Glavin: On the death of Samuel Paty – Shouldn’t freedom of religion mean freedom from religion too?

2020/10/30 Leave a comment

Two articles responding to the reaction in many Muslim countries to French President Macron’s comments following the beheading of Samuel Paty, starting with Terry Glavin’s pointing out the hypocrisy of those who criticize Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate in the West while being silent on Chinese repression and arguably genocidal policies against the Uighurs:

Samuel Paty was a quiet 47-year-old middle-school civics teacher at the Collège du Bois d’Aulne, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the suburbs of Paris. He would walk to and from school from his second-floor apartment in nearby Eragny, where he lived alone with his five-year-old son. After class, he liked to play tennis. By all accounts passionately devoted to teaching, Samuel Paty was otherwise a man of temperate disposition, well-regarded by his students and by his colleagues.

That was just three weeks ago. Now, Paty’s name is coming up in blood-curdling slogans shouted in the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and in arguments and imbecilities erupting in Ankara, Riyadh, Islamabad and Tehran. Ambassadors have been summoned. Diplomats have been recalled. Tuesday this week was officially International Religious Freedom Day. If there was anything worth observing about it, it’s that religious freedom must mean freedom from religion, too, or it means nothing at all.

Source: Glavin: On the death of Samuel Paty – Shouldn’t freedom of religion mean freedom from religion too?

More temperate commentary by Konrad Yakabuski along similar lines:

The beheading this month of a middle-school teacher by an 18-year-old Islamic extremist, upset that his victim had shown caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed to his students, was a crime so horrific that it shocked even France’s most-hardened anti-terrorism experts.

In a country permanently on high alert since a wave of terrorist attacks took the lives of hundreds of French civilians in 2015, the gruesome decapitation of teacher Samuel Paty was unanimously condemned by French politicians as an assault on the Republic itself.

“Samuel Paty was killed because the Islamists want our future and because they know that, with heroes like him, they will never have it,” President Emmanuel Macron declared at an Oct. 21 ceremony in honour of the slain teacher held outside the Sorbonne. “We will defend the freedom you taught and raise up secularism. We will not renounce caricatures, or sketches, even if others step back. We will offer all the chances that the Republic owes to its youth without discrimination.”

The caricatures that Mr. Paty had shown his adolescent students, as part of a lesson on freedom of expression, were the same ones that had led to an attack on the offices of the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo in 2015. That attack left 12 people dead and sparked the global “Je suis Charlie” movement in support of free speech. But Mr. Macron’s defence of the freedom of the press earned him nasty epithets throughout the Muslim world and exposed once again the clash in values between France’s secularist majority and its growing Muslim minority.

French police have rounded up dozens of suspected accomplices to the attack on Mr. Paty by a Chechen refugee who had been alerted to the teacher’s actions by French Muslims who denounced it on social media. Mr. Macron and hardline Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin have vowed further crackdowns on imams accused of promoting Islamic “separation” within France.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan led the foreign charge against Mr. Macron with weekend diatribes questioning the French President’s mental health and accusing him of “leading a campaign of hate” against Muslims akin to the pre-Second World War treatment of European Jews. On Monday, Mr. Erdogan joined growing calls for a boycott of French products. Anti-Macron protests erupted in several majority-Muslim countries.

While other Western leaders expressed solidarity with Mr. Macron in the wake of Mr. Paty’s killing, it took Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 10 days to even acknowledge the incident – and only after the Bloc Québécois brought forward a House of Commons motion condemning the attack “on freedom of expression” in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northeast of Paris.

Questioned by journalists on Tuesday, Mr. Trudeau did condemn Mr. Paty’s killing, but declined to express his solidarity with Mr. Macron. “I’m going to take the opportunity to talk to world leaders, community leaders, leaders of the Muslim community here in Canada, to understand their worries, their concerns, to listen and to work to reduce these tensions,” Mr. Trudeau said.

Unfortunately for Mr. Trudeau, there is no middle ground in this debate. If he does not stand with Mr. Macron to defend freedom of expression, he automatically stands with Mr. Erdogan as an apologist for Muslim extremists. A listening tour will not cut it.

Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne also failed the grade with a Monday tweet in which he expressed “solidarity with our French friends.” He referred to “Turkey’s recent comments” as being “totally unacceptable” but did not rebuke Mr. Erdogan personally. He promised to “defend freedom of expression with respect.”

There is no other way to interpret Mr. Champagne’s tweet except as a repudiation of Mr. Paty and Charlie Hebdo. The caricatures depicting the Prophet Mohammed were anything but respectful. That was their whole point. No religion is off limits to satirists. And thank God for that.

The right to freedom of speech is meaningless if it is subject to conditions such as “respect.” The Constitution protects freedom of speech precisely because speech that is meaningful is often controversial. It is up to the courts to determine what constitutes hate speech under Section 319 of the Criminal Code. But the bar is set mercifully high. Democracy depends on it.

This is the second time in as many weeks that Mr. Trudeau’s government chose to trample on the Charter in the name of political correctness. After a University of Ottawa professor was suspended for using the n-word as part of an educational online lecture, Mr. Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland made banal pronouncements about fighting systemic racism rather than standing up for academic freedom. It was a facile cop-out on their part.

“We will not give in, ever,” Mr. Macron tweeted on Sunday, in French, English and Arabic. “We respect all differences in a spirit of peace. We do not accept hate speech and [we] defend reasonable debate. We will always be on the side of human dignity and universal values.”

