés comme moi en sociologie du racisme, ces résultats m’apparaissaient immédiatement suspects. Dans la foulée, nous avons publié deux articles à ce sujet, l’un dans La Presse, l’autre dans la revue Éthique publique. Selon notre analyse, plusieurs raisons expliquaient ces résultats aberrants : une définition douteuse du racisme, l’agrégation de catégories non agrégeables, ce que l’on apprenait des attitudes concernant les accommodements raisonnables en comparaison, et l’absence des Premières Nations.

Une définition douteuse et des résultats contradictoires

La définition scientifique du racisme consiste en ceci : « Une idéologie qui se traduit par des préjugés, des pratiques de discrimination, de ségrégation et de violence, impliquant des rapports de pouvoir entre des groupes sociaux, qui a une fonction de stigmatisation, de légitimation et de domination, et dont les logiques d’infériorisation et de différenciation peuvent varier dans le temps et l’espace ».

Or, les sondés devaient réagir à une définition lacunaire : « … au niveau populaire, tous comportements, paroles, gestes ou attitudes désagréables, si mineurs soient-ils à l’égard d’une autre culture… ». Il est peu probable que tous aient saisi la signification profonde du terme « racisme » pour ensuite se juger « racistes ». En fait, ils devaient répondre à des questions (12 à 22) concernant davantage les relations interculturelles, voire l’ethnocentrisme, plutôt que le racisme. Il y avait donc d’entrée de jeu une utilisation déficiente du mot racisme pour exprimer toute une gamme d’attitudes délicates interprétables de façon variable.

Un deuxième problème était le regroupement des sous-catégories (fortement raciste, moyennement raciste, faiblement raciste, pas du tout raciste). Ceux et celles qui se disaient fortement racistes étaient fusionnés avec ceux et celles qui se disaient moyennement ou faiblement racistes, d’où le fameux total de 59 %. Or, que signifiaient exactement le « moyennement raciste » ou le « légèrement raciste » ?

Autre donnée contradictoire : la grande majorité des Québécois (77 %), tout comme la majorité des membres des « communautés culturelles » (80 %) estimaient qu’il n’y a pas de « races » humaines plus douées que d’autres (question 3). Et 78 % des membres des dites « communautés culturelles » déclaraient se sentir bien accueillis.

Comment expliquer ces résultats si 59 % des Québécois étaient racistes ?

D’autres contradictions sur les accommodements raisonnables

Il faut souligner que le sondage Léger Marketing de janvier 2007 s’est tenu dans un contexte chargé. L’opinion publique était chauffée à blanc par les politiciens et les médias sur la question des accommodements raisonnables à caractère religieux.

Dans le même sondage, Léger a donc cru bon d’introduire deux questions sur cet enjeu de société : « Quel énoncé correspond le mieux à votre opinion ? 1. Tous les immigrants devraient respecter les lois et règlements du Québec même si cela va à l’encontre de certaines croyances religieuses ou pratiques culturelles ; 2 « Il est nécessaire d’adopter des accommodements à nos lois et règlements pour ne pas obliger les immigrants à aller à l’encontre de leurs croyances religieuses ou pratiques culturelles ». Le résultat obtenu fut le suivant : « La très grande majorité des Québécois (83 %) croient que les immigrants devraient respecter les lois et les règlements du Québec, même si cela va à l’encontre de certaines croyances religieuses ou pratiques culturelles. Chez les membres des communautés culturelles, 74 % sont du même avis ».

En conclusion, on peut aussi se demander pourquoi le sondeur distinguait « communautés culturelles » et « Québécois », une question de fond dont l’importance politique et citoyenne est immense. Et pourquoi la dimension autochtone a été alors complètement évacuée de l’enquête  Le Journal de Montréal publiait en janvier 2007 un tableau intitulé « L’immigration en 5 minutes », dans lequel les 130 165 membres des « Premières Nations » figuraient parmi les « importantes communautés culturelles du Québec » issues de l’immigration ! Une gaffe désespérante…

On peut aussi se demander s’il ne serait pas pertinent de mener des sondages sur les types de préjugés relevant du Québec bashing systémique qui sévit au sein des minorités (un prototype étant celui pratiqué par Mme Elghawaby), à l’égard des Québécois dits « de souche », un incontestable tabou à affronter.

Source: Amira Elghawaby et le 59% de racistes québécois

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , , ,

Repatriation order for men in Syria raises questions about Canada’s consular obligations

2023/02/02 Leave a comment

I’m on the more cautious side on repatriation and the likelihood of rehabilitation, particularly with respect to adults:

Former diplomats say Canada should have moved to repatriate four men from northeastern Syria without a court order, avoiding another decision from the federal bench that casts more doubt on the country’s obligations to its citizens held for wrongdoing in foreign countries.

A day after the government came to an agreement to repatriate 19 women and children, the Federal Court ruled on Jan. 20 that four men held in detention camps for suspected ISIS members in northeastern Syria must be repatriated, too, noting that their living conditions are “even more dire than those of the women and children who Canada has just agreed to repatriate.”

The government has yet to indicate whether it will appeal the case. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) said on Jan. 23 that the government is looking at the situation “carefully” and is “making sure we’re defending Canadians’ safety and security.”

Former Canadian diplomat Daniel Livermore, who was director general of security and intelligence in Canada’s foreign service, said the Federal Court ruling will force Global Affairs to change its consular policy unless it is appealed.

“The tradition in consular service, the way it has been delivered … it doesn’t matter who you are and what you’ve done, you get consular service irrespective of background,” said Livermore, who authored Detained: Islamic Fundamentalist Extremism and the War on Terror in Canada. “Now, that didn’t happen with these people, and it didn’t happen because of their background.”

Livermore noted that there is little sympathy to provide any kind of assistance for those who are linked with allegedly going abroad to join a terrorist organization.

“I think the court case is really going to force the hands of Global Affairs to come up with something a lot better, and hopefully it is something that is anchored in a more sensible policy than they’ve pursued so far,” he said.

He added that in an “ideal world,” the case shouldn’t have even come to court and the repatriation should have taken place long ago.

In its policy framework to “evaluate the provision of extraordinary assistance,” the government notes that it has “no positive obligation under domestic or international law to provide consular assistance, including repatriation.”

The framework was unearthed as part of the Federal Court case.

The policy notes that Global Affairs “may” provide consular assistance to Canadians abroad with their request and consent, and pursuant to the government’s “royal prerogative on international relations.” The Federal Court ruled that the royal prerogative isn’t “exempt from constitutional scrutiny.”

Livermore said Canadian courts, in successive cases, have undermined the government’s claim of not having to provide consular assistance, including the most recent January decision. He said the notion was also disputed in 2010 when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Omar Khadr’s case. The top court ruled it could order the government to ask the United States to repatriate Khadr from detention in Guantanamo Bay, but chose not to. Livermore also cited the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik, who the Federal Court ordered be repatriated from Sudan in 2009.

“[The three cases show] a nice little pattern, which undermines the royal prerogative argument and limits it very substantially,” he said.

He said the consular policy is a “residue” of Canada’s post-9/11 policies.

“A lot of our policies were changed without thinking them through,” he said. “A lot of the security agencies at the centre, at the [Privy Council Office], began to exercise powers that they don’t legitimately have a right to claim. Now we’re starting to untangle all this stuff … so presumably Global Affairs will have to work on that a bit and it will be interesting to see how it will come up with it.”

Livermore said one solution for future consular cases is to remove the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) from the co-management of the situation, suggesting that could be done by invoking the individual’s rights under the Privacy Act.

Under the government’s framework, CSIS and the RCMP will determine the “potential threat” an individual poses to public safety and national security, which includes “the individual’s involvement in, or association with, terrorist activity, and whether the risk of their return to Canada can be sufficiently mitigated in transit and upon arrival.”

Unlike other countries, Canada has made little progress to repatriate its citizens who have been held in Kurdish-controlled camps in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).

The government has cited safety concerns for its inability to travel to the camps to assess the consular cases. Under its framework, it notes that one of the guiding principles is that government officials “must not be put in harm’s way.” Other countries’ diplomats, as well as academics, journalists, and civil society advocates, have gone to the AANES camps.

Patricia Fortier, who served as Global Affairs Canada’s assistant deputy minister responsible for security, consular, and emergency management prior to her retirement in 2016, said the duty-of-care issue is a “very live issue.”

“There is no question that it is more top of mind now than it was in the past,” she said. “No one wants to order an officer into a place where they might not come back or they might be injured.”

She said the recent Federal Court decision continues a “long string” of cases involving the post-9/11 context and return to Canada.

“In each of those, everyone predicted that it would change things and it didn’t,” she said.

She said that the repatriation of the women and children had to come, but the question of the men is a more difficult one for potential public safety reasons.

“It’s going to be a really difficult security question,” she said, noting the situation is unlike many other consular cases as the Kurds who have control over the camps want to offload all the detainees.

“It is an odd situation,” she said, noting that it is unlikely that a similar case will have to be dealt with in the future.