Canadians should stand with Mr. Macron, even if their government will not.

Source: Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canadians-should-stand-with-macron-even-if-trudeau-wont/

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MPs amend judge sex-assault training bill to add systemic racism training, sparking new concerns

2020/10/29 Leave a comment

Hard to understand the concerns given that the Canadian Judicial Council will develop the training but I may be missing something:

A bill that requires sexual assault training for federally appointed judges has been amended by MPs to also include training on “systemic racism and systemic discrimination” — a change some see as a troubling sign politicians will keep venturing further into judicial training.

The legislation, which has now gone through three versions in four years, has seen widespread debate in the legal community over its constitutionality. Judges are self-governed through independent bodies to insulate them from political pressure, and already have their own training programs, including on sexual assault.

Supporters of the bill argue this is simply Parliament signalling that more must be done to protect the rights of sexual assault complainants and avoid basic legal errors. They note that judicial organizations are still responsible for creating the actual training content.

But critics worry the bill represents politicians trying to inject their policy preferences into judicial training, and that once the door is opened through this sex-assault training bill, future governments will pile on with their own political priorities, such as national security.

As it turns out, MPs have not even waited for the bill to get through the House of Commons before adding to it.

Liberal MP Greg Fergus told the Commons justice committee on Tuesday that his amendments are in order because the bill already required the training to consider the “social context” around sexual assault. The new language specifies that social context includes “systemic racism and systemic discrimination.” It does not include any other topics, and does not define those terms.

“I found that this offered us a good opportunity to…include other groups into the purpose of the bill,” said Fergus, who chairs the parliamentary Black caucus. “Those are the reasons why I proposed some small modifications,” he said, speaking in French.

The amendments were carried with Liberal, Conservative and NDP support, though they still need to pass in the full House of Commons and the Senate. Only Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin voted against them, saying they stray too far off track.

“It’s like we’d gone off to buy potatoes at the store, and we returned home with strawberries,” Fortin said in French. “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t work…If we want to work on a different bill than the original one, which was for training on sexual assault, and we want something different on systemic discrimination, that’s fine and well, that can be something we could do. But we’ll have to make another bill completely or reopen the witness list.”

Fortin also argued that the term “systemic racism” is a politically popular phrase right now, but it’s not clear to everyone what it means.

Arif Virani, the parliamentary secretary to the justice minister, responded that there is wide social consensus around the phrase as it applies to institutions, and it “reflects sort of where we are as a nation, as a continent.”

Liberal MP James Maloney said that Fortin’s concerns about judicial independence could also be applied to the original bill, which Fortin supports. “We’ve crossed that threshold, Mr. Fortin,” Maloney said.

The legislation amends the Judge’s Act to require judges “undertake to participate in continuing education” on sexual assault and social context, and requires that the Canadian Judicial Council develop the training “with persons, groups or organizations the Council considers appropriate, such as sexual assault survivors and groups and organizations that support them.” It requires the Council to report to Parliament on when the seminars were given and how many judges attended.

The first version was introduced by former Conservative leader Rona Ambrose in 2017, but it stalled in the Senate in 2019 over concerns of judicial independence. It was largely rewritten in the Senate, mainly by Sen. Pierre Dalphond, a former Quebec judge, who scaled back some of the more intrusive parts of the bill.

However, procedural wrangling kept the bill from advancing and it died on the 2019 election call. Justice Minister David Lametti revived it in February as government legislation, but that bill also died when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prorogued Parliament in August.

Dalphond told National Post that from what he understands of the amendments, they’re acceptable to him since they only mention systemic racism as one part of the social context, not the whole definition. He also said that in his experience, systemic racism is already an important part of judicial training. But he warned that Parliament must not go too far in attempting to direct the training or influence the content.

“The shorter the better,” Dalphond said about the legislation.

Asked for comment, Ambrose replied with a statement that did not mention the systemic racism amendment. “I know victims of sexual assault are thankful that MPs are working together to get this bill passed,” she said. “I hope it passes without delay.”

Lametti’s office also did not comment directly on the amendment, but said the justice minister “fully agrees with the need to take action to address systemic racism in Canada’s justice system.”

Many in the legal profession are deeply concerned about the precedent the bill sets. Gib van Ert, a lawyer who was executive legal officer at the Supreme Court of Canada from 2015 to 2018, wrote in Maclean’s in February that governments should not be legislating training for judges, because once it starts it might never end.

“Why not put a few more required courses on the judges’ curriculum?” van Ert wrote rhetorically at the time. “Why not train our judges in systemic racism, Indigenous laws and rights, climate change, national security and counterterrorism, border security and unlawful migration?”

His essay turned out to be prescient.

“Of course, judges should learn about sexual assault and systemic racism,” van Ert told the Post on Tuesday. “They already do, through their own judge-led training programs. The problem lies in the training being mandated by politicians. When people go to court they need to feel their judge isn’t just thinking and doing what the government tells them to. They need to believe judges are independent. I continue to think this is a bad precedent.”

Source: MPs amend judge sex-assault training bill to add systemic racism training, sparking new concerns

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After Ottawa monument is vandalized, Ontario adopts International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s ‘working definition of anti-Semitism’

2020/10/29 Leave a comment

Of note despite some of the valid concerns that the definition may be interpreted too broadly with respect to legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies:

The Ontario cabinet has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “working definition of anti-Semitism” after recent vandalism at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa.

Government House Leader Paul Calandra said Premier Doug Ford’s ministers “took swift and decisive action” Monday to recognize the definition even before the passage of legislation currently before the house.

“After a heinous act of anti-Semitism at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa … it is crucial that all governments be clear and united in fighting anti-Semitism and our adoption of the working definition has done just that,” Calandra said Tuesday.

“The government of Ontario is proud to adopt and recognize the working definition of anti-Semitism. We stand with Ontario’s Jewish community in defence of their rights and fundamental freedoms as we always have and always will,” he said.

Four years ago, the IHRA, an intergovernmental organization with 34 member nations, including Canada, adopted the definition that reads: “anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.”

“Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities,” the definition continues.

While MPPs are currently reviewing Bill 168, the proposed Combating anti-Semitism Act, Calandra said the cabinet wanted to move more quickly with a largely symbolic gesture.

Ontario is the first province in Canada to use the working definition.

In a statement, Michael Levitt, president and CEO of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, said “we applaud the government of Ontario for joining the dozens of other governments around the world in adopting the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, a vital tool in the ongoing fight against hatred and discrimination targeting the Jewish community in Ontario.”

“Jews continue to be subjected to vile rhetoric and propaganda and still remain the minority group most targeted by hate crime, which is nothing less than an affront to our basic democratic values as Ontarians,” said Levitt, a former Liberal MP.

Not everyone was happy with the move.

While the New Democrats supported Bill 168, they expressed concern that the “government secretly adopted the definition, behind closed doors and passed it by Ford edict instead of by democratic vote.”

“Anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic acts of hate are growing in Ontario, and we need to take concrete actions as a province to stomp out this growing, racist movement,” said NDP MPP Gurratan Singh (Brampton East).

“Adopting a new definition of anti-Semitism should be done in consultation with the people of Ontario, and discussed in open and transparent debate. Excluding the voices of community members is no way to build a united coalition against hate.”

Others have opposed the implementation of the working definition out of concern it might conflate anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians.

On Oct. 16, a bike-riding suspect scratched hate graffiti onto the Ottawa monument, earning the condemnation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, among other leaders.

“The anti-Semitic desecration of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is completely unacceptable,” Trudeau said on Twitter.

“I strongly condemn this hateful act.”

Source: After Ottawa monument is vandalized, Ontario adopts International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s ‘working definition of anti-Semitism’

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 28 October Update

2020/10/29 Leave a comment

Main news continues to be with respect to infections:
 
Weekly:
 
Infections per million: UK higher than Quebec, Alberta higher than Canada, Germany higher than Ontario, Prairies higher than British Columbia 
 
Deaths per million: Prairies higher than Atlantic Canada, both higher than Pakistan
 
October 7-28 increase:
 
Infections per million: Prairies (Manitoba, Saskatchewan) join European countries in highest percentage increase
 
Deaths per million: Highest increase in Prairies, particularly Manitoba and Saskatchewan 
 
 

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Big gender gap in students attitudes and engagement in global and multicultural issues

2020/10/28 Leave a comment

New interesting element to the OECD’s PISA assessment. Detailed review on my to do list to see if interesting immigrant/non-immigrant comparisons:

Schools and education systems are failing to give boys and girls across the world the same opportunities to learn and apply their knowledge of global and multicultural issues, according to a new report on the first OECD PISA assessment of the knowledge, skills and attitudes of students to engage with other people and cultures.

Are Students Ready to Thrive in an Interconnected World? focused on students’ knowledge of issues of local and global significance, including public health, economic and environmental issues, as well as their intercultural knowledge, skills and attitudes. Students from 27 countries and economies took the test. Students, teachers, parents and school principals from around 66 countries and economies completed a questionnaire*.

The results reveal a gender gap in access to opportunities to learn global competence as well as in students’ global and intercultural skills and attitudes. On average across OECD countries, boys were more likely than girls to report taking part in activities where they are expected to express and discuss their views, while girls were more likely than boys to report taking part in activities related to intercultural understanding and communication.

Boys, for example, were more likely to learn about the interconnectedness of countries’ economies, look for news on the Internet or watch the news together during class. They were also more likely to be asked by teachers to give their opinion about international news, take part in classroom discussions about world events and analyse global issues with their classmates.

In contrast, girls were more likely than boys to report that they learn how to solve conflicts with their peers in the classroom, learn about different cultures and learn how people from different cultures can have different perspectives on some issues. These gender differences could reflect personal interests and self-efficacy but could also reflect how girls and boys are socialised at home and at school, according to the report.

“Education is key to helping young people navigate today’s increasingly complex and interconnected world,” said Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills. “The schools and education systems that are most successful in fostering global knowledge, skills and attitudes among young people are those that offer a curriculum that values openness to the world, provide a positive and inclusive learning environment and offer opportunities to relate to people from other cultures.”

The findings reveal the key role teachers play in promoting and integrating intercultural understanding into their classroom practices and lessons. Most teachers reported that they are confident in their ability to teach in multicultural settings. But the lack of adequate professional development opportunities in this field is a major challenge. Few teachers reported having received training on teaching in multicultural or multilingual settings.

More than 90% of students attended schools where principals reported positive multicultural beliefs among their teachers. Yet students who perceive discrimination by their teachers towards immigrants and people from other cultural backgrounds, for example, exhibited similar negative attitudes. This highlights the key role of teachers and school principals in countering or perpetuating discrimination by acting as role models.

The report found a strong link between students learning activities at school and having more positive intercultural attitudes. Also, speaking two or more languages was positively associated with awareness of global issues, interest in learning about other cultures, respect for people from other cultures and positive attitudes towards immigrants.