Fortier said the situation will likely be resolved by Global Affairs and the security agencies, with the possible input of the defence department, before winding up on Trudeau’s desk.

She also noted the concern of the Yazidi population in Canada. In 2016, the House of Commons passed a motion that recognized that ISIS was committing genocide against Yazidi people. CBC News reported that survivors of the genocide who have resettled in Canada feel “heartbroken and betrayed.”

She said it is not always possible for the government to have a positive obligation to provide consular assistance, noting that could require Canada to repatriate a Canadian abroad who simply runs out of money.

Former diplomat Gar Pardy, who was the director general of the consular affairs bureau in the foreign service, said he doubted that the government would be interested in using the Federal Court’s decision as a foundation to change its consular policy.

He said that is why he thinks the government will appeal the decision.

Regardless of how the court process ends, Pardy said the government should be repatriating its citizens in northeastern Syria.

“The Canadian government should join what other governments have done,” he said, noting that many of Canada’s allies have repatriated their citizens who were in Syria. “Why the Canadian government has not followed this path—it just doesn’t seem to make any sense.”

The NDP and Green Party have called on the government to move forward on repatriation.

Source: Repatriation order for men in Syria raises questions about Canada’s consular obligations

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , , , , ,

French prime minister unveils plans to tackle racism – The Associated Press

2023/02/01 Leave a comment

Of note. Will see if anything concrete:

Name it, act on it, sanction it.

That is the focus of a new drive against racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination of all kinds that was announced Monday by French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.

The four-year plan starts with educating youth with a required yearly trip to a Holocaust or other memorial site exemplifying the horrors that racism can produce. It includes training teachers and civil servants about discrimination and toughening the ability to punish those denounced for discrimination.

Arrest warrants will be issued to those who use freedom of expression for racist or anti-Semitic ends.

Unusually, the plan includes fighting discrimination against Roma.

“There will be no impunity for hate,” Borne said, presenting her plan with 80 measures at the Institute of the Arab World.

Tolerance is on the rise, “but hate has reinvented itself,” she said.

“Our first challenge is to look squarely at the reality of racism and anti-Semitism and cede nothing to those who falsify history, who rewrite our past, forgetting or deforming some pages,” Borne added.

Some people working for years in French associations against racism and discrimination are skeptical about the plan, reject it outright or are reserving their judgement.

Even Kaltoum Gachi, a co-president of the anti-racist MRAP organization — which contributed a proposal — told The Associated Press that her group “will be vigilant to see if, concretely, (the plan) bears fruit.”

France’s government has rolled out a succession of plans over five decades, the latest in 2018, to grapple with racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination. Still, the estimated number of victims who suffered as least one racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic attack was 1.2 million per year, according to the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights.

Social media and a rising far-right fearful of the disappearance of the nation’s Christian roots in an increasingly multi-cultural France have added new dimensions to the fight against racism. Generations of citizens from former colonies in mostly Muslim north and west Africa have over decades given the nation a new face.

Gachi, the MRAP co-president and a lawyer, told those attending the presentation that 25 years ago, her younger brother Kamel failed in numerous requests for a job interview with an automaker — until he changed his name to Kevin.

Just on Monday, Gachi, a lawyer, said in an interview with The AP that she spoke with a youth with the same problem, a humiliating experience that leaves a lasting mark. She added that dignity, not just equality, is part of the equation.

Names, addresses and looks have long been a roadblock for people with origins outside France. Regular testing in private and public places of employment will be part of the new anti-discrimination effort, though the exact method is still being devised.

Borne said her plan will also offer victims of racism and discrimination the possibility to file complaints outside a police station, and in a “partially anonymous” way. She did not elaborate.

The plan will also make it “an aggravating circumstance” if someone in authority, such as a police officer, uses racist or discriminatory words to someone.

However, Borne’s plan dodges some sensitive areas, notably failing to directly tackle discrimination and racial profiling within the nation’s powerful police force.

Omer Mas Capitolin, a founder of the grassroots Community House for Supportive Development, said the measures are not sufficient.

“There is a denial of systemic discrimination,” not mentioned once in the plan, he told the AP.

His organization is one of a group of NGOs that launched a class action suit in 2021 against France’s powerful police in 2021, contending that it lawfully propagates a culture leading to systemic discrimination in identity checks. But for Mas Capitolin, who spoke on a personal level, alleged systemic discrimination goes beyond law enforcement to sectors like housing and jobs.

Mas Capitolin also criticized the timing for unveiling the plan on a day parliament opens debate on a hotly contested pension plan and on the eve of a planned protest march.

Source: French prime minister unveils plans to tackle racism – The Associated Press

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , ,

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