On average across OECD countries, 50% of students reported learning two or more languages at school, 38% reported learning one foreign language and only 12% reported not learning any foreign language at school. The largest share of students (more than 20%) who reported not learning any foreign language at school were observed in Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Scotland. By contrast, in 42 countries, more than 90% of students reported that they learn at least one foreign language at school.

Source: Big gender gap in students attitudes and engagement in global and multicultural issues

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A Teacher, His Killer and the Failure of French Integration

2020/10/27 Leave a comment

Good in-depth background:

They could have easily shared the same classroom — the immigrant teenager and the veteran teacher known for his commitment to instilling the nation’s ideals, in a relationship that had turned waves of newcomers into French citizens.

But Abdoullakh Anzorov, 18, who grew up in France from age 6 and was the product of its public schools, rejected those principles in a horrific crime that shocked and enraged France. Offended by cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad shown in a class on free speech given by the teacher, Samuel Paty, 47, the teenager beheaded him a week ago with a long knife before being gunned down by the police.

France has paid national homage to Mr. Paty because the killing was seen as an attack on the very foundation — the teacher, the public school — of French citizenship. In the anger sweeping the nation, French leaders have promised to redouble their defense of a public educational system that plays an essential role in shaping national identity.

The killing has underscored the increasing challenges to that system as France grows more racially and ethnically diverse. Two or three generations of newcomers have now struggled to integrate into French society, the political establishment agrees.

But the nation, broadly, has balked at the suggestion from critics, many in the Muslim community, that France’s model of integration, including its schools, needs an update or an overhaul.

President Emmanuel Macron’s emphatic defense of the caricatures has also led to ripples overseas. Several Muslim nations, including Kuwait and Qatar, have begun boycotting French goods in protest. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey questioned Mr. Macron’s mental health in a speech, prompting France to recall its ambassador to Turkey.

Mr. Anzorov was the latest product of France’s public schools to turn against their ideals: Two brothers who went to public schools in 2015 attacked Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine that published — and republished last month — caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Jean-Pierre Obin, a former senior national education official, said that public schools played a leading role in “the cultural assimilation and political integration” of immigrant children who “were turned into good little French” and no longer felt “Italian, Spanish, Portuguese or Polish.” Other institutions that also played this role — the Catholic church, unions and political parties — have been weakened, leaving only the schools, he said.

“Today, public schools can’t fully do this,” Mr. Obin said. “But I don’t see another model — especially the Anglo-Saxon model of multiculturalism, which I don’t think is more successful.”

The French model ran into obstacles when the immigrants were no longer European, white or Roman Catholic. Today about 10 percent of France’s population is believed to be Muslim.

The push to assimilate risks engendering a form of xenophobia in the broader population, said Hakim El Karoui, a senior fellow at the Paris-based think tank Institut Montaigne.

“The message is: ‘We don’t want your otherness because we want you to be like us,’” he said.

The children who fail to assimilate — and often end up lost, feeling that they belong to neither France nor their ancestral countries — embody the doubt “that our model is not the right one,” Mr. El Karoui said, a possibility that the French “obviously find unbearable.”

It was in schools that immigrant children learned not only proper French, but also how to politely address teachers as “Madame” or “Monsieur.” They also absorbed notions like secularism in a country where, much like in the United States, ideals form the basis of nationhood.

At least on paper, Mr. Anzorov seemed a good candidate to fit into French society. A Russian of Chechen descent, he arrived in Paris when he was 6 and entered a public primary school. When he was about 10, his family moved to Évreux, a city in an economically depressed area about 55 miles west of Paris and home to about 50 Chechen families, according to Chechens living in the city.

The Chechens largely kept to themselves in Madeleine, a poor neighborhood with other immigrants, who are mostly from former French colonies and whose integration is often complicated by France’s colonial legacy. 

Mr. Anzorov attended a middle school called Collège Pablo Neruda that, hewing to the national curriculum, also offered civics lessons on secularism and freedom of expression. He lived in a rent-subsidized, five-story apartment building with his family, with a direct view of the local jail.

“He always passed in front of my place when going home,” said Ruslan Ibragimov, 49, a Chechen who arrived in Évreux 18 years ago. “He was always alone, with his backpack. Even when he would see me from afar, he’d come over to greet me. He never talked much.”

Never much interested in his studies, Mr. Anzorov was passionate about mixed-martial arts, said a 26-year-old Chechen who also practices the sport. When he was 16 in 2018, Mr. Anzorov lived for a while in Toulouse, where he had an uncle.

There, he joined a sports club that had a Chechen coach and a good reputation among athletes, the 26-year-old said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he said he feared reprisals against Chechens.

“His goal was to fight in the U.F.C.,” the 26-year-old said, referring to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a top promoter of mixed martial arts.

Located in a public facility, the club was investigated by the local authorities because some members prayed in the locker room and asked women to cover their arms and legs, according to the French news media.

In a country guided by strict secularism, such actions are a violation of French law and regarded as signs of radicalization by the authorities — and they have led to many sports clubs being placed under surveillance.

But it was not known what, if any, influence the club exerted on Mr. Anzorov, who had not been on any terrorism watch list.

Unsuccessful in Toulouse, Mr. Anzorov came back to Évreux. His father, who specialized in setting up security for construction sites and other businesses, was encouraging his son to join him, Mr. Ibragimov said. The father had recently bought his son a car, he added.

“But he couldn’t drive it yet because he still hadn’t gotten his driver’s license,” Mr. Ibragimov said.

It was only in recent months that the teenager had shown signs of radicalization, said the special antiterrorism prosecutor, Jean-François Ricard. Mr. Anzorov’s transformation appeared to have played out online, according to an analysis by the French news website Mediapart of a Twitter account that he created in June and that was deleted last week after his death.

His posts on Twitter attacked a wide range of targets — from Jews to Christians to the rulers of Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Paty was teaching history and civics at a middle school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a middle-class Paris suburb, at the time of the attack.

“He is the kind of teacher who leaves his mark, by his gentleness and open-mindedness,” said Maeva Latil, 21, who joined a tribute in front of the Jacques-Prévert middle school, in a small village south of Paris, where Mr. Paty taught between 2011 and 2018.

In history classes, he used contemporary examples — from Pink Floyd songs to a book on racism by a soccer player — to make his teaching resonate with his students, said Aurélie Davoust, 43, a former literature teacher at Jacques-Prévert.

“With him, there was really this aspect: You don’t study history to talk about dead things, you study history to become a citizen,” she said.

Mr. Paty was a strong believer in laïcité, the strict secularism that separates religion from the state in France. Ms. Davoust recalled Mr. Paty once asking a young girl wearing a cross around her neck in school to take it off.

“Our democracy was established against the Catholic Church and the monarchy, and laïcité is the way that democracy was organized in France,” said Dominique Schnapper, a sociologist and president of the Council of the Wise, a group created by the government in 2018 to reinforce laïcité in public schools.

In a class on freedom of expression — including the right to say blasphemous things about all religions — Mr. Paty used caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, Jesus and rabbis to teach, former students said.

After his transfer a few years ago to Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in a Paris suburb with a more diverse population, he appeared to adjust his approach. When showing caricatures, he began telling students who might be offended that they could leave the classroom or look away.

At the new school, students said he showed mostly caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that had been published by Charlie Hebdo. One of the two shown this month was titled “A star is born” and depicted Muhammad fully nude. That upset many Muslim students and their parents, according to the local chapter of PEEP, a national parents association.

Mr. Paty said he was surprised by the backlash and apologized to students, said Talia, a 13-year-old student who was present at the lecture.

“He told us that he’s a teacher, that this class is part of his program, that France is a secular country and so is our school,” said Talia, who asked that she be identified by her first name only given the sensitivity of the situation.

One angry father complained about the teacher in videos he uploaded on social media. Enraged, Mr. Anzorov, the Chechen teenager, traveled all the way from Évreux to Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, nearly 60 miles, to kill Mr. Paty.

“Did he never have committed teachers? Or did he have them and he didn’t hear them?” Ms. Schnapper, the president of the Council of the Wise, said of Mr. Anzorov’s years in France’s public schools. “We’ll never know. But it’s a sign of failure.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/world/europe/france-beheading-teacher.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

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Blanchet vows to press PM on prof’s use of slur, drawing sharp rebukes from Black MPs

2020/10/27 Leave a comment

While IMO, the professor in question, Verushka Lieutenant-Duval, used the word legitimately to demonstrate reappropriation, rather telling for Bloc and CAQ leaders to spring to her defence given their overall lack of sensitivity to racism and systemic racism:

A controversy over a suspended professor who used a notoriously derogatory word for Black people in class has stirred strong emotions on Parliament Hill, over whether, if ever, the term should be used.

The heated responses came amid a push by the Bloc Québécois to have the government say unequivocally whether the Liberals, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in particular, supported the professor at the heart of the controversy.

Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet said he was unimpressed with Trudeau’s response Wednesday to a question in the House of Commons, and planned to press Trudeau anew on Thursday.

Blanchet said those subjected to hateful words deserve compassion and support, but using the term in an educational context isn’t prejudicial.

Asked what he would say to those who believe otherwise, Blanchet said: “I have to say that you have very rightfully expressed your sensibility and opinion, which I respect absolutely, but which I do not share.”

The issue has been of particular interest in Quebec, where provincial politicians have come to the defence of University of Ottawa professor Verushka Lieutenant-Duval. So have Bloc Québécois MPs on Parliament Hill.

New Democrat Matthew Green blasted the Bloc, saying that defending use of the offensive word under the banner of free speech opens a path for continued racist attacks on Canada’s Black communities.

“For somebody who has had that word hurled against them from the time I was nine years old … that is a dehumanizing word, it is a form of racial violence,” said Green, who was wearing a Black Lives Matter button on his mask.

“Those that would choose to defend it, what they’re really defending is the prerogative to uphold white supremacy.”

Green party Leader Annamie Paul tweeted that she, not Blanchet, has been targeted with use of the slur “and it stung each time.”

“Before making statements about an issue he clearly doesn’t understand, I invite Mr. Blanchet to contact me so I can explain why the N word remains painful for many,” she wrote on Twitter.

Lieutenant-Duval was suspended after using the term during a classroom discussion last month. She has since apologized.

On Wednesday, University of Ottawa president Jacques Frémont issued an appeal for campus calm, saying inflamed rhetoric wouldn’t lead to a resolution.

The decision to remove Lieutenant-Duval from the classroom was not taken arbitrarily, nor was her academic freedom threatened at any point, he wrote.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole said healthy and open on-campus debate needed to carried out with respect for professors and students. There must be a similar context of respect if ever the offensive word is to be used under the umbrella of academic freedom, he said.

“The discussions about racism lately have been good in raising awareness of inequalities and unacceptable outcomes,” O’Toole said Thursday.

“So how do you find that balance? I think universities are trying to look at that and there should be respect as part of that process.”

Trudeau wasn’t in question period Thursday, but on Wednesday had told the House of Commons that “we all need to be conscious of the power of our words.”

On Thursday, Bloc MP Kristina Michaud asked Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland if the government would defend academic freedom at the University of Ottawa.

“Obviously, our government and I think every member in this House will defend academic freedom,” Freeland said in French.

“At the same time … and this is a difficult thing, we must be aware of the reality and that we have systemic racism in our country and we must also act on that.”

Source: Blanchet vows to press PM on prof’s use of slur, drawing sharp rebukes from Black MPs

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‘Dramatic’ decline in Canadians who say discrimination against Black and Chinese communities is not a problem here

2020/10/26 Leave a comment

Yet another interesting survey from Environics with this encouraging trend:

There has been a “dramatic” decline in the proportion of Canadians who say that discrimination against Black and Chinese communities is no longer a problem in Canada, a new study has found.

The study, conducted by the Environics Institute alongside Vancity, Century Initiative and the University of Ottawa, is based on research conducted over the course of two public opinion surveys, which were completed in August and September. The first survey was conducted online, and gauged the opinions of 3,008 Canadians. The second survey was based on telephone interviews with 2,000 Canadians, and is accurate within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

The surveys have found that there is little divide on the issue of racism in Canada: the views of those that identify as white and those who are racialized have both shifted in the same direction.

The proportion of Canadians who said that discrimination against Chinese-Canadians is no longer an issue has fallen by just over half. In 2019, 63 per cent of Canadians said it was no longer a problem. In 2020, only 31 per cent agreed that discrimination against Chinese-Canadians was no longer a problem.

Similar trends emerged for how Canadians perceive racism against Black communities: Fewer than half as many — 20 per cent — say it is no longer an issue in Canada than in 2019, when 47 per cent said racism against Black Canadians was no longer an issue.

While many Canadians disagreed discrimination against Indigenous communities was no longer a problem last year, the proportion of people that strongly disagreed grew from 29 per cent in 2019 to 43 per cent this year.

The proportion of Canadians that “agree that it is more difficult for non-white people to be successful in Canadian society” has also grown from 2019, the study found.

There has been a decline over the last decade in confidence in local police and the RCMP, the study survey showed, with 73 per cent of Canadians saying they have a lot or some confidence in police. Meanwhile, 64 say the same about the RCMP. In 2010, 88 per cent expressed confidence in local police, and 84 per cent expressed confidence in the RCMP.

Andrew Parkin, executive director of the Environics Institute, told the Star that typically, opinions change gradually. This year, though, there are clear, sharp changes in the way Canadians view race and policing.

“In the report, we call (the shift) dramatic — and I don’t think we’re exaggerating,” Parkin said. “That’s a dramatic change in a short period of time.”

The major changes in public perception suggest “that something grabbed the public’s attention and led them to think about these issues in a different way from which they’ve been thinking about them before,” he said.

The report cites the wide public discussion around police brutality, anti-Black racism protests and the publicity of racist behaviour towards Chinese-Canadians in the wake of COVID-19 as the likely trigger for the shift.

The report “certainly shows a more openness to the idea of systemic racism,” Parkin said.

The shift in thinking shows “we’re moving forward,” said Marva Wisdom, a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. “I think that is a good thing. So I am very, very hopeful.”

The survey matches up with what those on the ground doing anti-racism work are experiencing and hearing, she said. However, Wisdom said she’s feeling cautious about the results.

There is “vigilance that has to go along with this,” she said. “It’s critical, and it’s important and while I’m hopeful, I also recognize that we have to build in sustainability in the work that we’re doing.”

Public perception “has never been like this before, the response has never been this consistently positive,” Wisdom said.

“People are working to read books and finding out how they can learn about systemic racism. And, I cannot understate how important that is for our country, our communities, and for especially Black and Indigenous populations going forward.”

Source: ‘Dramatic’ decline in Canadians who say discrimination against Black and Chinese communities is not a problem here

For the survey:  Final Report,  Detailed Data Tables

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Australia: Governments must stop the patronising attitude to multicultural media

2020/10/26 Leave a comment

Similar situation in Canada, unfortunately (see the Canadian Ethnic Media Association’s The Need for adequate and equitable recognition of Canada’s Ethnic media):

Since the beginning of the COVID crisis not a single multicultural media outlet has been invited or been granted access into the daily media briefings from the Victorian Premier or the Australian Prime Minister.

Earlier this year as the reality of the pandemic hit our shores and federal and state governments imposed the first lockdown we saw fear enter into the psyche of the entire community. Supermarket shelves were emptied as a collective primal instinct set in. People envisaged the worst, and it was the government and the media’s role to allay those fears.

At Neos Kosmos we immediately assured our staff and our readers that it was ‘business as usual’, in fact our commitment to report the news was heightened, not only for accuracy but with ongoing rolling coverage as developments unfolded. Our community needed us more than ever.

It has been very difficult to produce the essential service we provide to the community. As with most publishers, we had to cut back our freelance contributors and slash costs wherever we could as advertising revenue plummeted.

Meanwhile our ongoing coverage, in Greek and English, was being distilled from the established mainstream news sources (ABC, News Corporation and Nine outlets). This is not uncommon for any small publisher who needs to cover national or state news, with limited resources.

As the devastating aged care crisis in Victoria emerged in July we decided to ask the Victorian government questions directly on behalf of our readers and the community. Our most respected community members, our parents and grandparents, the pioneers of our community, who sacrificed so much, had been compromised by endemic failures, at both state and federal level. Many began to die.

We made our first request to attend the Victorian Premier’s daily media conference on August 3, as the crisis of the second wave in Victoria was unfolding. As a respected publisher with 63 years of journalism experience behind us, it was a no brainer, we needed to ask questions directly to our Premier. To our surprise we were denied access… and have been denied access ever since.

Earlier in the year, the federal government had set up weekly multicultural media briefings by Minister Alan Tudge, the Acting Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs. This was welcome, however, these conferences are more government public relations than the opportunity for media to scrutinise and ask unvetted questions. Media must either submit questions or ask them via chat, leaving it up to the Minister’s advisors as to which get answered and when.

Multicultural media is treated as a second-class citizen, and in the words of a current Victorian Minister, who’s name we shall not reveal, it is being treated in a very ‘paternalistic’ manner. Over the past three and half months we have lobbied our leaders, whilst continuing to request access to the Premier’s briefings. We are continuously denied, being given excuses and that our request will be ‘put forward’.

Well over 150 Greek Australian Victorians have died over the past few months from COVID, an unproportionally high number of the 800 plus that have lost their lives in this state. Our government will not let the community’s represented media ask unvetted questions. Why?

We are told that due to COVID there are limited media placings in the auditorium due to social distancing requirements. We don’t make the cut. We rely on the likes of the ABC, The Australian, The Age and Sky News. When suggesting that we do not need to be physically present, but to be able to ask questions via Zoom, or the like, we were told this suggestion would be ‘put forward’. That was in July. We are still waiting.

That fact of the matter is that no government has wanted to deal with the ‘headache’ of having to manage tens, if not hundreds, of requests from multicultural media outlets to attend conferences. It has even been suggested that it would be easier to consider if we (multicultural media) had a representative group.

Such a suggestion is valid and overdue, and is currently in discussion, however no broad industry group could speak on behalf of vastly different communities and media outlets, each with unique circumstances, needs and even politics.

There is no excuse, governments of all persuasions need to be able to assess a media outlets credibility and public interest, and we need to ask direct questions at briefings. Something must change and government needs to act. Governments must stop the paternalistic behaviour and engage with our journalists. Journalists who understand their communities and who can not only ask the right questions but to make government and mainstream media aware of the nuances of any particular community.

In Melbourne’s most recent outbreak at East Preston Islamic College a mainstream journalist asked the Victorian Premier at his media conference last Friday ‘what improvements had been made in communications with non-English speaking communities’.

The Premier replied “I think that every day we look for different ways, enhanced ways to get to some communities that are pretty hard to get to, they’re hard to sometimes connect with. And that can be language issues, cultural issues, all sorts of things.”

He then went on to say, “we engage with community leaders, we use multicultural media, we use mainstream media, all manner of social media platforms..” and also said “there’s a constant search for ways in which we can better link with the diverse communities that make up our city and state.”

Not a single multicultural media journalist was present at that conference.

Source: Governments must stop the patronising attitude to multicultural media

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As France mourns slain teacher Samuel Paty, some question secular values

2020/10/26 Leave a comment

Needed discussion:

In January 2015, millions of people flooded the streets of Paris and other French cities to denounce the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks. An angry nation brandished brightly colored pencils and banners, defending free expression and France’s staunchly secular ideology.

Five years later, and after another terrorist attack, there’s a sense of deja vu. Today’s protests are smaller. But the horror is the same, following the brutal decapitation of Samuel Paty, a middle school history teacher, after he displayed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on free speech.

The same mocking cartoons which inspired the Charlie Hebdo attacks — and last month’s stabbing of two people in Paris — are again testing the limits of France’s vaunted secularism, or laïcité. Clashing views of faith and free speech are on the line. Feeding the tensions, some experts say, is a broader sense of stigmatization and disenfranchisement felt by many French Muslims, who represent Western Europe’s largest Islamic community.

Now, as President Emmanuel Macron and his centrist government have vowed an all-out war against radical Islam, critics have said the strong defense of secularism is only exacerbating the problem. Instead of providing a neutral space for the country’s melting pot of beliefs, as it’s intended, secularism— enshrined in a 1905 law separating church and state — has become a flashpoint.

“There’s a political culture that has problems with Islam,” said Farhad Khosrokhavar, a prominent sociologist and expert on radical Islam. “And this political culture, laïcité, is a problem.”

Paty was posthumously awarded with France’s highest civilian award, the Legion d’Honneur

Secularism has become ‘a civil religion’

Authorities insist there is no disharmony between moderate Islam and French values. They instead fault communitarianism, a term used in France to suggest an inward-looking view of society that is often, although not exclusively, linked to conservative Islam. More recently, Macron has replaced communitarianism with separatism in his lexicon.

Some observers have said that same inward view helped fuel Paty’s murder, with authorities citing an online hate campaign launched by a disgruntled parent of a student in Paty’s class. That campaign, they say, motivated 18-year-old Chechen refugee Abdoullakh Anzorov to kill Paty.

In its fight against communitarianism over the years, the French government has introduced bans on religious symbols in public schools and offices and outlawed full-body Islamic swimsuits, or burkinis, in public swimming pools and beaches, the latter cast as a hygienic measure.

In September some lawmakers, including from Macron’s own party, recently walked out of a session of the National Assembly during a speech by a veiled student leader — although she had broken no laws with her hijab.

“Laïcité was once a way to manage the relationship between government and society,” said Khosrokhavar. “But it has become a kind of civil religion, with its codes, its prescriptions.”

As he paid homage to Paty at a national memorial in Paris on Wednesday, Macron offered up an emotional defense of France’s secular values. He said they provided the space for free and critical thinking, and even the right to mock a religion — although not a person.

“We will not give up cartoons,” the president vowed at the ceremony in the courtyard of the Sorbonne University.

Macron’s government has responded to Paty’s murder with muscular action, carrying out dozens of raids against suspected Islamist networks early this week, temporarily shutting down a mosque in a Paris suburb for relaying a denunciation against the teacher and vowing to expel radicalized foreigners and dissolve organizations with extremist ties. It also plans to unveil legislation in early December to fight separatism, with Islamist extremism in its crosshairs.

Government ‘needs a scapegoat’

But France’s largest opposition party, the far-right National Rally, believes Macron’s government hasn’t gone far enough.

Calling radical Islam a “warlike ideology,” National Rally leader Marine Le Pen — considered for now as the president’s top opponent in the April 2022 presidential election — has called for “war legislation” to match it, including an immediate halt to immigration.

Others, however, fear the authorities have gone too far. Among the most prominent groups targeted for dissolution is the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF). Hard-line Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has described the NGO that offers legal aid for Muslims as a “threat to the Republic.”

Darmanin has linked the CCIF to Paty’s killing, ostensibly because the disgruntled father behind the hate campaign against the teacher sought the group’s help. CCIF head Jawad Bachare has rejected such accusations, and several rights groups have protested the group’s possible dissolution.

“The government was unable to protect its citizens and it needs a scapegoat,” Bachare said in an interview earlier this week. “And that’s the CCIF.”

Stirring up the debate is a government plan to “renew” the Secularism Observatory, a government advisory body, to reportedly bring it more “in line” with the fight against separatism. The body has sometimes gone against state and local authorities on matters like the burkini ban on beaches, which it said was illegal.

Remarks made Tuesday by Darmanin during a TV interview also haven’t helped matters. Speaking with broadcaster BFM TV, he suggested “separatism” extended even to supermarkets.

“I do not criticize the consumers but those who sell them something. I understand very well that halal meat is sold in a supermarket, what I regret is the aisles,” he said. “So you have the aisle for Muslims, the kosher aisle and then all the others … why specific aisles?”

French worry secular values are in danger

Such moves may resonate with French voters, shaken by a string of Islamic terror attacks in recent years that have left more than 250 dead. But some may question their timing, coming 18 months ahead of the presidential election.

A survey this week by the Ifop polling firm found an overwhelming majority of respondents considered France’s secular values were in danger, and that radical Islam was at war with the country.

“Laïcité is not against religion but allows everyone to live his religion or be atheist,” said Elisabeth Gandin, who joined thousands at Paris’ Place de la Republique to protest the attack against Paty. “I don’t agree with the Charlie cartoons, but I’m on the streets to defend the right to say things some may not like.”

Bolstering those views may be another recent Ifop survey suggesting that 40% of Muslims, including more than three-quarters of those under 25, put their religious convictions ahead of the country. Those figures were far higher than for non-Muslims, although skeptics have questioned how the survey’s questions were framed.

Muslims feel targeted by secularism

Mainstream Muslim leaders have expressed outrage at Paty’s killing, echoing arguments about the dangers of radical Islam while also warning against stigmatizing the Muslim community as a whole.

“We cannot allow on French territory words, activities, actions, calls for hate without punishing them,” Tareq Oubrou, the imam of Bordeaux mosque, told France Info radio. Still, he said, ordinary Muslims are doubly hit, “as both French citizens and Muslims.”

Analyst Khosrokhavar believes France’s fierce interpretation of secularism has paradoxically helped fuel radicalization. He notes the country became Western Europe’s biggest exporter of jihadi fighters to Syria, even though others, like Germany and Britain, also have large Muslim populations. Intolerant views about headscarves, he claims, have helped push some conservative Muslim women toward fundamentalism.

“The majority feel they are targeted by this laïcité, which becomes a kind of symbol of neo-colonial rule and for them, a denial of their dignity,” Khosrokhavar said, referring also to his interviews with multiple middle-class Muslim men, many not particularly religious, for an upcoming book.

Teaching tolerance, secularism demands patience

Teachers, especially in France’s immigrant-heavy suburbs, say they must also tread carefully in dealing with secularism as they are on the front lines of explaining its principles.

“There is a penetration of a religiosity that increasingly structures students and feeds a radical vision,” said Iannis Roder, a history teacher in the Seine-Saint-Denis region northeast of Paris, which is home to one of the country’s largest populations of North African and Black immigrants. “It manifests itself in really basic things, like some students refusing to listen to music during Ramadan,” he told French radio.

Teaching tolerance and secularism to her class, another Paris-area high school teacher said, demands patience.

“Tackling free expression by showing caricatures of the Prophet [Muhammad] — you have to weigh the consequences,” she said, declining to be identified as she had not received her school’s authorization to speak to the media.

The teacher has spent years on projects to explain the Holocaust and other sensitive events, taking her often skeptical students on field trips to see history up close.

“You have to fight,” she said, “but it’s a long fight.”

Source: As France mourns slain teacher Samuel Paty, some question secular values

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